Happy New Year! This place is a dream. There is a real hill here behind Donny’s Marina. Behind it is a nice short walk to New Plymouth, the village on the Southern end of Green Turtle Cay. From here, you can see the southwest part of the island. That part of the island has another anchorage and a bay. Little Abaco island is visible from there, and for all intents and purposes, that island is the ‘mainland.’ Its an amazing view especially since the sun sets in that direction. I hate leaving things the last minute. Actually, I love leaving

Entry from 12/27 continued You know how the water looks like in the old James Bond movie, Thunderball? That’s how the water looks here, even though I was in the Grand Bahama Island and he was in Nassau. I woke up to a similar scene. Clear water, white bottom all around, and big motor yachts and sailboats on the horizon. The night was very uneventful. Blissfully, we had a very calm night. Judging by how easy the anchor was weighed, I’m not sure how good the holding was. Despite this, we did not drag. All the vessel had to deal

I can’t get over this — every time I step off the boat and onto a pier, or the other way around, I feel like I’m jumping over an endless abyss. Or that I was hopping on stones to skip over another universe. In a sense, I really am. The water is so clear here, that it feels like there is nothing under my boat. Just air, containing a whole different universe with fantastic creatures. These were my first thoughts as I set foot in the new-to-me country for the very first time. There had been a few things on

I have a friend who is a sailmaker and a great cruiser with extensive experience sailing the US east coast. Sebastian had told me a month ago that “everything starting at Beaufort and further south are expert level anchorages.” This conversation felt like it was an eternity ago, and it felt as if I was sitting in a different world when I was listening to him. But I took that advice seriously. It really put me in the right mindset. I decided that I’ll never be lazy with anchoring. And to always double check everything in my ground tackle. Unlike

“I know you hate motoring, but you should just motor. Its just something you do when you are cruising.” My friend Anna’s face popped up next to my head like a spirit bubble, not unlike Mr. T’s spirit bubble in the dumb high school movie spoof that is Not Another Teen Movie. It happened a few times on this leg. Today, my total distance traveled is approximately 740 nautical miles. This is longer than the longest sailing cruise I’d done previously on Sonora, which was the 600 nautical miles that I traveled during my solo DelMarVa cruise. I did a

What a ride! Sonora had a headsail out on a pole and the main set on the opposite side. Both boom and the pole were made fast with their respective downhauls, pulling her sails out for the strong winds to fill. She looked incredible, with her canvas out on both sides, running rigging creating shapes of a triangle on all of her spars. Looking like this, waves ranging from six to eight feet would catch up to her, and her stern would rise a bit as she surfed down the face of the wave. Gusty winds pushed her forward and