January 6, 2008. The unthinkable has happened!

Winter arrived in Marathon on Monday but on the bright side it was gone by Friday. I thought it would never end. Tuesday afternoon was in the mid eighties and the wind was supposed to swing around and blow hard out of the north late in the day.

It did as promised, and the temperature plummeted to the upper fifties. The wind continued to blow from the north between 20 and 30 knots for a few days. Wednesday night the mercury dropped as low as 45 degrees. Thankfully the wind finally began to clock around and come from the east. So by late Friday the temperature was back in the seventies.

On Saturday morning we attended a skippers meeting for boats looking to cross to the Bahamas together during the next available weather window. It was run by a guy, Jerry, who has been to the Bahamas eleven consecutive years. He and his usual buddy boat were both there and seemed to be very conservative in the type of seas that they’re willing to set out in. They had a wealth of knowledge to share and Christy and I came away from the meeting with a good feeling about our proposed little armada.

I spent today changing oil and replacing a circuit breaker that had begun to get a little fussy. We also removed our big CQR anchor from its home in an aft locker and placed it up on the bow so it’s ready to deploy. We already had our primary anchor and a smaller secondary anchor on the bow, now there are three. We were trying to avoid adding anymore weight to the bow of the boat but it was time to get it out. It looks as if we have an anchor fetish now that all 3 bow anchors are in place. Oh yeah, we have a 4th anchor on the stern.

Taking the anchor out of the locker also opened up a lot of storage space. So we spent a good bit of time rearranging our gear. On Wednesday we’ll pick up our bicycles from the bike rack and bring them back out to the boat. Our V-berth has been converted into a garage of sorts. Once the bikes are back on board we’ll empty out the V-berth, put the bikes in first and bury them with all the rest of our stuff. We shouldn’t need them until we arrive back in the states.

So we’re still sitting here waiting for a weather window that will enable us to get going. It’s a little early to tell but the end of the week looks promising. We’ll see how it plays out; plans on a sailboat are often set in Jell-O.