Well a lot of water has passed under the keel since I last did an update...We are presently safe and sound in Savannah GA and on our way north but I'll take this opportunity to backtrack a bit.

We had a great time in early March with good buddy Alge and enjoyed catching up with him and showing him a bit of the Abacos. The weather was pretty funky for much of his visit but we did get around a bit and had some fun together. I think he liked the relaxation as much as the scenery! We enjoyed having him aboard (most people wear us thin after 3-4 days...but after a whole week he is still in the running for the cabin boy position!).

We then spent another week on a mooring at my favorite island, Guana Cay, and enjoyed the lobstering and snorkeling off the back reef some more and hung out with our Canadian friends who would be leaving soon. Then is was back to Marsh Harbor for provisioning for the trip home and getting a suddenly balky auto-pilot checked out.

Once at the dock I discovered that salt water had been leaking up through my rudder post compression fitting and sloshing around with my auto pilot's linear drive which is NOT waterproof. A few turns on the shaft compression nut cured the leak but the damage had been done. I had no clue that this was happening as there was no outlet for this water to the bilge (There is NOW!), and the first sign of something amiss was the faulty steering. This was not fixable locally so we scratched our offshore plans and decided to head back across the gulf stream instead of to Beaufort which would have mean 4+ days of hand steering 24 hours a day. A bummer...but still a whole lot better than working!

Tony and Kathy on Odyssey decided to go back to Solomon's MD at about the same time so we agreed to travel together as we've really enjoyed each others company. We sailed over to Baker's Bay on Guana Cay for a final get together with our cruising buddies before we rounded "the Whale" for the last time and began the trek home. We anchored out and played around the bay all day and had a bonfire on the beach at night courtesy of Ed and Marlene on Valhalla who will follow in mid April.

We rounded the Whale Cay the next day and anchored in Green Turtle for the night and had dinner at the Club where chef Mike was once again kind enough to prepare sweetbreads for the first mate. In my opinion this is the best restaurant in the Abacos by a wide margin...don't miss it.

Earlier in the day I stopped by Black Sound marina to pick up a new zinc for the prop shaft as I discovered in Baker's Bay that the old one was GONE. Glad I looked...but the combination of very salty water and warm sea temperatures ate it away much more quickly than in the Chesapeake. On the other hand ...my bottom paint from Deltaville Yacht Yard has held up much better than most of the other boats here.

We left Green Turtle and decided to stop at Alan's-Pensacola Cay which is a bit of the normally traveled route to West End. It is a beautiful deserted Cay and we dinghied around and gathered conch shells and fishing floats and poked through the flotsam and jetsam on the Atlantic side looking for treasures. Imagine...a tropical island all to ourselves!

After that it was on to Great Sale Cay for a night and then the 50 mile slog to West End before jumping off to Florida. A cautionary tale here....

As we exited the little Bahama bank it gets VERY shoal and HARD CORAL lines the navigable channel which is only marked by a few stakes...which sometime go missing due to weather and lack of maintenance. All then chart books have GPS waypoints for the turning points in this channel which we used to navigate along with our chart. As we approached the last waypoint I could see that it would put us to port of a stake by a few hundred feet that the chart showed should be passed on the other side. We stopped the boat...turned back and went around the stake as the chart showed realizing that the waypoint was with our GPS margin of error (or at least hoping that the cart was accurate!). We had no further problem but friends that chose to follow the waypoint did...thankfully with no damage...but certainly a scary moment to find you home bouncing on coral! Moral...GPS is no substitute for good chart work and eyeball navigation!

After a brief stop at West End's Old Bahama Bay Marina (otherwise known as no-see-um marina) we had a beautiful Gulf Stream crossing to Ft. Pierce which took 11 hours and saved us 2 days on the ICW vs. a Lake Worth crossing. Tony and Kathy went to Lake Worth with their slower cruising speed and this proved to be prudent as they had engine coolant problems near shore and had to be towed in. If they had chosen Ft. Pierce they would have been disabled further off shore and had a night at sea.

We spent a day in Ft. Pierce at the Harbortown Marina to rest up after our crossing jaunt and to install a new fresh water pump. The old one had self destructed after a decade of use so I couldn't complain but I didn't fit very well into the spaces I needed to for the "operation". Several hours and skinned knuckles later the job was complete and the 1st mate was amazed to have quiet running water! The Cap'n decided to have tonic water mixed with a little something stronger!

We hooked back up with them in Vero Beach which is now one of our favorite stops on the waterway. The town provides moorings for cruisers for 8 bucks a night and shower use is $1 per person. They have a FREE bus/tram that stops in front of the marina each hour and will take you to shops, grocery stores, the mall etc. and they go out of their way to make cruisers feel welcome. They do NOT permit anchoring out but will do their best to get you a mooring in their beautiful anchorage if you call ahead. Highly recommended.

We made it up to Titusville in time to watch the Space Shuttle launch. We could see the shuttle on the pad and we listened on the radio to the countdown. The speed and the power and the sound of the launch was incredible...What a feat of engineering and physics!

From there we headed to Telemar Bay and anchored out near our favorite Chinese restaurant...Followed by a stop in Daytona where I picked up the replacement autopilot I had ordered from West Marine. The removal and reinstallation of a new linear drive took most of the day but it felt good to be able to do it and especially to see it work so well once we were back on the waterway. I've saved the old unit in the hope that Deltaville Electronics can repair it or send it back to Raytheon for fixing so I'll be able to carry a spare with me in the future.

We made our way to Jacksonville & replenished the larder at Publix and Wal-Mart and then it was on to beautiful Cumberland Island which amazed Tony and Kathy as it had us on the way down. We went "outside" around Cumberland the next day and had a nice motor sail in light winds to St. Simon Island where we anchored for the night. We got a bit more than halfway to Savannah the next day but separated from Odyssey as they were having some engine difficulties and were nursing it along. As it was, we anchored in Big Tom Creek about 30 miles south of Savannah and had it all to ourselves on a beautiful night with a gentle breeze and a million stars.

Odyssey caught up with us at the Palmer Johnson marina today (4/18) and we'll take in Savannah tomorrow while Odyssey is being looked at. At this rate we'll arrive back in the Chesapeake during the first week in May but we'll continue to enjoy the sights and sounds of the ICW till then! ......//GB