Pretty cool eh? When you first get to a new cruising ground it all sounds very exotic. Once you've been there a while the exoticness wears off a bit. At present we are on Day 3 of the long ocean passage (430 miles) from the BVIs to somewhere else. We haven't quite decided where yet. It depends on weather forecasts if we can get one, on the SSB radio, on daylight arrival times and crew desire to keep going. Wherever we decide to stop I think Puerto Rico, Dominican Republic and the Turks and Caicos Islands sound pretty much as exotic as it gets. After the T and Cs it it is a series of short hops to George Town in the Exumas, part of the Bahamas, where we will leave the boat.
Day 3 usually means that a routine is developing. Seas legs are established and watch keeping settling down. And that is the case today.
This morning at around 9am life was just about perfect. We shook out the second reef, the sun was out, we had long, slow 6' Atlantic swells swooping under our keel, the sea was azure blue and the crew was content. In the distance we watched two massive whales leaping out of the water and spouting. I sat on the bowsprit with my legs dangling. Occasionally the bow dipped, splashing my legs with warm tropical water. I looked back along the boat. Clear deck (now the night's flying fish collection has been thrown overboard), jib set nicely, reefed main and mizzen way out to port and held securely by their preventers. Absolutely perfect 15-20 knot, stressfree, blue water Trade Wind sailing at 6-7 knots. Beautiful, just beautiful.
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