Henry is here!!!!

Here he is; Henry Ranger Davidson

Our adorable little man.

Proud papa at home with the little man.

I finally got to hold him. One happy mamma!

Henry is having his first checkup here right after birth. You can see the forecepts mark on his cheek. He's already cute.

Hey everyone!

So, I know we are a little late in announcing this, but with the holidays & all we've been a bit busy!

Henry Ranger Davidson was born on December 20th at 12:14 PM. He weighed 9lbs 2oz and was 21 1/2 inches long.

We had a long (31 hours, with 7 hours of pushing) traumatic delivery, but made it through ok. Henry finally decided to join us & we couldn't be more thrilled! He's perfect! (I know....every new parent says that...but I can't help it. He's really perfect.)

We had John & laurie over for about a week which was really nice & Scott came to join us for Christmas too.

We are getting into our new routine around the house & trying to sneak in sleep where we can. Luckily Henry is a great baby. hardly any crying, but he has his hours backwards, so he's up all night & sleeping all day. We will try to get him switched around eventually, but for now, we are trying to adjust ourselves to his nutty schedule.

Hope you all have a great New Year & enjoy the pictures!! We hope to see and hear from you all soon. It has once again been too long since we've seen many of you. Hi to Brian & Alicia on Sarabande by the way!!! Great to hear from you!! We'll check your blog next. I'm curious to see where you are now.

Nope, No baby yet.,

Just to let you all know, there is no baby yet. I assure you that we will be posting when he arrives. We promise. Kristen is doing well & so is the baby. He's big & healthy & we saw a 3-D ultrasound the other day & he already has a little hair on his noggin. Very cool.
Sorry for the delay, but the little man just doesn't want to come out yet..apparently. We are getting pretty anxious. Especially with Christmas being next week.
Hopefully you will all be hearing from us very soon. Happy holidays if we don't talk to you before then!!! We will most likely be staying home.

Keep up on the blog. We will post pics as soon as possible!!
-Ben & Kristen

Nine Months Pregnant Pictures

From the side

Seriously HUGE!!!

Outside all bundled up.

Ok, so I've been asked by a ton of people to please post a picture of me pregnant.

So...here I am in all my glory at 9 months along. This is as big as it gets.

I'm due any day & wish I had some older preggo pics to share with you, but this is it.

Any time now!! We'll make sure to let you all know when he shows up!!

-Kristen

Any day now!

Hi guys!,

Thanksgiving was really good. We had a bunch of people over at our house & had a Big turkey & a ham plus all the stuff that goes with, so we still have some leftovers. I love Thanksgiving leftovers!! hope everyone else had a good one too!! It was funny having one at home again. last year it was our first full day out on the boat after leaving Oriental, so the three of us were all alone. It was nice not to have to travel this year too.

We are still just waiting for the arrival of the little guy. I went to the doctor on Tuesday & she said he's on his way for sure & she would be surprised if he waited another week. I haven't been sleeping the last two nights because of cramps and contractions, so thats a good sign that he's getting ready. These contractions could last up to two weeks though. I hope not!!! We went to another class last night & that was good. It was about all the scary stuff like epidurals & creepy tools etc... I'm glad I got to see everything.

I have been told that if I go bounce around or walk up a steep hill etc... I could go into labor pretty quickly, but I'm hoping to let him come out when it is his time. I figure if he comes out when he's ready instead of when I bounce him out labor might go more smoothly... Thats my thoery anyway. We'll see. I am really excited for him to show up & today would be great...so wish us luck!

We will update you soon. Probably when he's born....I hope!!

I put a few pictures of the roosters up to entertain you & show you what they look like in case anyone is interested. They were taken with our camara that is dying, so they arent' the best quality, but thanks to Doug & his early Christmas present we are the proud new owners of an amazing camara as of yesterday, so we should have awesome baby pics when he arrives!!!!!

Thanks again Doug!!!!!

Roosters!

Hey again,

there has been a lot going on at the Davidson household for the last few weeks. We are getting ready for the little man of course. We are painting his room Monday or Tuesday & we had two showers last weekend. One here in Cle Elum for the Eastsiders & one in Bellevue at Doug & Janet's house for the westsiders. They were both really fun & we hope everyone had a good time! We really loved seeing everyone!! Especially people we haven't seen since as long ago as our wedding! I still can't believe we have been back home since summer & have missed out on seeing so many people!! We will try to be better about visiting friends in the future!...although, we may be a bit busy with the baby for a while.

Our house is quickly filling up with baby stuff. I am trying to keep it contained! We are hoping to keep his room as the guest room for a while, and have him staying in our room at first, mostly so I don't have to go trudging across the house at all hours of the night to feed & change him. I figure that all those extra minutes that I save wandering around are extra minutes of sleep I will be getting. It probably means much less sleep for Ben, but some sacrifices need to be made. It's funny, because our guest room bed is a king & the baby's room is tiny, so not much room to maneuver around once all the little man stuff is in there. Oh well. Guests will understand I'm sure. It just looks a little messy.

We are on our last "vacation" right now before I am not able to travel anymore. We are in Port Angeles at Cy's house finishing up her deck & getting Ben a bit of surfing in. We should be home on Monday. I could be due any time, so I have to stay near the hospital after this weekend until he shows up. It's funny to think that this is the last trip we will be on alone together. We are so excited to be having this baby! We can't wait.

We were out of town all last week as well starting Cy's deck project & had my mom watching our chickens for us. Thanks again by the way! We got home & on Monday morning realized that the "hens" were crowing!!! they had never done that before!! Ben had a suspicion that the supposed female chickens were roosters, but I wasn't convinced....until Monday. Turns out that out of the 4 "guaranteed Hens" that we bought we are really the proud owners of 3 roosters & one poor hen. Over the last week they have really started to develop their crows. At first they were just tiny little half crows, but they are quick learners. Now we get three roosters competing for loudest longest crow of the day....all day long! They chase poor eggbert (our hen) around & sit on her quite often. I think they are claiming her. She has become a pretty fast runner. We will put pictures up soon. Who knew chickens could be so exciting! Ben wants to eat them, but I raised them & am quite attached, so I am only willing to give two away to happy homes who promise not to eat them. If anyone is interested, they are Buff Orpingtons. They are a fancy rare breed layer chicken known to lay double yolk eggs & are also known strangely enough for their personalities. They bond with people & become attached to you. They are quiet chickens...yes, the roosters crow, but really not too loud. We can't even hear it in the house most of the time. They are HUGE chickens. bigger than a small dog or cat.

Well, other than that,we are getting ready for the holidays. Thanksgiving will be at our house this year! I can't go too far, so we are bringing the party to ourselves. We have an estimated 16 people on the way as of right now...but the way things are going, we will have more than that by the time the day arrives. I hope everyone is up for getting cozy, because we have a small house! I'm excited though! It's going to be nice to see everyone, especially since we have no idea what we are doing for Christmas this year. If we have the baby early enough, we will be able to travel...If not, well, I guess we are on our own. I know we will be tired, but we are hoping that we can still drop in on the family for Christmas. We will just have to hand him off & take naps if it works out time wise.

Ok, well gotta go check out the farmer's market with Cy now. We will put pics up when we get home.

Hope to hear from you soon!

love, Kristen & Ben

Land life update

Skip dog at home in Washington.

Kristen at the farmer's market

Ben with a fish he caught up at lake Cle Elum

Our house in Roslyn..bit messy. we were still moving in.

Some of the wonderful weather Ben encountered on his way home.

freaky clouds creeping in

Hi!

Kristen here, I know, I know, it's been months & months since we last wrote to update anyone. So much has happened that it is going to be way too much to fill you all in on, so I'll give you the quick cliff notes version of life after Panama.

We left Panama after realizing that the boat along with ourselves were not up to the challenge of taking on the Pacific Ocean this season & also found out that we are having a baby!

Took on a new crew member to help us back up to North Carolina where the boat was to be stored. Ben was my hero! He was so good about taking almost all my watches for me while I was feeding the fishes over the side rail, but there was no way either of us could live through the whole trek back with me that sick & him that sleep deprived, so our new crew member Russ was crucial.

I was sooooo sick (yay morning sickness combined with being in the middle of the ocean) that it was no longer safe for me or the baby to be on board the boat any longer, so I jumped ship in Grand Cayman & left the boys to take the boat up to North Carolina alone.

It was a nerve racking few weeks for me, because I was not used to being without Ben after all that time together on the boat & the second I got on the plane I missed him already. I was also worried about him out there with a new guy on the boat. We had a routine down & it worked really well for us. I also had little to no contact with him until he reached the states, which did not help me feel any better about the situation. The only thing that made me happy was the fact that I was now reunited with Skippy & we spent all our time hanging out & taking walks together. It was great! Meanwhile, although he did miss me he was having a lovely sail back up around Cuba with the brand new spinnaker that we had just made together & the trip could not have gone better.

The story changed dramatically when he reached Florida! Luckily I could talk to him on a real phone again! Unfortunately, the weather turned bad in a hurry & unless he got the boat out of the "hurricane area" quick Wind-Borne was uninsured until he hit North Carolina waters. He encountered the craziest storms & lightning showers. We had seen nothing like it before. He still gets a worried look on his face when he sees lightning after that. I'm not sure if you all know what lightning can do to a boat, but it can pretty much annihilate it immediately. There you are bobbing around in open water with a 50 plus foot metal lightning rod sticking straight up from the middle of your boat...... so,that's not a good start. If you do get hit it completely wipes out all your electronics. You have no AIS, no GPS, no radio, no depth finder...you get the point. It does this and can damage several other things on the boat as well. Long story short, he spent much of his time sitting under bridges in the ICW & anchoring out as close to boats with larger masts than Wind-Borne as he could get in the hopes that if lightning did strike, maybe it would hit the bigger lightning rod first..... Good news is he made it!!

So, now we had to decide what to do with Wind-Borne now that she was back home.

Russ took off for his home (Canada) and I flew back to Oriental NC to help Ben with boat prep & loading up the suburban (which we left at the boat yard) for the long drive home. I was sooo happy to be back with Ben & both be on land in the US! We decided to put Wind-Borne up for sale, because we didn't know when we would be able to return to finish the journey with the new baby & all, so that added a lot of work for us. We cleaned, re-stained, re fitted, & rechecked everything on the boat along with finishing up a few small projects we had put off & after about two weeks of working steady we were ready to go. We put her in her new slip, said a tear full goodbye & off we went.

We made two stops on the way home. One in Nebraska to see Tyson & Neris & one in South Dakota to see my dad & family over there. Nebraska was sooo much fun & we loved the chance to hang out with old friends again! Dad's was fun too. We just so happened to arrive the day before a big cattle brand. Ben was amazing!! He was assigned to be a cow wrangler, which I think is the hardest job & he looked like a prop doing it! He did manage to get his hand branded on accident, which was lame, and also bucked off by a nice sized cow, and had an impressive showdown with a big mean black cow with long horns that had it in for him. It charged & there was no time to get out of the corral, so Ben help his ground & armed with only a little plastic paddle he kicked that cows butt. It never knew what hit it. (I guess all that baseball practice really paid off) he whacked it upside the head so quickly & so furiously that it stopped in it's tracks & when he just continued to beat on it non stop it finally backed down. Very impressive!...and pretty funny when it was all over.

So, we made it home!!

Skippy was so happy to see us & have the whole pack back together again!! It was perfect.

We stayed with family until we found a place to rent in Roslyn. We have a nice little two bedroom house built in the 1920's right in town with a big yard & I started a nice little garden.

Ben got back to work and I settled in.

I started baking for the farmer's markets which was awesome to make some extra money & because I love to bake & Ben's business started to pick up. Things on land were starting to look pretty good.

We bought chickens. Yes, chickens... we had a big enough yard & we thought it would be cool to get our own eggs. Skippy was not amused by the chickens, but didn't dislike them either, so that was good.

Life on land seemed like it could not get any better, although we do miss Wind-Borne & the adventures we had. Not to mention the friends we made out there.

We found out we are having a little boy & he is due in December! He is very healthy & we could not be more excited!!

Life was indeed perfect for team Davidson. (or as close as it gets) then tragedy struck.

I'm sorry to inform you with some really bad news. We are still not over the shock of it, and are still unable to really talk about it, but about three weeks ago, Skippy was hit by a lumber truck at work with Ben & died almost instantly. We miss him everyday. He was with us constantly & made our lives better. Ben had him more than 13 years & they have traveled everywhere together. We never imagined life without him. Especially since he was so healthy & happy still at his old age. It has left a huge hole in our lives...

So, we have been trying to move on & continue getting ready for the little man's arrival. I am due in a month & a half, so that's great! We can't wait. Next step is getting the nursery together. It's a disaster area with all our extra furniture etc... crammed into it. I think we will paint it next week.

Farmers markets are over for the year, so I'm just doing side orders for custom cakes etc, but nothing big. We have had our first snow although nothing stuck to the ground yet. Its' been a roller coaster with the weather being warmish, then freezing cold. Today I accidentally went ice skating across the lawn in my slippers when I went out to feed the chickens. Brrr!!! Luckily I did manage to stay on my feet & did not end up on my backside.

We have a baby shower coming up soon & John & Laurie (Ben's parents) are coming over to stay with us tomorrow. We are excited! Oh yeah, and Ben's birthday was last week!!! he's 33! That went pretty well too!

Ok, so that's all the updating I have for now...I'm sure I missed a ton of stuff, but you get the gist of things I think. Keep in touch & we hope to keep this blog going even though we are land lovers now. We will have new things to blog about when the baby comes & maybe if we keep this up long enough it will turn into a sailing blog again someday. Who knows.

Hope everyone is happy & doing well.

-Kristen & Ben

Panama U-Turn

Hey guys!!
We are here in Portobello Panama waiting to...come home.
Yup, Wind Borne is coming home!..To North Carolina that is! We are not doing the Pacific this year due to unforseen electrical & other circumstances & the fact that we are getting to be late. We want to come home, because we miss everyone & are not ready to miss the whole pacific just yet. We want to leave when we have more time & money to do so...so here we are all the way in Panama preparing for Wednesday when we will hopefully be on the way back.
Don´t be too excited yet!! We won´t be there right away!! It take some time to get back up the coast, but we are going to go as fast as we can. We are so excited to see everyone & take a break from the adventure! We miss you all so much & should be home in 2 months or less...
We will be driving our suburban back from Oriental to Washington & leave Wind-Borne in the care of sailcraft services. We would not feel right leaving it anywhere else!
Well, we are headed back to the boat to work some more, but we will see you all soon & are very very excited!!! Keep in touch. ...the adventure is not over, it´s just taking a break for now!

Love, Kristen & Ben

Isla de Providencia, Colombia

Hello Everyone!
I’m not even sure where to start on this one. It seems like it has been a month since we last posted a blog. We are here on Isla De Providencia & have been far longer than we expected. We were supposed to sail from Grand Cayman to Providencia, have a quick (one day or so) layover to catch up on sleep before continuing on down to the San Blas Islands in Panama, but the weather had different plans for us & we have been unable to escape for 10 days now!!! We are still unable to post on the internet here, so I will probably just add to this in the San Blas and you will end up with a lot of reading material. There will be no internet in the San Blas, because it is very remote & the Kuna Indians inhabit them. They try to live the way they always have, but they do have a few more modern conveniences now. We will tell you more about that when we get there though… Back to the trip so far…
So, I think we already talked about Grand Cayman, that was really fun & the water was absolutely amazing! We left there on Thursday the 16th of April & arrived at Low Cay (which is a little piece of coral above water with lots of coral surrounding it barely under the water’s surface just outside of Providencia) there is nothing there but a little light beacon on the “land” and we anchored in the protection of the reef. The plan when we arrived was that to avoid the fees in Colombia and shave off some time on our travels we would only stay in Low Cay for a night, then leave again for Panama, but the weather started to act up & was supposed to be getting better in two or three days, so to avoid an uncomfortable passage we pulled into Providencia the next day after a great snorkel in the morning.
Providencia turned out to be a great place & we are really happy that we stayed here. The people are nice & it’s a safe place. They all speak English too! Very convenient.
We met some new cruising friends including Jim & Laura on Nilaya another Bayfield 36 the same size & color as ours. Although I have to say they have a way better dodger & the floor in theirs is beautiful.(ours is very dinged & scuffed) Their Bayfield is a year older than ours & the layout is also a little different. They do not have a table that folds up against the wall like ours, instead the table is mounted to the floor in the middle of the salon area & the leaves on both sides fold up so you can eat at both couches & it can be used as a convenient lee cloth to make a double sea berth. It takes up more room than ours & although you can feed more people more comfortably I like that we can get rid of ours completely when it is not in use. The galley cabinets are different as well & where we have a chain locker door in the vee berth they have a plain wall….among some other small differences. We had a good time getting to know them & a few of the other cruisers here as well. We didn’t get as social as we would have liked, or explore the island a bunch either, because we were downstairs the whole time sewing up the new spinnaker.
The Spinnaker is a huge light weight 1000 square foot sail that you attach to the front of the boat in light winds so that you are still moving at a decent pace when the normal sails would not be doing much at all. We bought the kit online and have been planning on sewing it in Panama when we get there, but then we realized that we aren’t going to have much time there at all, so we needed to start here. We have done three huge panels out of four & have lots of work to go after we get all those together. We have a few pictures of the process so far.
Anyway, back to Providencia… We checked in with Mr. Bush. He is the guy that checks all the cruisers in & he is very kind & loves to see boaters coming in! He will do anything to help you that he can. You can call him on channel 16 & ask for a mechanic & he will go find one for you & have them meet you at the dock. Very cool. We went to the horse races on the beach on Saturday & it was crazy! We rented a scooter at the grocery store & drove over to the beach it was at. We arrived early & decided to get lunch first at a little outdoor restaurant on the beach. Turns out our table was the finish line! We stayed there & waited for the race to begin. Men kept piling up down on the sand in front of us & as the race got closer & closer the conversations they were having (in some foreign language) got more & more heated. They take their betting seriously here & they were apparently arguing over who would win. The horses were running up & down the beach before the race to try & show off & get bets. Children were all over the beach & the riders had to swerve around them. Finally they got down to it & the race was on. Two horses erupted through the crowd at the far end of the beach & as they got closer the yelling intensified and it was over. One horse won by a nose & the losing horse tossed his owner into the water. We though there was more coming, but nope. Only two horses today! The betters inspected the horses for a long time to make sure noting funny was going on & everyone went on with their business.
We had rented our scooter for the entire day & wanted to get our money’s worth so we scooted around the entire island three & a half times. We took turns driving & took lots of pictures along the way. There were lots of horses loose in the road. One was taking a nap in the road & seemed completely unfazed by our presence. Then there were the herds of cows crossing the roads & being herded up them by their owners on scooters & bicycles. Usually one person per herd. One man was on his bike & he had the last cow by the tail & was directing it by pulling on it’s tail in the direction he wanted it to go & smacking it with it to go faster. It seemed to be working….I for one would not want to be that close to a cows hind end. We also saw a big Blue lizard & some other cool huge lizards & took lots of pictures of the island as we passed.
On our last lap around the island we got a flat tire!! We ran over a nail & had to stop. We were way up on a hill in the middle of nowhere & Ben was pushing the scooter down the road towards town while we were trying to figure out what to do since we were so far from anywhere. We passed some guys on their front porch& they yelled out to us that they knew someone who worked on scooters. The guys flagged him down for us & he took us to his house just down the road where we sat in his lawn as he fixed the flat. He ended up having to put a new tube in, because we punctured ours in too many places to patch, so he gave us one of his. The funny thing was that every time one of his family members would come out of the house to do something they would spot us there in their yard & do a quick double take before running to another building quickly & telling someone else that there were strange white people in their yard. then another family member would pop out from somewhere & do a double take & run to the house or wherever & so on & so on… I think we freaked out like 4 family members by the time the tire was fixed. We thought it was hilarious. It was like if you came out in your yard at home in Washington & saw a rhinoceros in the yard. They just froze for a minute took another look….tried to focus their eyes…then ran for shelter…They were nice though. Just confused. The tire change took about twenty minutes & cost two dollars! Ben tipped him & gave him three. Big spender! We were very pleased!
The island is pretty. I found it funny that almost all the houses looked uninhabitable to me. No doors or windows in the ones in the country & if I were to pass them anywhere else I would have expected them to be abandoned, but all of the locals are really clean & well dressed in new clothes & their hair & make up is always done nicely....odd combo. They also have three grocery stores on the same block all with the same stuff & two bakeries & anything else they could need. Very nice little town. We ate out at a restaurant in town & after a dinner for two with 5 (very small) Colombian beers the tab came to 8 dollars! Awesome!
The mayor of Providencia threw a big celebration for the cruisers in the town square on Friday & that was really fun. The children danced traditional dances for us & a local band played music & they explained their culture to us & welcomed everyone to their island. Ben got picked out to dance with the local girls in the dancing show twice. I have it on video & when I figure out how to put it online I will show it to you. Very fun!
I guess we are going to town now & we are going to try & put this on a thumb drive & take it in to put on a local computer & try to get it online,,,, so I hope it works. Sorry, no pictures for now. We will have tons to show you when we get to mainland Panama. We are only going to be spending about a week weather permitting in the San Blas, because of our delay here. I think it will be ok, because fishing season is closed there & you are not allowed to dive. I am still looking forward to seeing it though. I will try to get a picture of a Kuna Indian for you, but I know they shun pictures. I have heard that if you pay them a dollar they will gladly let you take a picture though, so we will see.
Ok, well, gotta go top town & get some stuff done. We are off in the morning hopefully!! We tried to leave Monday, but decided not to on the morning of, because of the high seas & squalls coming in. It will not be too much better tomorrow, but lower seas. Keep up on the spots & we will check back in when we can!
We miss you all so much. We really really miss Skip Dog too!! We talk about him all the time & just want to get home to see him (& you guys of course) as soon as possible. The boat is not the same without him though. We are pretty sad. Doug & Janet, give him a hug & tell him hello for us!

Kristen


Ben here! We have been so busy working on sewing up our new beautiful Spinnaker, we have hardly had time to see this island… We did go and snorkel some rocks and a cave where the notorious Captain Morgan stashed his loot. We also saw a stump of a fish that looked like a fat lizard. I expected him to have little feet up front and shook my flipper in front of him to see if he would move. We bolted away super fast and scared Kristen and I. Weird fish though, he had markings like a rattlesnake.
On another note, observing our anchorage in a more distant port… We are tied for the smallest boat. We are actually exactly tied as the other boat is a Bayfield 36 with a very nice couple, Jim and Laura on board. Other observations… There are no Beneteaus… Almost half of the boats have a furling main sail. There are about 24 boats now… Everyone is patiently waiting for the moderate winds to subside. Most people here are full time cruisers and spending the hurricane season either in Panama, Colombia (Cartegena) or heading up the Rio Dulce in Guatemala. Some are on their way back to Florida, but not many… We haven´t gotten to know many people though, as most of the fleet seems a bit leery of our young crew. Or maybe we do not take enough showers… Not sure which. We have met some really nice folks though, and in truth, we have mostly been sweating away belowdecks slaving over our new Spinnaker. I sure hope we like our new sail! We should be heading out tomorrow and have a solid two day passage to the San Blas Islands where the Kuna Indians make their youngest son into a girl (transvestite) if they haven’t had a girl yet…Can’t wait! Beautiful Islands and hopefully surf-too lucky! We will not have internet, but will spot while there. We only have about a week or ten days there though before we need to get through the canal… Doug-thanks again for watching Skip-Dog! Hope he is being a well behaved gentleman. I am also hoping Spring has sprung back home after a fairly nasty winter as I hear it. Miss you all!
Ben (el capitan)

Cayman Islands are awesome!!

Hey everyone & Skippy Doo!!
It's Monday & we hope everyone had a great Easter Sunday! We are still on Grand Cayman Island & we love it here! There are an insane amount of reefs to dive & it's a really clean friendly place to be! We are in town getting our dive tanks filled as we can go out & see some more! We went snorkeling a few times & had two really good dives. We saw plenty of tropical fish, a stingray, some turtles (Kristen's favorite)a mermaid (statue)a wreck with coral growing on it, and believe it or not a 4 foot long puffer fish that was like 2 feet across in it's belly. Crazy! We have never seen water this clear & pretty before! Where we are moored it's like 50 feet deep & we can see the little ripples in the sand on the bottom clearly. They are pretty serious about protecting their reef here & it shows! I've never seen so many fish!
Ben made a rope swing off the boat using the whisker pole which is pretty cool! He was doing back flips off it yesterday! Like I said..no complaints in the Caymans! We really love it here. We are leaving on Thursday though I think. It seems like there will be a good window in the weather to get us to Isla De Providencia off Nicaragua. The trip should take three days or less from here.
We are both excited to get to the San Blas islands in Panama, but Ben just informed me the other day that you are not allowed to dive there, so... we will have to get all the diving in that we can while we are here. The San Blas look amazing though!! Little islands of Palm tree forests surrounded by big white sand beaches & blue water.
We also wanted to say hi to ma & pa Davidson & say thanks for letting Skippy vacation on Blakely with you this week! We know he loves it there! We loved seeing him today on the skype camera too!!! He looks great! It was also good to talk to you. Hope you have good luck with your new chickens!
Ok, the Internet cafe closes in 10 minutes, so I have to go, but we will keep you updated & put some Cayman Pics up when we get online again!
Miss you all!!
Love, Kristen & Ben!

OK Here are the Pictures!!!
This is our current anchorage!


The water is so clear and blue with coral reefs about 200 feet from the boat! Grand Cayman seems pretty cool so far!

This is our boat... off to the right, yeah that little guy.

The sunset crossing the Florida Straits before the front came through.

Cabo San Antonio. The Western Point of Cuba. This is the Closest we came to Cuba. Legal or not, we tried to avoid some currents around this point.

Another Sunset from the Cockpit. Florida Straits?

Kristen obviously overwhelmed by the freighter traffic. Oh, we installed a new AIS that transmits the data to and from the big ships. Lets them know were here and lets us avoid them and know where they are going. My new favorite toy!

This Fillet...

From this Mahi-mahi! Our big excitement on the passage. Not the biggest fish we hooked though. We hooked on to something that took the line without slowing down at all for 200 yards didn't seem to notice us. When we got the line back the stainless leader was mangled like 16 inches past the lure... Big mouth! We didn't get to see him though...

This is Key West City Harbor. A place well worth visiting. About the only place in Florida well worth visiting.

Here is my model of the Dinghy. Cutey!......(ok, so I still can't figure out why Ben put this picture on here, but it's the worst picture we have taken of me so far on the trip. I can't figuire out how to delete it...if anyone knows how to delete pics please tell me quick!!!)

This is supposed to be the best beach in the Keys. You can see it all. The view:

Is bridges on both sides... We thought it was kinda funny...

This is Boot Key Harbor in Marathon, FL. Sooo many boats spend the winter here. We had our alternator tinkered with here. We requested that he replace some parts so it would all blow up about ten hours later. He succeded.

I am thinking this is back in Miami. We had some beautiful sunsets and sunrises here.

There are two Dolphins (porpoises) off to the left here that Kristen got a pic of. I think there were waterspouts reported this day as we left Miami for Key Largo.

Another anchorage in Miami area.

Skippy with his second favorite chin rest. We miss him sooo much, but keep thinking he is sooo glad to not be here...

This was cool! We saw the Space shuttle launch from Miami.

Sorry for the quick commentary, the Mosquitos are eating me up. Miss you all!

Crew of Wind-Borne

Four and one Half days later...

Well, we have suvived our first multi-day ocean passage. We are all cleared in and ready to explore the sights. We set out from Key West Saturday about 9:30 in the morning and motored for two days against currents to reach the west point of Cuba... Pretty uneventful except a Cuban Guard boat(unmarked) with a spotlight at night yelling at us, a blown alternator, and a Mahi-mahi! We got arount Cabo San antonio before a front was supposed to arrive and headed SE towards the Caymans. The front came through a little after midnight and started to blow pretty good from the SW. Seas were 4 to 6 foot with a small window of 8 footers and Kristen swears 10 on her night shift(I don't doubt it) Wind-Borne sailed like the champ she is and the Monitor self-steering vane we have named Hank was our best friend. He steered and corrected as we surfed down swells and we just basically read a book and tried to stay awake... So when you are sailing 24 hours a day, you need someone up at all times, so it pretty much broken into shifts. We had two 6 hour shifts from 06:00 to 12:00 and 12:00 to 18:00 and three four hour shifts through the night. 18:00 to 22:00, 22:00 to 02:00 and 02:00 to 06:00. We both thought the 02:00 to 06:00 was the worst. So as soon as you get off shift, you basically crash and hope to actually fall asleep before your next shift. Kristen made lee cloths for us which is like a hammock that comes up on the side of the couch in the main salon that keeps you in bed. It worked great! No one fell out of bed.
So we made it in to the Caymans and it is a beautiful place! The water is full of coral and really really blue water! Can't wait to go diving! Lots of cruise ships though. Three yesterday and two today. Sunburns everywhere!
We made it down here in four days and 6 hours and it was 550 Nautical miles. that is 129 miles a day on average. We were fighting a 1.5 to 2 knot current for most of the first two days, so I think that we made up for it on the last two... I know we were moving right along! I know we made a good decision with Skippy because I kept thinking I was so glad he wasn't having to go through this... Kristen did a great job as admiral and held all of her watches and did a wonderful job keeping us safe. We are planning our next move, but think we should be here for a few days anyways!
Love you all and miss you! Especially Skippy-Doo!

!!!Pictures & Changes!!!

PICTURES:
Key West photos & pics of other stuff too:

Mallory Square: people line up all the way down the boardwalk every single night waiting for the tall ships to sail by & to watch the street performers do their thing at the nightly sunset festival. Pretty cool.

Big wooden schooners that sail by every evening at sunset. Very pretty.

Kristen with a big banyon tree in the old town district where all the huge houses & cool trees are.

Ben's most recent catch!! He realized that his tiny little 50 inch mahi mahi wasn't impressing anyone, so he went out & caught this bad boy! What do you think now!?

Jack of Free @last having a run on the beach with Skippy

Free @ last on our Starboard side. We were ahead...for a minute...then they beat our pants off. ..

Relaxing underway while Ben mans the helm.

Brian & Alicia on Sarabande! Where are you guys? Are you still near Georgetown?

us with Jack & the crew of Nauti Girl out of New Jersey. Ben had just gotten out of the water after a diving expedition looking for dinner. He didn't know it, but he was swimming with a large white tip on the reef! Like his cool new dive knife?

Big foot Ben

The view from the top of Chub Cay. We went down this little river all the way accross the island in our dinghy.

Traveling down the river.

Mr. Doo & his adorable sandy face.

Ben working in the locker again. Looks comfy huh! You should have seen us trying to get him out of here upside down & backwords.

Hello!!

Everyone is asking for more pictures, so I'm going to put some on, but they are not all super recent. I hope you enjoy them.

Also, plans are changing as usual on Wind-Borne & a MAJOR decision has been made by the crew to send the big guy (Skippy) home to his aunt & uncle Doug & Janet while we cross the big blue. We have thought about it for months now & have come to the conclusion that although we will miss him every minute it isn't in Skippy's best interest to be crossing big oceans & going long periods without letting him go to shore. He just does so much better when he gets walks & has little creatures to chase.

Doug, Janet, & Rex have graciously offered to take him in & watch over him while we are away. They are a perfect home for him & We are sure that Skip will be thrilled to have some good front porch sitting time with his cousin Rex. We have already sent his things back to Washington & he will be boarding his flight with Delta on Friday morning at 7:20 AM. He is excited to see some cold weather.(and his extended family) He's been far too hot here despite being shaved.

As for the rest of the crew, we will continue on with the plan to travel from Key west & make our way south to Panama. If weather permits we will be on our way Saturday. Please keep in touch via e-mail, comments, and keeping an eye on our SPOT. You will always know where we are even when we can't talk to you. We will be able to get internet access again after leaving the Keys, but we aren't sure exactly when, so please be patient. It may take a week... or it may take a month... we just can't tell right now. Just check in occasionally.

We really miss you all & wish we could catch a flight home with Skippy to see everyone. He's a lucky dog! We will see you soon enough though! December is not that far away! Thanks again Doug, Janet, & Rex!!!

Enjoy the pictures everyone!