Wednesday, March 25, 2009

Check out the SPOT




If you click on this it will show you where we are and where we have been! As we set sail around the coast of Cuba and down across the Caribbean this will be the only way to check in on us!
Miss you all!
crew of Wind-Borne



Our Aussie friends: Hamish, Sarah, and Jack


Hey guys!!
Thanks for writing!!Sorry no pictures yet. We are working on it. ...Speaking of pictures...Ben wants to know what he has to do to impress you guys! He caught a 50 inch Mahi & no one commented on it! He keeps checking to see if anyone saw it, but no one has mentioned anything about it.... He wants to know how large the fish has to be before anyone gets excited about it. ...Did I mention that he caught it on a Salmon Rod with standard sized reel? ...IF you haven't checked it out go down a few blog entries & take a peek.
Moving on....
We are in Marathon in the Florida Keys right now & Heading to Key West soon. We are just waiting for a part to show up.
Miami gave us the wonderful parting gift of a seriously bad cold! I lost my voice for three days & had little blisters in the back of my throat...still do & Ben has been sneezing, coughing, etc... for a week straight. Not much sleep being had on our boat these days. We are on our way to recovery though. Work slowed up for a few days so we could try to rest & get better quicker, but we have almost the entire list of things done that we wanted to do before leaving the states again. We are both excited for Key West. IT was really fun the last time we were there & should be again. We will, receive all our last minute packages & mail & hopefully head out on Monday. They are calling for some calm weather then, which should be ideal for crossing the gulf stream again & heading around the western end of Cuba.That's pretty soon though, so we'll see! Just keep in mind that it will be increasingly difficult for us to use the Internet as we get closer & closer to the Pacific! We will be out at sea for longer periods of time and near marinas less & less. Keep up on the Spot though & you will always know where we are at.
I really will work on getting the pics up soon! Have a great rest of the week everyone!! We miss you all & can't wait to see you again!!

love,
Kristen, Ben & Mr Doo the healthiest crew member of team Davidson...how is it that a 14 year old dog is feeling better than we are out here?People keep asking us if he's a puppy.... Very strange.

Wednesday, March 18, 2009

Still in Miami

Hey.
Just a quick hello from Wind-Borne. We are still in the Miami area, although we have moved anchorages. We will be on our way to Marathon tomorrow. Unfortunatley we will be leaving our good friends on Free @ last behind which is really sad, but we will see them again.
We will be on our own again traveling down to Panama soon.
Hopefully everyone at home is doing well. We are good here in Florida. It rained really hard last night & our dinghy filled at least half way up with water. I will try to put the pictures of it on when I get time. It looks pretty funny. Ben had to bail it out with a mixing bowl this morning. The boat got a nice fresh water rinse though, which is really good. And, it's cooler out for the next few days, so Skippy will be pleased. Another shave for him is on the agenda, so wish us luck on that one. He always comes out with crazy chunky fur.
Well, I'm being timed on the internet, so I should go. We miss you all & hope to hear from you soon. We have not seen a comment in a long time....I know we haven't written in a long time though. I will try when we get to Key west or Marathon (which is a Key north of Key West)

Ok, have a good week everyone. Talk to you later,

Kristen, Ben, & Skippy

Thursday, March 12, 2009

So here's the plan....

Ok, so it's been a while!
Sorry guys! We have been traveling and working hard the past few weeks. As you know from reading the last entry, we are in Miami. We arrived here last weekend on Sunday.
We made it down to Georgetown in the Bahamas & met up with our good friends on Free @ Last (not sure if we mentioned that yet or not) and we were trying to figure out what we were going to do..head down to the lower Caribbean and stay there through the summer.... go back up to the east coast & put our boat up for hurricane season.... or just go for it & do what we wanted to do in the first place, which was going to the Pacific. We chose Pacific. We had had enough of the Bahamas, although beautiful they are expensive & on top of eating up all our funds the islands just weren't what we thought they would be. The land was almost all bare with coral sand, growing only shrubs, and mangroves. The water was the most beautiful color you can imagine, but it was lacking culture, mountains, and shady trees for us. We also want to be somewhere they can actually grow fruits & veggies! We missed fresh food sooooo much!! (Other than fish, obviously..we had plenty of that)All in all, just not paradise for us. I think Washington is far more beautiful personally.
So, now that we had our plan the question was how to do it. We wanted a few more upgrades on the boat before making the big crossing & also had Skippy to think about. How would he do? Where could we take him? What were the regulations? We found out online that we can not take Skippy to most of the islands in the south pacific where we would ideally like to be. Our dream is to go to Australia & New Zealand. New Zealand almost completely forbids foreign dogs & would litterally be impossible for us to bring Skippy to on a boat...Australia too. We wanted to go somewhere we could work & make some money, so we picked Hawaii as a possible destination next. Turns out we can make it to Hawaii & take Skippy, but it is extremely difficult & there is only one lab in the united states that they will accept blood tests from & he had to have everything done four months in advance of when we would arrive....so up to Florida we went.
Luckily Free @ last was going to Florida as well, so we made a whirlwind tour back north to Miami from Georgetown in about a week. We had a ton of fun with them! Ben & Hamish got to go spear fishing while Sarah, Jack, Skippy, & I played on the beach. We had fish dinners every day around sunset on each others boats & went to a new island every day. Very cool.
When we got to Miami we started to finalize plans & get the boat ready. We realized on the way back up from the Bahamas that we really love our boat & it performs better than we could have imagined. We had a lead on free @ last for a little while which is no small feat considering their size & the captain & crew's sailing capability. We feel fully confident in the capabilities of our boat & are feeling a lot better about our own as well.
We got our AIS system which tells us where big ships are at night & tells them where we are & we are fixing up the bow sprit right now which has been seriously been needing some attention, put in new window screens, did some more bright work(wood work) boxed up things we wont be needing & sent them home, got all the charts for the pacific, Panama, Costa Rica, Marquesas, Cuba, Caymans...etc.....got guidebooks, more food for us & Skippy, worked on our water maker, bought parts, returned parts (because it turns out we already had everything on board)oops. Took the spare starter in to have it checked, got rebuild kits for the toilet, bought impellers, filters, gaskets, new jugs for spare fuel & water, books, cards, more music for my violin (so I can torture Ben with it all the way across the Pacific) :)....the list goes on....
Anyway, here we are & we have the plan pretty much set, so here it is:
We will go to Marathon & Key West next week, see what there is to see there, pick up some things we haven't received yet, wait for good weather & head out around the western side of Cuba down to the Cayman islands. We will stay there briefly & wait for a weather window & head south to Panama. We will get our assigned day for passing through the canal which is usually a two to three week wait & pass the time traveling through the San Blas islands of Panama exploring & taking it easy...well...Ben will be taking it easy, I will be sewing our new Spinnaker!!! That's right.. I am sewing us a huge spinnaker. We have ordered all the bits & pieces to make it from Sailrite, the same company I bought my sewing machine from, & I will construct it before we leave Panama or Costa Rica at the very latest. We will pass through the Panama Canal then check out some of the islands on the Pacific side before heading over to Costa Rica. We will leave there on my birthday (may 10) ideally, but I think we may push it back into June...not sure right now. We will head straight to the Marquesas which is about 3000 miles out into the ocean off the coast of South America. It will take us somewhere between 25 & 35 days to reach it. We will stay there as long as we like, then make our way to Hawaii by the end of summer most likely. We will fly home for Christmas.

Thats the plan & we will try to stick with it. Bring on the questions.

love, Kristen, Ben, and SKippy Doo!

P.S. Happy Birthday Grandma Betty!!

Monday, March 9, 2009

a few new pics..updates coming soon!! Promise!

leaving Nassau harbour
the enormous amount of meat we got from the 50 inch Mahi Mahi Ben pulled in on the way back to Florida! We ate fish for days!

Ben's big fish






Hi everyone!!




So here we are in Florida! We are in the Miami area & yes everything is fine! We are gearing up for a new adventure & will tell you all the plan shortly! Here are a few pictures of our last few weeks in the Bahamas!! Story & plans to come!