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!!