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!

Check out the SPOT

Our SPOT website is: http://share.findmespot.com/shared/faces/viewspots.jsp?glId=09GSAiPTTFXn5LSfvHcSLmWKCn7rGBi9j

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.

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

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!!