Last month, we had the pleasure of welcoming my two favorite aunts, Laurie and Liz, aboard Dragonfly . Family visits are always special, but there's something uniquely grounding about sharing time on the water with people who’ve known you forever. As we prepped for the trip, the weather seemed determined to test our patience. But sailors learn early on—life’s best moments often happen between raindrops. We set sail through a misty morning, navigating toward the Tide’s Inn. It’s not far, but this time we faced a new challenge: the bridge. You know, that bridge. The kind of structure that looms ahead, and no matter how many measurements or reassurances you get, there’s always that brief, heart-stopping moment when you wonder if you’ll make it through. Spoiler alert: the mast is still standing, and my nerves are mostly intact. After the bridge victory, we docked at Tide’s Inn, a place where the land itself seems to breathe with life. Laurie, Liz, Mike, and I took a walk along the In...

As the months begin to bear the weight of the letter r , the world seems to collectively shift its attention. For some, it’s back to school—a return to classrooms, lunchboxes, and the click-clack of chalk on a board. For us, it’s a different kind of schooling. One without walls, where the lessons come from the wind, the water, and the stubborn demands of a sailboat named Dragonfly . Cruisers go to school too, but ours is on the Chesapeake, where summer’s relentless heat finally loosens its grip. It's a strange kind of relief—like peeling off a sweat-drenched shirt after a long August day, replaced with the first crisp breaths of fall. The air turns cooler, clearer. You can feel the change in your lungs before you even hit the water. But before we point the bow south, there's some studying to be done. This month, it’s the SSCA GAM —learning, prepping, gathering tricks of the trade. October brings us back to one of our favorite playgrounds: Annapolis. The Sailboat Show. Cruisers ...

After dropping off the Goldens at the airport in Staniel Cay, we headed just a little bit south to Black Point Settlement on Great Guana Cay.  Great Guana Cay feels like a true "family island"--the kind where you get to become a temporary local.  In fact many of the workers at tourist-centric Staniel live in Black Point and commute early each morning by boat.  There are far fewer cruisers anchored here and the friendly locals have not become tired of us yet.   The local laundromat has a couple of bikes you can rent and tool around the island.  We did so and then hiked out to the first of two local attractions:  The blow hole. The second local attraction is a driftwood sculpture garden. But the main attraction in town is Lorrain's Cafe - which has wifi, good food and drinks.  All the cuisers would come over in the morning to work on their computers and then take a break when Lorraine opened for lunch. They also had a number of very helpful "staff" to as...

      At this point, we had pretty much exhausted the attractions in the immediate vicinity of Staniel Cay and decided to take advantage of the favorable winds from the south to run up to Wardrick Wells in the Exuma Land and Sea Park.  We've contributed some cash to the park so that we get priority access to the best mooring fields and can make reservations in advance.  However, this relies on them actually reading their email and putting us on the list.  They responded to my third follow-up email the day before and said they had just received it and that they would have to put us on a waiting list.  We didn't get the spot in the north field that I was hoping for, so we had to settle for the Emerald Rock field.  They had plenty of space and we did have a really nice sail.  It was downwind and smooth and I don't think the boys spent more than a few minutes outside the salon.  I was a bit concerned that the trip back was going to...

     Finally, the long awaited arrival of the Golden clan!  Lisa and I made Dragonfly as clean and welcoming as we were able and got up nice and early to bring a bag of trash ashore and pick up our 6 seat golf cart to transport the crew around the island.  We were a bit early, so we decided to get breakfast and wait until we needed to head to the airport to pick them up.  There was a brief moment of panic when I got a text from Karen saying they were ahead of schedule and I thought they had already landed.  Of course, breakfast was being delivered at the leisurely pace that most all services are performed in the Bahamas and I thought we were off to a very poor start indeed.  It turned out that she was texting me from an intermediate stop on another island.  We ended up having time to eat our breakfast slowly and still beat them to the airport.  They arrived safe and sound, if a bit worn out from the brutal schedule where they must h...

    Sometime, probably about 15 years ago, one of my nephews used to run around our house pretending to be the shark from Jaws and we would all shout out the famous theme song as he ran around.  The way one pretends to be a shark is by holding one's hands together on the top of one's head in imitation of a shark's fin.  At the time his head was relatively enormous and his hands couldn't quite reach to the top of his head, making it that much more amusing.  Since then, Lisa and I use that as our code to indicate that the nephews are on the way, either with the song or the hand gesture or both when their arrival is imminent.  Over these few days, the theme song was heard pretty often aboard Dragonfly. Nephews coming!      Shopping was done, the boat was mostly clean and the weather was promising (or at least decent) for a run north.  So, we headed out of Georgetown on our way back to Staniel Cay where my family was flying in a fe...

      Georgetown is more or less the most popular destination for cruisers in the Exumas and arguably the most popular destination in all the Bahamas.  So much so that our weather guy pretty much always was giving us advice based on when we'd be able to get to Georgetown even when we were a long, long way away.  Note that I say the most popular, I'm not yet sure I would call it the best destination.  There are a lot of things going for it.  The Elizabeth Harbor area has a number of things going for it, chief amongst them that it is genuinely massive.  At one point this season there were nearly 400 boats anchored in there.  Additionally, it is what passes for a big city in the Exumas.  There are 3 grocery stores where most islands have either zero or one.  There are hardware stores, boat supply stores, pretty much every kind of shopping that you can find in the Bahamas.  The down side is that it can feel like you are i...