As I think I've mentioned previously, Chub Cay wasn't our first choice because it is known a bit more for being a sport fishing hub than a cruisers stop.  We have kind of a love/hate relationship with marinas.  They are a lot more expensive (in the Bahamas they run $150-200 a night for our boat normally).  The upside is that they typically have some amenities like swimming pools, restaurants, unlimited hot water for showers and washing machines and dryers for clothes.  If you anchored off the island, you didn't pay anything, but you didn't get all that stuff either. The folks who chose not to pay the marina still got the cool sunsets.      One of the downsides of the marina is that you don't always get positioned to take advantage of the breezes.  As I type this post, I'm at anchor somewhere else in the Bahamas and the wind is absolutely blasting through the boat making everything 15 degrees cooler.  What's...

      Much like circumnavigating Diamond Shoals off Cape Hatteras, crossing the Gulf Stream is the kind of slightly tricky voyage that can sometimes be absolutely disastrous.  When the winds oppose the mighty currents there, it can generate enormous swells that will toss you around like you are an insignificant speck on the ocean, which you pretty much are from the Gulf Stream's perspective.  It can also flow at rates nearing 5 knots which would reduce our boat speed to nearly zero if we were fooling enough to try to head upstream.  Because it brings along warm water and warm moist air, it can also form its own weather system.        Fortunately, you can buy expert weather advice that will tell you when conditions are good to cross.  Its a balancing act, because you almost never get the perfect balance of wind, weather and sea state.  We do use a guy named Chris Parker, who is pretty over cautious and genera...

      We have an extensive list of items that we needed to do on the boat.  Some were urgent, some just desirable and some more in the category of aspirational.  Before we left Richmond, we actually divided them into locations where we thought we would accomplish them.  Some for Charleston, some for St Augustine and so on.  As the trip wore on, we often said to ourselves things like "that doesn't really have to happen yet" or "we could do that in West Palm."  In this state of careless optimism, we arrived in West Palm and now we could no longer defer most of them, because if they didn't get done now, they just weren't going to happen before we hit the Bahamas, which realistically means that they weren't going to happen until next year.  When we arrived in West Palm, we had already shipped several packages to Lisa's dad.  It is no exaggeration to say that we had a new delivery to the handy Amazon lockers every day.  Most da...

      This was yet another of those legs that didn't quite fit into a day sail, so we prepared for what we thought would be our last overnight sail for a while (spoiler alert, it wasn't).  We didn't want to be a news story, so we carefully read up on the Kennedy launch schedule and thought we would be fine.  Unfortunately, I didn't realize that the Air Force is also able to launch rockets and they use a different web site.  They had a launch scheduled for the time I wanted to depart, but some sources said that it was delayed.  As you may have noticed, this new age of information often has conflicting and inaccurate information.  Eventually, I just picked up the phone and called the Coast Guard, who assured me that the rocket was most certainly not launching today.  Reassured, we went through our checklists and eased Dragonfly from the dock and out into the channel.  A large cruise ship was heading out at the same time and I dec...

      We had a good time at Cape Canaveral and the yacht club where we stayed had the best showers on the trip so far.  On a boat you are always trying to preserve water and electricity, so when you are at a dock, its always nice to have unlimited hot water to shower in.  Our boat has a nice shower, but a small hot water tank and we generally have to run the somewhat noisy generator to make hot water, so we'd prefer to shower ashore.  Sometimes marinas have pretty spartan conditions in the showers, such that one would rather deal with the limited hot water onboard.  Not here!  The showers were large, great water pressure and like 6 hooks to hang your towels, clothes and so on.  Its the little things, I tell ya.  The only downside of the location is that there just isn't all that much to do right at the port.  There are a handful of bars and restaurants in the area surrounding the cruise ship terminals, but they were mostly...

      Dawn broke quietly as we gently bobbed around the waters of Ponce de Leon Inlet.  I made some espresso and waved to the early morning fishermen as they headed out in search of fresh catch.  Lisa was not far behind and I quickly went through our departure checklist.  I had the engines running before she was even finished with her first cup of coffee, but I promised that she could stay inside toasty warm once we got underway.  I had just done this path the night before and I was confident that it would be no real challenge today.  We expected our journey to take around 10 hours and we didn't want to leave any potential for drama should something go a bit long, so I wanted to get going nice and early.      Fortunately, leaving from an anchorage is a lot quicker and easier than from a dock.  When you are a dock, you have usually four or five dock lines to manage as well a number of inflatable fenders (little bu...