Falling in Love with our Boat

After a couple days of slogging upwind in 20+ knots of breeze and bashing head first into some pretty heavy seas, we have arrived in Nassau.  If we've learned anything thus far, it's that we are really happy with the way we set up this boat.  The stays'l, the davits, the instrument pole...all the minor annoyances we had with our last boat have been remedied with this boat and the ease of sailing (with all lines leading to the cockpit), the windward performance (with our centerboard down) and steadiness at sea (with various sail/reefing options) are all proving to be tremendous assets.  We had hoped this would be the case, but until you start using a boat you never really know for sure how it will all pan out in practice.  It's official, we are falling in love with our boat.  There have been no shortage of excited high-fives going on since we left Ft. Lauderdale, so many so that Isla is now giving them every chance she can get.  She's happy with the boat too it seems, which is pretty much the coolest thing of all.

Our plan is to remain here in Nassau until Tuesday or so as we wait for this next weather front to blow through.  It's supposed to get pretty gnarly this weekend so we opted to stay at a marina for now.  The anchorages here are sketchy at best (remember this post from last time we were here?) and we actually have loads of errands to run so being shoreside will make it much easier.  Our plan is to head down the Exuma island chain over the next six weeks, making short island hops down to Georgetown from where Scott will head back to Grenada to work before we continue further south.  Our plans are loose after that (probably spending hurricane season in Grenada), but we know one thing for sure: we're going somewhere, this boat is too awesome not to!