| 21º 49.002' N | 72º 8.868' W | Wind Dancer | Wednesday, April 24, 2024 5:15 PM We left Crooked Island, Bahamas, at 9:30 AM yesterday morning for the 26 hour sail to our present location at Blue Haven Marina, Providenciales, Turks and Caicos Islands. On a map the Turks and Caicos look like simply the southernmost group of islands in the Bahamas chain. And back when these two countries were one British colony that was indeed the case. But when the northern islands got tired of being a colony and wanted independence from England, the people in these southern islands voted to keep their ties to England. Thus the Bahamas are an independent country and the Turks and Caicos are a British Overseas Territory. So we have checked out of the Bahamas and this afternoon went through Customs and Immigration to check in to the Turks and Caicos. The Bahamas issue and print their own paper currency, the Bahamian Dollar, but to keep things simple for the majority of tourists who come from the US they keep their dollar always pegged equal to the US dollar. When you get change from a purchase there you get a random mixture of Bahamian and US paper currency. Turks and Caicos, not being an independent country, can't issue their own currency. But tourism from the US is all important here too, so to keep things easy for the tourists they have made US dollars the official currency in their territory. Confusing, but simple! Yesterday's sail was one of the best, 14 kts of wind on a close reach with calm seas. Perfect all day, straight down the rhumb line. But after dark the wind grew to 20 kts and came around to only 30 degrees off the bow and the calm sea turned into rolling 4 foot waves. Not the worst we've been in but pretty uncomfortable. And the entrance to the channel leading to this marina had us surfing down 8 foot waves rolling over the bar. A bit too exciting for a while, but all's well that ends well and were happy to be now calmly tied up at our slip. | 8 months ago | Show
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| 22º 26.802' N | 73º 23.436' W | Wind Dancer | | 8 months ago | Show
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| 22º 47.268' N | 73º 53.232' W | Wind Dancer | | 8 months ago | Show
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| 22º 49.836' N | 74º 20.088' W | Wind Dancer | Friday, April 19, 2024 5:10 PM Motor sailed today from Long Island over to Crooked Island Lodge and Marina on Crooked Island. Wind was about 30 degrees off of the port bow at ENE. Not enough to to totally sail, but enough pressuer on the sail to steady out the ocean swell. Looks like we'll be here till next Wednesday when conditions will be good for us to make a 24 hour run to Providenciales in the Turks and Caicos. Tomorrow we're going to rent a car and explore the little settlements here on Crooked Island. The guide book says the house of The Out Island Doctor is here and we hope we can find it. | 9 months ago | Show
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| 23º 6.114' N | 74º 57.006' W | Wind Dancer | May 4,2024 - Saturday - Left Blue Haven Marina in Turks & Caicos at 9:30 AM yesterday morning. Strong east wind all day and night had us sailing fast under reefed main and jib doing 7.5 to 8 knots all the way. Quite rolly though as the wind had a 4 foot swell sweeping under us. Arrived here at Flying Fish Marina at 11:30 this morning and checked in with a 12 month cruising permit. We will work our way north over the next month and leave the boat in Marsh Harbour, Abaco Island, for most of the summer. Looks like we'll be here for 4 or 5 days waiting for the wind to abate before sailing north. | 8 months ago | Show
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| 23º 6.114' N | 74º 57.006' W | Wind Dancer | Sunday, April 14 Arrived here at Flying Fish Marina at 3:30 PM after a very rolly motor sail from Calabash Bay. The wind has been howling at 20 to 25 knots out of the north for the past two days and it has really built up big waves. We think that we will probably stay here for 4 days or so until the wind dies down a bit. After the last two days of sailing we both feel like we've been living in wind tunnel! | 9 months ago | Show
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| 23º 39.216' N | 75º 20.232' W | Wind Dancer | Saturday, April 13, 5:00 PM - Sailed today from Galliot Cay over on the Bahama banks where we've been sailing for the last three weeks. Anchored now in Calabash Bay at the north end of Long Island. Left the banks where the water averaged 20 feet deep just after sunrise and went through the Galliot Cut out to the North Atlantic where the water was 5,000 feet deep. Since we float on the top it actually doesn't matter how deep it is, just as long as we don't go anywhere where it is too shallow! Winds were very brisk at 20 to 25 knots, and the ocean swell was up to about 4' high. We were on a beam reach all day, which was good, but were going right parallel to the waves, which was not so good. Lots of heavy rolling back and forth as a wave rose up to our beam, which rolled us away from the wave, and then we rolled back the other way as the wave went away from us. Quite tiring and we have to be very careful as we move around on the boat. These heavy wind/wave conditions are supposed to last for the next 4 days. We'll decide in the morning if we're going to stay here until conditions lighten up or moved on. | 9 months ago | Show
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| 23º 30.582' N | 75º 37.914' W | Wind Dancer | Friday, May 10, 2024 - Having a great sail on calm seas from Calabash Bay over to George Town. I'll type more when we get there. | 8 months ago | Show
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| 25º 11.784' N | 76º 14.916' W | Wind Dancer | Thursday, May 23, 2024 12:36 PM We anchored yesterday afternoon in Governor's Harbour on Eleuthra. Nice little town with two good restaurants' and a good food market. On our way here yesterday afternoon we were motoring when we ran over an abandoned crab pot line whose float had broken off. The line wound around our prop and we had to stop the engine. Very calm seas and we were still about 3 miles south of the harbour. I put on my snorkel mask and fins and dove down to saw on the rope, but it was such a tightly wound mass of old, tough rope that I could make little headway at sawing away at it. I could tell that it was going to take me hours at the rate I was going. We had good Wi-Fi phone connectivity through our Starlink, so I called the local dive shop in Governor's Harbour. Very nice lady said they no longer had any staff who could scuba dive to help us, but she gave us the phone number for her cousin, Richard, who was a bonefish guide and should be able to come out and help us. Luckily he wasn't busy and he came right out in his boat to help. Very nice young man who said he spent a lot of time free diving and was sure he could help. He could hold his breath four times longer than I had been able to, and after 20 minutes of diving up and down to saw on the old rope with his knife he was finally able to free the prop. Once again we were lucky with our misadventure - it was a calm day and help was readily available. We're spending today here in the harbour and will continue north again tomorrow. | 7 months ago | Show
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| 23º 55.452' N | 76º 17.898' W | Wind Dancer | | 8 months ago | Show
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| 24º 50.118' N | 76º 20.598' W | Wind Dancer | Tuesday, May 21, 2024 11:27 AM. Arrived here at Cape Eleuthra Marina last Saturday. Nice place. Rented a car yesterday and drove up the island. Had a nice lunch at Frigate's Restaurant in Governors Harbour. When we returned to the boat that evening Janice's iPhone fell out of her pocket into 10 feet of water! Borrowed the marina's swimming pool net on a pole this morning but so far haven't been able to scoop it up. It just settles further and further into the sand. So our main phone number of 503-333-7903 is unavailable! Anyone wanting to call or message should use my phone of 503-863-7358. More thunderstorms rolling in today. Probably won't leave here until the weather clears up tomorrow or Thursday. | 7 months ago | Show
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| 24º 22.986' N | 76º 37.416' W | Wind Dancer | Wednesday, March 27. 6:20 PM Currently on a mooring ball at Warderick Wells in the Exuma chain of the Bahamas. Beautiful weather the last three days - light winds, small seas, and incredibly clear blue water. We've anchored off of two other small islands on our way down here and explored sandy beaches and winding rivers through the mangrove marshes. Tomorrow we'll sail to Staniel Cay to see the swimming pigs and have dinner at the Staniel Cay Yacht Club. Then we'll start working our way back up the Exuma's to Nassau. Our friends Toby and Chris have to be back by next Monday to fly back to the real world in Iowa! | 9 months ago | Show
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| 25º 31.236' N | 76º 46.566' W | Wind Dancer | 12:10 PM, Sunday March 17.. Happy St Patricks Day! Janice has some corned beef that she's going to cook, but no cabbage. We do have brussel sprouts, carrots, and potatoes though so it will be a good meal. We just dropped anchor south of Spanish Wells after a 24 hour sail down from Grand Bahama Island. Not sure yet if we'll dinghy in to the town itself, the anchorage is a fair bit away from the harbor. | 10 months ago | Show
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| 24º 40.002' N | 76º 49.098' W | Wind Dancer | 6:00 PM Saturday, April 6 - Our friends Toby and Chris left from Nassau last Monday. We waited all week at Palm Cay Marina (very nice place) for the delivery of the new controller for our freezer, which had not been working. Finally got the part on Friday afternoon, installed it, and now the freezer works great. Janice is very happy!
Motored and sailed today from Nassau down to our anchor spot just south of Lobster Cay and Highborn Cay. Fantasticly clear water is wonderful shades of blue. Gorgeous spot with small, deserted cays all around us. Hard to imagine that anywhere in the world could be prettier that this. Tomorrow we will sail down to Warderick Wells, then on Monday down to Staniel Cay to feed the swimming pigs and perhaps snorkel in Thunderball Grotto. Beautiful weather and we are taking out time working our way south toward Puerto Rico. | 9 months ago | Show
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| 26º 20.634' N | 77º 0.234' W | Wind Dancer | May 30, 2024 8:00 PM Anchored tonight here in the Bay of Old Robinson on Abaco Island. Came up here 2 days ago after a few pleasant days at the marina in Spanish Wells. The last 2 weeks have been hot and muggy with very little wind. Not much sailing, a lot of motoring to make progress. Tomorrow we will complete the final leg up to Marsh Harbour where we'll leave the boat for the summer. And the forecast for the next two weeks looks like a lot of wind coming our way. It's often like that, either not enough wind or too much! | 7 months ago | Show
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| 25º 18.984' N | 77º 3.036' W | Wind Dancer | | 10 months ago | Show
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| 26º 32.784' N | 77º 3.216' W | Wind Dancer | May 31, 2024 After several months of sailing up and down the Bahama chain we have arrived here at Harbor View Marina where we'll leave the boat for several months while we're away traveling in Europe and Oregon. | 7 months ago | Show
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| 25º 6.048' N | 77º 12.102' W | Wind Dancer | | 10 months ago | Show
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| 25º 1.236' N | 77º 16.434' W | Wind Dancer | Winds at 30 kts! Lots of bommies (coral heads) all around us! Lightning, thunder, and heavy rain! Wow, what a morning! We were anchored last night on the north side of Rose Island because the wind yesterday was from the south. We knew we wanted to up anchor early to get around to the south side of the island for shelter from the north wind that was coming with the thunderstorms, so we were up before dawn and weighed anchor just after sunrise. But we were only halfway around the island when the storms blew in and everything got very rough. We knew the south side anchorage was going to be rough too in winds this high, so Janice phoned Palm Cay marina and asked if we could come in a day early. Luckily they had a vacancy. We spent the next two hours with lightning all around us weaving our way between numerous coral heads to the marina as the heavy rain blew in sideways under the bimini. But we're here now, safely tied up at the dock. Thank heavens the Navionics charts for this part of the world are very accurate, if it wasn't for them we'd be sitting high and dry on some coral reef right now! | 10 months ago | Show
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| 26º 7.314' N | 78º 0.966' W | Wind Dancer | Wind has died down. Seas have settled too. Motoring along nicely at 5 kts. We don't want to get there too early, best to be full daylight when we go up on the bank where it's only 10 feet deep. | 10 months ago | Show
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| 26º 25.008' N | 78º 28.914' W | Wind Dancer | Left Grand Bahama Yacht Club at 11:00 AM. Should be a 24 hour sail down to Spanish Wells. We're headed SE and wind is from SW so able to sail along nicely in moderate seas. | 10 months ago | Show
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| 26º 31.086' N | 78º 38.166' W | Wind Dancer | Arrived at Grand Bahama Yacht Club at 2:30 PM. Staff remembered us from last year and said "Welcome Home". Tomorrow afternoon we will take the marina shuttle bus to the nearby Soloman's supermarket. Probably leave for Spanish Wells on Saturday or Sunday. | 10 months ago | Show
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| 26º 33.816' N | 78º 52.614' W | Wind Dancer | Left West End at 9:30 AM. Catching a nice eddy current south on the edge of the Gulf Stream. Wind light and on the nose so motoring along a 6 kts. Sunny skies, blue water. Lovely day. | 10 months ago | Show
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| 26º 42.066' N | 78º 59.448' W | Wind Dancer | Marina said there would be someone at Slip C-37 but as we turned down the fairway no one was in sight. Man came running out the dock and indicated that we were just about past slip C-37. I put boat into reverse to stop her, but when we were stopped the 20 knt wind quickly blew the stern toward the back of the boats on the other side of the fairway. I had to gun the throttle to quickly get steerage, just missed hitting the other boat by inches! We shot past C-37 and were going to have a difficult time turning around in the wind to get back to it. The dockhand saw the problem and quickly shouted to us to keep going to C-17, which was ahead of us and empty. He ran ahead and caught our line as we entered the slip. Safe and sound and no damage done! | 10 months ago | Show
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| 26º 41.898' N | 78º 59.814' W | Wind Dancer | Arrived here at 10:30 PM. Don't want to enter the marina in the dark, and no one is there to assign us a slip. Anchored here all night in 20 kts of wind. Boat rolled a lot at anchor. Radioed the marina at 9:00 AM the next morning and got assigned to slip C-37. Glad to up anchor and head in out of the wind! | 10 months ago | Show
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| 26º 53.886' N | 79º 22.002' W | Wind Dancer | Sunday, March 10, 2024 at 4:30 PM. We had a brief rain shower before lunch and the wind shifted around to NW, which puts it right astern of us. Pretty significant roll to the boat without any heeling pressure on the sail to steady it. Our speed was reduced from 7 kts. to 4 kts. by the current in the middle of the Gulf Stream, but now we're getting toward the eastern edge of the Stream and our speed is back up to 6 kts. | 10 months ago | Show
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| 27º 9.516' N | 80º 6.006' W | Wind Dancer | Sunday March 10, 2024 we left Stuart, Florida at 8:00 AM headed across the Gulf Stream to Old Bahama Bay Marina in West End on Grand Bahama Island. Sailing under partly cloudy skies at 7 kts on a starboard beam reach in moderate seas. The sailing is good and we're on our way. | 10 months ago | Show
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| 27º 12.816' N | 80º 15.402' W | Wind Dancer | Arrived here at Safe Harbor Harborage Yacht Club at 4:00 PM this afternoon. (Monday, February 26, 2024) (Farkwar seems to note these waypoints a Greenwich Mean Time, which means the day and hour as shown by Farkwar is not the local time day and hour that the waypoint is posted.) The finger piers here between slips are quite short, so we have to step on and off the boat over the lifeline at midship. Tomorrow the mechanic is coming to give our new Yanmar engine it's official 50 hour check and maintenance. He will also check out our generator to see why it has stopped putting out a proper 120 volts. Then on Wednesday an electronics technician is coming to fix a few glitches in the Raymarine chartplotter. We are scheduled to leave here on this Friday, March 1, but that will depend on the weather. | 10 months ago | Show
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| 27º 27.366' N | 80º 18.168' W | Wind Dancer | Good weather motoring south on the ICW today. I got too involved checking the chartplotter for bridges up ahead and sideswiped one of the ICW channel marker poles. No harm done to us or the pole. Anchored this afternoon in the cove just south of the Fort Pierce high bridge. | 10 months ago | Show
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| 27º 42.264' N | 80º 23.502' W | Wind Dancer | | 10 months ago | Show
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| 27º 52.698' N | 80º 29.25' W | Wind Dancer | | 10 months ago | Show
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| 28º 21.252' N | 80º 43.266' W | Wind Dancer | Anchored tonight just south of Cocoa, Florida. A good run today down the ICW past Cape Canaveral. We will stay here for a day or two before continuing south. It's been cold for the past few days, but tomorrow it is supposed to be in the 70;s. Yay! | 10 months ago | Show
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| 32º 10.734' N | 80º 44.586' W | Wind Dancer | The boat was hauled today for bottom painting here at Hilton Head Island, South Carolina. If all goes well, and the weather cooperates, we will depart next week - headed south for the Bahamas. | about 1 year ago | Show
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| 29º 0.702' N | 80º 54.066' W | Wind Dancer | Currently anchored for the night just off of the ICW in 8 feet of water. Nice and calm. Left St. Augustine this morning at 7:00 AM and got here at 5:00 PM. We went under several 65' clearance bridges ( we are 64' to the top of our radio antenna atop the mast ) and had to radio ahead to several shorter clearance draw bridges for the bridge to open as we approached. A nice sunny day, but cold in the cockpit. High temp was around 60 degrees. | 10 months ago | Show
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| 31º 48.648' N | 80º 55.302' W | Wind Dancer | 2023-12-09 00:00:00 UTC: Engine overheated off of the coast of Georgia. Spent two nights anchored on the continental shelf offshore. Today SeaTow pulled us in to Thunderbird Marina here near Savannah. On Monday a mechanic is coming to tell us how bad the engine problem is. | about 1 year ago | Show
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| 32º 1.518' N | 81º 2.832' W | Wind Dancer | 2024-02-10 00:00:00 UTC: New Yanmar engine was successfully installed at Thunderbolt Marine, near Savannah, Georgia. Runs great! We have resumed making our way south along the Florida coast. No hurry, watching the weather fronts cycle through about weekly and picking the one or two days in the cycle when the wind is out of the north to continue our trip. Next stop Cape Canaveral, Florida. When we reach Fort Lauderdale we hope to have our wind indicator repaired and a few other modifications to our electronics done. From there we'll hop over to the Bahamas. | 11 months ago | Show
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| 32º 1.524' N | 81º 2.85' W | Wind Dancer | Typo in That last position report! Hopefully this one looks better! | about 1 year ago | Show
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| 29º 45.15' N | 81º 15.0' W | Wind Dancer | | 10 months ago | Show
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| 29º 53.052' N | 81º 18.054' W | Wind Dancer | Sailed south from Fernandina Beach and we are now at the Municipal Marina in St Augustine, Florida. We'll spend a few days here waiting for the next good weather window to continue south. Very nice city, great historic district with lots of museums and restaurants. Tricky tidal currents here in the marina. It took us two tries to get into our slip, but everything was OK in the end. | 11 months ago | Show
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| 30º 35.1' N | 81º 21.9' W | Wind Dancer | | 11 months ago | Show
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| 30º 40.314' N | 81º 27.948' W | Wind Dancer | Oops! Obvious error in the lat/lon or that last waypoint. When post a manual waypoint I can add notes, but putting in the Lat/Lon the way they want it is tricky! | 11 months ago | Show
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| 30º 40.314' N | 81º 27.948' W | Wind Dancer | | 11 months ago | Show
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| 30º 42.018' N | 81º 27.948' W | Wind Dancer | | 11 months ago | Show
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