Good morning, all! It's Saturday morning, July 5th. We hope you all enjoyed your 4th of July celebrations; they were pretty uneventful here. Other than the lighthouse on Great Inagua, we've been out of site of land. As of now the Ragged Islands, Bahamas are somewhere off our starboard (right) and Cuba somewhere off our port (left). I'm hoping we'll be close enough to Cuba later today to at least catch a glimpse. By tomorrow we should be entering the Old Bahamian Channel heading northwest. Yesterday morning I told you the winds had died down and the seas calmed. The winds continued to diminish throughout the day to about only 5 knots, and by 4:30 we dropped sails and had to motor. We averaged around 6 knots yesterday, both sailing and motoring, thanks in part to the current in our favor. As of this morning, we've traveled about 680 miles with about 400 miles to go to West Palm. The loss of wind meant a reduced breeze, but it did allow us to open the hatches in the salon for the afternoon to refresh it a bit. We had a couple of light passing showers during the day. The guys were hoping for a good fresh-water rinse, but the showers weren't quite strong enough for that. Dave improved upon his first attempt at the "Lime in da Coconut" drinks in the afternoon; were they ever delicious! He even made us supper, yummy coconut fish curry. We finally had a ship within hailing distance of us and they called us up to check in and ensure us they were passing well behind us heading for Louisiana, and wished us a Happy 4th, which we returned in kind. Mark had the first evening watch from 7-10 and the winds came back, so he rolled out the gennie and turned off the motors- peace and quiet again (except for when we have to charge the batteries, which is more often than we like. We might be picking up new ones in FL). Mom and Dad had the eventful watch from 10pm-1am, when a squall kicked up, which isn't unusual, but they had to close all the salon hatches quickly and then a sudden flash of lighting high in the clouds, followed by a rumble of thunder (the first in our near vicinity) sent them scrambling to stash the important electronics in the oven, just in case of a strike. Fortunately there was no strike (lightning stayed in the clouds), and the squall passed quickly. The remaining night watches were quiet and we sailed comfortably on gennie. Dave and I had the 1-4am watch with low clouds in the sky, a dome of stars overhead, a clear view of the Milky Way, and only occasional distant lightning flashes far off. Everyone has breakfasted and it is time to settle into our daily rituals of chatting, napping, gaming, and eating.

Cheers!

Lisa, Dave, and da crew