IATO

25 January 2010 | Fort Pierce FL
26 April 2009 | Leeward Islands
11 April 2009 | St Barts
11 April 2009 | St. Barts
14 March 2009 | leeward Islands
12 March 2009 | Leeward Islands
07 February 2009 | St Thomas
20 January 2009 | St. Thomas USVI
06 January 2009 | Luperon
11 December 2008 | Luperon
24 November 2008 | In the Exumas Bahamas
15 October 2008 | Near Jeckyl Island
06 September 2008 | NYC, Long Island, CT and MA
18 May 2008 | Cape Canaveral Florida
17 April 2008 | Durban and Cape Town
13 February 2008 | West Palm Beach, Florida
25 November 2007 | Grand Bahamas Island
20 November 2007 | Grand bahamas Island
20 November 2007 | West Palm Beach, FL

George Town

24 November 2008 | In the Exumas Bahamas
RicK
I'm writing from George Town Exumas in the Bahamas. We have been here for about 4 days now and plan on staying about a month. We have come a long way since the last blog entry. After arriving in West Palm Beach we spent a week in the yard painting the bottom of the boat and cleaning and waxing the rest of the boat. Ken and Pat McConahay arrived on the 7th of November and we headed out that night for the Bahamas. It went as smooth as you can hope for and we arrived in Freeport the next morning. That was the easiest leg of our trip. The whole time we were watching Hurricane Puloma over Cuba. Luckily we were right and the hurricane fell apart.

The rest of the trip to George Town was as rough as I've seen. It wasn't the Hurricane that got us, it was a high pressure system over the South Eastern US and the following 3 cold fronts that came through. While the US was freezing from the cold fronts our weather was nice and warm but very, very windy. As a cruiser when this happens you find a nice spot to hide and enjoy life. But we had travelers with us with a date to be back to work and they were to fly out of George Town. So with that in mind we kept going. We left Freeport and sailed to the Berry Islands, through the islands and on to Nassau. We rested a day and then sailed to the northern end of the Exuma islands and then on to George Town about 90 miles south.

At one time leaving the Berry Islands we had to go through a passage between two islands. The seas were the roughest I've ever sailed in with short steep 10 foot waves. The action for about 5 minutes was so rough that our 1 � inch tubing that holds up our hard top broke in 4 different places. We just got that fixed today. We have learned our lesson about having to get to someplace on a certain date. Future travelers with us will have to be more flexible. Come be with us when we are going to be in one area for a while and all that will be a non issue. But, with that said we enjoyed having Ken and Pat with us. Ken/McGiver is a lot of help in bad situations.

George Town is like a cruisers trailer park. Right now there are only 12 boats with us in the anchorage. They say within about a month there will be about 300. The water is unbelievable gorgeous and the beaches are nice. The gang here spends lots of time hanging around the beach playing games and just visiting. They say there are a lot of pot luck dinners that we look forward to.

That's all for now. Hope everyone stateside can stay warm this winter. I think I'll go for a swim.

Happy Thanksgiving Everyone!
Comments
Vessel Name: IATO
Vessel Make/Model: 40' Manta Catamaran
Hailing Port: Ft. Lauderdale, Florida
Crew: Rick and Linda Wilson
About: We recently retired and are setting out to fulfill our dreams. We hope to cruise to new places and new worlds.

Who: Rick and Linda Wilson
Port: Ft. Lauderdale, Florida