Thanks again to all our readers for your comments. We feel like you are travelling with us. Only wish we could send some of this warm weather back to those of you in cooler climates.

For Ian - the ICW is the Intra Coastal Waterway - worth a Google.

We enjoyed the ultimate sail over yesterday. Upping anchor with the dawn, we had 50 miles to go. It was a beam reach all the way - 15-20 kts of wind and the boat doing 7-8 kts - Barracuda doing what she does best. With the wind in the south, the Gulf Stream was calm and though it was a bit blowy on arrival we made it in a rather good 7.5 hours.

We made landfall in Alice Town, Bimini and went through the usual mega form-filling exercise for customs and immigration; but we are into the Bahamas - yeah! Celebration with K's first Kalik beer, G's first punch. We're spending the night at Brown's Marina, mentioned in Hemingway's 'Islands in the Stream'. The guys here brought us lobster tails so we have cooked them up and really dined in style. Communications are going to become a little more sparse now so blogs will not come out as often, but we will write when we can.

Today we will sail off over through the shallow waters of the Great Bahama Bank (2-4m nearly all the way) towards the Berry Islands, which will take a couple of days to reach. Apparently when you want to stop for the night you just throw down the anchor and don't worry too much about dragging: it's all flat and there's nothing to hit. We shall report back in a couple of days.