Cheryl's Notes:

We are still in Compass Cay with our Catalina friends. Monday was our last calm day before this massive cold front. John and Jim made a dinghy run down to Sampson Cay Marina. Their store was almost wiped out of products. Everyone was stocking up before being boat bound for three or four days. We went to shore at lunchtime to Compass marina for hot dogs and I painted a driftwood sign with our names and boat name to leave behind on the island. We were going to return to Boo Boo Hill to leave the sign, but we have spent so much time here, that this is our new found home. We buzzed back to the boat so that I could put the final touches on dinner and desert. It was our turn to host the Catalina cruisers night. I made a big pot of chili and some key lime bars from scratch. Leslie on Just Limin made johnnycake and brought chips and salsa, Joe from Onward contributed real sour cream, and both boats brought bags of ice cubes. Instant party, just add ice. (We are the only boat without an ice maker.)

The cold front moving through right now, is actually two fronts that are colliding over us. That means instead of lasting 48 hours, the wind will be blowing for almost four days. We are to the point that anything under 20 knots is considered light and variable. It is the constant 25-30 knots that is making us crazy. It always seems worse at night, when things are pitch black and you have trouble keeping your orientation with the shoreline. We keep our GPS tracking feature turned on at all times so that we can watch where the boat is in respect to the anchor. The anchor drag alarm is set when we try to sleep at night. Imagine going to bed at night not knowing if your house will be in the same spot when you wake up. The additional worry is wondering if you will drag into another boat, or will they come crashing into yours during the night. We have been very lucky with our ground tackle. Yesterday the anchor of a boat near us popped out of the bottom, and in the high winds it took them almost two hours to get the anchor reset.

Note to all of our family and friends: Our email account was compromised while on Black Point. The wifi was free, and I guess that you take your chances. Do not open any mail that says that it is from us, but looks like it is forwarded. We would not send any emails that way. Sorry to all of you for the inconvenience.

John's Notes:

I know, I know, you are asking yourself (especially if you are from the Midwest, how we can complain about the weather. Sure, I don't think it has been below 55 degrees since we left Miami. It was freezing there. The thing is, the weather here has been terrible. It might be warmer than back home but if you are in the Twin Cities, or even our marina in North Carolina, you probably don't spend most of the night worrying if your house is going to drift away in the middle of the night. Imagine, you are sitting in your living room and all of a sudden everything on the coffee table ends up on your lap. Ten seconds later, everything on the table that didn't end up on your lab is now on the other side of the table on the floor. If you get up to go anywhere you have to hold on with both hands to keep from falling down. There just aren't enough solid things to hold on to. It's like being in a washing machine and every 10 seconds someone switches it to spin cycle. Like I have said many times, living on a boat is definitely not for everyone. I still don't know how Cheryl puts up with it sometimes. Then again, as the old adage goes, "A bad day on the water beats a great day at the office!"

We were talking with a guy the other day who has had a house on Staniel Cay for over 30 years and he informed us that this is the absolute worst weather he has ever experienced. Wouldn't you know, this would be the year we go to the Bahamas.

The good weather days are fantastic. The problem is that there are not enough of them. We usually take those to recuperate and get ready for the next blow or spend it finding a new place to hide for the next front. When you want or need to move in anticipation of the next front, you have to get to the next place early because if your don't, there won't be any room at the inn when you get there. Take the place we are anchored now. In bad weather it can support about 5 maybe 6 boats without anyone worrying about swinging into each other as the tide changes. When we got here the other day, we were the first to arrive. We were surprised by that. We thought from what we heard on the radio, that other boats would already be here. Luckily, we got the best anchorage spots. At one time yesterday we had 10 boats in here. The later arrivals were definitely anchored way too close to us for us not to worry about them swinging into us. Lucky for us, we didn't have any problems and some of the boats left today to find other places to anchor. What is really scary is that the really heavy weather here is usually in the middle of the night. That is when it is so black out that you can't see either end of the boat when you are on deck. Imagine you neighborhood is a very small island and there is absolutely no lights on and you have an emergency. Be careful where you step................