After spending 3 days at the lovely Grand Bahamas Yacht Club (finally somewhere with free wifi !), we will be heading North again to Jacksonville as of tomorrow - with a potential quick pit stop near West End to anchor for the night. This has been one of my preferred marinas so far - with beautiful grounds, great service, a lovely pool and a free shuttle to the Lucaya Marina Village. The price for diesel here is also much more decent than we have seen up the chain. The only thing that confuses me is why their price per foot increases in what I consider the "off season" - there are only about 10 boats here at the moment.....

The weather in the Bahamas continues to be unbelieavably hot, with scattered thunderstorms. Expect that we will need to go through a few squalls on our way home given the current forecasts- but other than that, with limited wind expected, we will be motoring most of the way. We are hoping to spend part of our trip making use of the Gulf Stream to carry us North and speed our progress. We will then spend 1-2 weeks at Sadler Point Marina (where it all started) to work through some repairs and do some deep cleaning of the boat. The boat will then be hauled for its centerboard repair and to clean all the barnacles off that have joined our party.

It is with a twinge of sadness that John and I will become landlubbers for an indefinate time period as of the end of this month. We had been very tempted to continue our sailing journey onwards from the Caribbean and I am extremely envious of the sailblogs I read of those in the Med or in the Pacific. But, alas, these places will need to wait and we hope to reach their shores by sailboat one day in the future. In the meantime, after having been at sea for a total of 15 months, we will be going back to work for a while and rebuilding our sailing budget, with dreams of setting sail again in the future. The initial plan was to sell our boat after this trip but after all the blood, sweat and tears (and $$) we have put into her, we will continue as her owners for the time being. Lucky Escape is truly a one of a kind vessel and we are enjoying the time spent as continue to upgrade/improve her. She is almost completely transformed from the day we bought her (January 25, 2009) !

We will continue to post blogs and pics as we round out this year's sailing adventures - and then hope to be back again soon !!