Just before Hurricane Sandy and unrelated to it, we decided for the first time in our sailing career to join a rally, The Salty Dawg. Not sure why we have not joined a rally before other than we are fiercely independent and they are usually expensive. The Salty Dawg offered some real benefits, such as, being free, providing weather forecast and routing by a well-known weather guru, Chris Parker, and a fairly substantial discount to acquire a GPS tracking device, SPOT. Thus, you will be able to follow us in real time. No more relying on one of us, lazy bums, to update our blog for you to see where we are.

For me, the Salty Dawg's biggest perk has been to get to know some more sailors and a sailing family (Anything Goes) with similar interests and cruising plans. We first met Anything Goes in Washington DC where we had them over for pre-dinner drinks which lasted from 6pm to 11pm, but had not had the chance to spend any real time with them till now. We have become fast friends in just a few days - which is fairly common among cruising folk as time together is short. Unfortunately, Anything Goes and her beautiful crew (yes, Craig, you too), together with most of the Salty Dawg sailors, are going to the British Virgin Islands in the Caribbean. We hope to catch with them somewhere south of the Bahamas in the spring just before we sail to Bermuda and they sail north through the Bahamas to Florida.

Marta