Well, we made the weather window. It was a quiet night of motoring and light wind sailing. By 10;00 AM we were anchored behind the reef in 30 feet of very clear water on a sand bottom. Five other cruising boats are spread out around the inside of the reef. There are 4 or 5 big live aboard dive charters here as well. It's a big lagoon. Some of the boats are a mile away. There is no land in site, just crashing surf on the reef around us. This morning at about 3:00 AM the wind came right on schedule. It's been blowing 20 to 25 knots ever since. We've now been here 24 hours. Our forecasts are calling for even more wind this afternoon, tomorrow, and then continuing for the next 3 days. We dived on our anchor yesterday to make sure that it was set properly. We have 225 feet of scope (chain) out and feel secure. Even though we were tired yesterday from our overnight passage we decided to do a little snorkeling before the winds came. In the dinghy we headed for the reef to find some of the best coral and sea life we've seen in a long time. The water is a little cool compared to what we are used to. (80 degrees). We took our underwater camera but some dummy left it set on "movie" and we came up with lots of blurred meaningless junk before the memory card was full.. We are watching for the dolphins that are supposed to be here. It's pretty choppy and we can't go too far in our little dinghy so we are hoping that they come and visit Freebird while the wind is still blowing.

j's version ~ The Howling Howells. It's Thursday morning. We've been here 24 hrs now & the winds have steadily picked up. After we came back from snorkeling yesterday we seriously started to batten down. We took down the reacher sail & lashed it to the deck to make less windage on bow of the boat. We retired my canoe further back. We rigged the 2nd bow anchor ready to let fly if the main one releases. We put the 2nd tie around the dinghy & took out of the cockpit anything airborn. Smokey the DaveBear ~ Saftey first. It's a bit unnerving but i figured that if that's our last night we'd better BBQ the last of the steaks. For breakfast we had our hoarded bacon & blueberry muffins. Now for lunch?????. We might have 3 days of this. YIKES