Brooke Elder

4 days and 3 night we finally made it to the United States a day before the 4th of July! We finally made it 2000 miles. Never thought we'd make it.

After 6 days of sailing we finally are in The Bahamas and get to go off the boat. The sail was really good. We averaged 9.3 knots for the first 7 hours or so. We were supposed to hit the tail end of a thunderstorm but our weather bubble kept us safe and we never saw the storm.

Just about 200 miles! We had a fun sail. The first few hours were super sporty. We had a huge wave come and drench the cockpit. For 80% of the time it was a nice downwind sail. Our port engine had a coolant leak that we thought we fixed on the passage but right as we were going to anchor broke again. Luckily we have friends in the same Bay to come help. Welcome to the Bahamas! We did have a casualty. Dead squid on deck.

Our plan was to do a 2 night sail to the Bahamas but the wind off of Dominican Republic didn't look great. So we opted to do a one night to a little island off Turks and Caicos called Big Sand Cay. It's gorgeous! Good stop for the night before we get to the Bahamas tomorrow.

This was our longest sail so far. We decided to fly the spinnaker. It was a little tricky to get up but we flew it for about 3 hours. Then the wind started to pick up. The line that pulls down the sock to take the sail down got tangled in one of the other lines do we couldn't get it down. It took Ben, Brooke, max and Isaac to pull in the line and we finally got the sail down. It was flapping really hard in the wind and scared the girls. Our overnight sail was pretty uneventful. We made it to Puerto Bahia Marina and Ben docked like a boss. It was a tight squeeze and he did great!

Great sail! Tricky going through the channel with a cruise ship. So many boats! We aren't used to this.

Great sail. The last hour was pretty wavy. The anchorage was harder to get I to than we thought but we got on a mooring ball.

We made it to the BVI! I never thought I would sail here! The over night passage wasn't too bad. 15-18 knot winds and 4-6 foot seas. It was a long passage but we made it. As we were vaout to anchor our starboard side engine stopped working. The alternator is bad we think. The battery was dead so we had to borrow the battery from the generator to get the battery to get started so we decided to spend our first night at the marina at Virgin Gorda.

Our longest sail yet. We made pretty good time. Only about 10-15 knots of wind. We had a stole way join us. A big black butterfly. It made it's home in Max's room for the whole passage. We finally got it out when we anchored. Rest today for our overnighter tomorrow.