YIPPEEEE!!!!!!!

Rickshaw, along with Tide Hiker have left Nassau! After spending 12 very soggy days in the Nassau Harbor Club Marina we were more than ready to get on our way. We have been anxiously watching the calendar as insurance dictates that we be at or north of Savannah, Georgia (32 degrees north) by June 15. The next two days look great weather-wise so we will be back in Florida late afternoon on Wednesday hopefully. It will probably take us 5 or so days to get up the coast of Florida so we should be in good shape. After that, we will be making a bee-line back home.

We have had such a great trip but it has been long and we both look forward to seeing our friends and family again. It will also be nice to be on land and leave behind the rocking and rolling that we have experienced for the last few weeks. It is funny that sometimes when we are sitting at a restaurant or shopping at the grocery we have moments when feel we are still rocking. Guess it takes a while for the brain to catch up...or maybe it is the rum punches!

As a matter of fact we are currently rolling pretty well where we are. We arrived at Chub Key in the Berry Islands, about 40 miles NW of Nassau, today at 2:30.

To see Rickshaw's location at Chub Key click here. The little "A" in the exclamation point is where we are anchored. At the zoom level Rick selected, you can see Andros Island to the SE and the apex of the Tongue of the Ocean near the top left. That is where we will head tomorrow morning to get back onto the Bahama Banks heading for Bimini. You can zoom in or out to get a perspective of the Berry Islands in relation to the rest of the Bahamas.

As we were heading NW today a large thunderstorm developed SE of us and we were hopeful we'd get into the anchorage before it hit. It turned out that the storm passed south of us, but the wave and surge action is making the anchorage quite rolly at the moment. Perhaps we'll have another rum drink. Rick is making water here as we found the tap water quality pretty poor at Nassau Harbor Club. They say they drink it all the time, but Rick uses his water meter to test the quality before putting it in the tanks, and at that marina it showed the dissolved solid content to be about 3 times what normal city water contains. He made water there instead of using the tap, and the quality was much better. Anyway, thank goodness for the water maker, as it has performed well while in the islands. Tomorrow we'll leave for Bimini, about 10 hours to the west across the Bahama Banks. Then Wednesday we plan to cross the Gulf Stream, and let the north-bound current carry us up to Stuart, FL. That will be a very long day as well.

At any rate, we will continue to blog as we make our way home. We hope to see you all soon.