June 1 2002
After motoring for 35 hours with just a very little bit of sailing and thanks to a major boost from the Gulf stream we finally arrive in North Cat Cay in the Bahamas.
It's hot here ...it's very very hot...... almost hotter than anywhere else I have been so far......No Wind...absolutely not a breath of air...nothing stirs.

 Cat Cay wins the overall prize for being the biggest government "Rip Off".

Cat Cay is a private Island and offers a public service "Customs and Immigration"....it is a port of entry for the Bahamas. They charged us $50.us to enter the island by boat....even when you are there "only for a few hours"..... "clearing in". Customs charged us a total of $130us for fishing, landing and exit fees.
We spent $180us in about 3 hours (on top of everything they kept us waiting!) and got nothing but our passports stamped and a sheet of paper in return.

I really wonder who came up with this "smart" idea to put a public service on a private island and then charge you a hefty entry fee.....somebody made a deal with somebody.....great business...environmentally friendly too....too bad......I hope not to return soon....wonder why?

We spent 1 night anchored in 8 feet of water, swimming...sunbathing....eating...smoking Havana cigars, etc....all the "fun" stuff that's in the brochure. The snorkeling was great....and the 2 three and a half foot long barracudas that took up residence under the keel "in the shade" were quite intimidating at first but after a while we had enough guts to swim up to them so you could almost touch them.

The next day we left late in the afternoon to cross the Gulf stream at night .....destination? 
"Fort Lauderdale" again...motor...motor...motor..."never motored as much as on this leg"
 

Dolphins...."my brothers"
We are moving......or should I say "non sailing" at about 1.2 knots or less.
Daybreak is here and the morning light is just starting to appear, a few puffy clouds, no wind,
flat flat seas "just like a lake". It has been like this for a while, "quite a few days actually" progress towards our goal "Cape Hatteras" is absolutely minimum.  "Patience is a virtue" is a very practical slogan right now.An hour ago....at the start of my watch I heard the heavy breathing and now with the sun starting to rise I can clearly see the pot of dolphins that are swimming around our boat. Large bottlenose dolphins they are 6 or more feet long, young and old, you can spot the different markings on them.
The strange thing is that they are still here, "they never seem to have an interest in a boat which is not moving through the water".
Usually the faster you go the more fun they have playing at the bow and the longer they stay!.... "no speed no fun"!

                                 The swim ladder is down, my snorkel is pressed firmly in my mouth.
Is this going to work "swimming with the dolphins"?.... last time I tried I ran into a 6 foot shark in South Africa and never saw one. As I lower myself into the water I can see how this Gulf Stream water is absolutely crystal clear. YES..... YES.....YES..... I cannot believe my eyes.....look.... there.....there they are ....near the bow ......I can see a dolphin clearly......and there.....look there is another one coming in from the right.....ooooh this is absolutely fantastic....Oooh NO .......look there are three more "turning around" and swimming straight for me.......now I let go of the swim ladder and swim free of the boat......"let's swim towards the dolphins and see what will happen"......."my brothers" I am coming!........"Ooooh God "....."this is a dream come true"......a lot of beeping and tweeting is going on here......they are still swimming straight towards me.....and so am I....we come closer and closer.....we start to slow down........look at each other......I reach out with my hand and smile inside my diving mask..... I hum and haw through my snorkel......they tweet and beep....one of them starts to swim upside down.....than come within inches of me....turning around they start swimming just ahead of me ..."side by side"..."over and under".....I can see their eyes looking at me it's like they are looking over their shoulders.....their tail flippers are only inches away from my out stretched hands......."this is unreal".......I cannot believe this...."I am swimming with the dolphins in the big open see".....""my dream come true".

The rest of the crew followed.....we rigged a rope off the bow of the boat " to hang on to"....our swimming with the dolphins rope! We all spent hours swimming and playing with our "new found friends".
Hanging on to the rope ....."while suspended underwater".....and pushing off from the bow of the boat..... I hold myself forward of the boat with nothing but a clear underwater world ahead of me......deep clear blue water. ...."the bow is dolphin territory" The whole pot was present and I find myself being surrounded by more than 15 dolphins .......it felt like I had become part of their world "one of them" ....almost!
The dolphins crisscross in front and below me.....high and deep....I am surprised as to "how skittish they are".....truly a wild and curious animal.......I started to recognize some of them because they all looked distinctively different............sometimes a dolphin would swim straight for me at high speed and turn just inches away from me and then playfully turn and spin around.....I could see the young ones and their mothers.....the obvious granddaddy of the pot.....the lean and eager ones......the more curious than other ones.....they would pinch each others tail as they swam in perfect formation......I could see battle scars on their bodies....some would look straight at me....one dolphin pooped right in front of me......I took pictures....others leaped in and out of the water....and dolphins would swim in formation with "me" off the bow of the boat...."skipper turned dolphin".....Ooooh what a gift....what a pleasure....I stayed in the water for as long as I could ..."playing"....until I was freezing cold....not wanting to leave "my brothers" behind.

Sailed a 100,000 miles to experience this......finally......after all this time......this was better than I ever could have dreamed of. Thanks creator...thank you soooo much.....it's good to be alive....thank you!
"Whales are next I hope!"
 

The green flash "These are the perfect conditions for a green flash" Bob says while looking at the horizon where the bright sun is setting. First gently touching and then it starts to sink quickly into the sea! Just as we see the upper limb disappear below the horizon we actually see the ......"green flash" This is the first time in all my years of offshore sailing that I see this for real.......I must have looked for that hundreds of times, never seen it...... always heard about it....read about it....but never seen it.....even started to doubt it actually existed and here it was .....I clearly saw it...... and so did the rest of the crew....it does exist!

June 13  Wednesday wind NNE 8kn of wind clause hauled boat speed 4.5...5kn "Brrrrrrrrr it's cold and foggy here" We left the warm waters behind at Cape Hatteras.....no more warm gulf stream water with flying fish, now we are sailing in gray cold waters with limited visibility.....no more fruit flies...."I think they froze to death"......now warm soup sounds like a great idea for lunch. Getting to and around Cape Hatteras was not easy. We struggled with many calms and then strong headwinds At one point we sailed into very large seas with breakers, these had built with contrary winds going against the the Gulf Stream. Sailed for 2 days and night and made no more than 20 miles towards the Cape....."a lot of discomfort and work for almost nothing". The calms also have had their challenges.....so far we have motored for 78 hours....."ridiculous". That is more motor hours than we have done in the last 7 legs.  "I hate polluting the ocean and air this way".

June 18
New York Manhattan anchored between pier 62 an 63

"Is that okay with you?...it's $ 4 per foot per night" is what the voice on the telephone ask's me......I do a quick calculation in my head....that means 1 night in the marina would cost us $ 168.00.
"Is that the best rate you can give us...do you have any weekly rates" I ask.....a dumb question of course!...needles to say we decided to rather spent that money on some nice dinners and "fun in the City"...wouldn't you?

So here we are.....anchored.....apparently illegally.....what do we know?......(because we come from afar and are Canadian flagged the local powers to be decided to give us a break for a few days...great!!..."Thank you for your hospitality").
We are in Chelsea between two piers....a prime spot downtown...very New York like with pier 62 party's going every night till 6am....."this is after all the City that never sleeps"......I don't think I'll hang here for long .

En route to New York we stopped in Manasquan....a nice little seaside town!
This was after another 3 days of wind on the nose....rain....cold....fog...and very sloppy seas we were very happy to pull in .....to hide out, dry out and regroup.
The Shrimp box restaurant offered us free moorage if we would come for dinner.....that was a deal of course! .....also a very refreshing attitude ..."thank you"....we spent 2 nights here, waiting out the weather...finally the wind shifted to the S and we where finally off to New York city.