Sailing Miles

Does the mantra ray really want to eat Danny? The huge mantra rays came right past our boat every morning while we were anchored in Manta Ray Bay on the island of Tahuata. https://youtube.com/shorts/JguWEv0J1C8?si=hqhqVe-f_OhmRSZl 

During three weeks at sea, we saw some fun sealife, overcame big challenges, dodged squalls and low-pressure systems, had great sailing days, made new cruiser friends, and enjoyed seeing land again.  Cindy kissed the dirt the first time we went ashore. After sixty days in the Galapagos, they kicked us out. 🤯 No, we didn't do anything wrong, our extended visa expired. We had some neighbors going the same way as we were going.  Oops, is that squall coming our way?  Whee! 3084 nautical miles was a great ocean crossing.

Hello, fellow map nerds. (My people!) We receive many comments from people who are interested in where we are and what we have done. I thought I'd like to put together a general path of our travels, with the hashtag #whereismiles. We may need to do some catching up here, but I wanted to start with the season we're in now. March finished off an amazing three months in the clear waters of the Bahamas. We headed down to the Dominican Republic, and then to Puerto Rico and the Virgin Islands. We left from pretty far north, compared to most cruising boats, but we wanted to top off our diesel tanks before the four-day trip to Samana in the Dominican Republic. ***** The sail was fun, with a good weather window. Our friends on S/V Motu were just ahead of us, so we had a great idea of what to expect.  We fished, cooked in the sun oven, and split the shifts between Steve, Cindy, and I. The nights at sea were star-filled beauty, with no ambient light around us. ****...

What do you do when your spare propane tank runs out before you had a chance to refill the main tank? The stove and oven won't work without propane, so what do we have left? Eating cold canned food? Not quite that bad. We have a microwave, and we also have a plethora of fresh fruits and avocados from the "boat boy" who kayaks to our boat in the mornings and sells us as much fruit as he can talk us into buying. You google "breakfast meals in the microwave" and you end up making banana-avocado-coconut oil "muffins" in the microwave (that turned out more like a banana-avocado souffle) and scrambled eggs in the microwave, something we now remember we used to do on the truck. And of course, green Tabasco and fresh avocado slices for the eggs - to add the green. It looks like it will be leftover spaghetti and canned corn for dinner. A very respectable option, given that we let our main cooking source expire. We have advance reports from cruising friends a st...

https://www.tiktok.com/t/ZTRNEBvE3/?k=1  https://youtube.com/shorts/g9XgLXP_sog?feature=share 

SV Miles had a great sail from Martinique to St Lucia. We saw twenty dolphins, four brown booby birds fishing for over an hour, and caught ten pounds of Sargasso weed on our fishing lure. No fish, though... Now we are enjoying Marigot Bay. Although the climb to the grocery store is about 300 feet gain in only a half-mile.  Of course, if you do the climb, you get to enjoy the view. See Miles? The road was a bit intimidating. When we got to the top, a lady in a food truck asked if we needed something cool to drink. Cindy thought she was a good salesperson. I thought she might call an ambulance.⛰️🚶‍♀️🚶‍♂️🥾 We had sailed the Caribbean some years ago on two of the Windjammer Barefoot fleet. Windjammer went out of business in 2007. Another business, Island Windjammers, connected to the fiercely loyal Windjammer fans.  Sagitta, waiting on a refit, is one of their tall-mast ships. ⛵⛵⛵ Spectacular sunsets are in...