"Merry Christmas" Spoken in a Queen Elizabeth English Accent

Woke up Christmas Eve at 4:45am unhooked from the dock and off we went.  Leaving officially at 5:54am out of Port Everglade and into the wide open blue.  When I say blue I mean BLUE.  I have never seen water so blue in my life.  It reminds me of my favorite color crayon when I was little, Azul was the color name.  As we were leaving port a cruise ship was entering and we got the feeling of what an ant must feel like every day.

We took our heading at 89 degrees East Northeast and before we new it we could no longer see the skyline of Fort Lauderdale.  Ocean all around, no other ships on the horizon, and our GPS lost its signal.  I suppose it was a good thing that we didn't know how to use the GPS yet and I had done all the navigation mathematically already.  So we kept our heading and adjusted as the winds picked up.  All day we had winds coming from the East Southeast at 6-13 knots.  This made for perfect sailing and we put both sails up almost immediately after the sun came up.  They both stayed up until we reached West End, Bahamas at 5:23pm, right as the sun was going down.

Layla was acting very stressed and anxious so I gave her half a pill the vet gave us to sedate her.  Well she fought so hard all day to stay awake here eyelids were drooping half and inch.  She was out of it the rest of the day, confused and loopy.  Lucy on the other hand took to the rough seas and wanted to be outside in the cockpit all day.  She has this new thing that if any lines are out on the deck that is where she is going to sleep.  As for us, nobody got sick and everyone was exhausted by the time we got to West End.  Throughout the day the GPS picked up a signal again and we figured out how to use that, the chart plotter, and Herbie, our autopilot.  All in all it was a fairly rough ride with 4-6 feet seas.  If we hit a wave wrong you could feel the whole floor beneath your feet "bounce" up.  I had to rearrange a few things in the cabin as they were flying around and falling on the floor.  Other than that I spent the majority of my day making the Bahamas courtesy flag that we will fly while we are in the Bahamas.  I had decided I would just sew all the courtesy flags as each can run $20-40.  I bought a book with all the patterns and enough material for under $100.  When I bought a thimble at Walmart a few days ago the checkout lady said, "WOW! A thimble, I haven't sold one of these in probably 8 years."

As I write the boys are cleaning the salt off the boat and I have the Christmas Brunch Sweedish T-ring rising in the galley.  We will be leaving in a few minutes to find a lone anchorage on a private beach to spend the rest of Christmas and probably the week.  We hope you all enjoy your snowy, cold Christmas while we sip Piña Coladas on the beach!!!