After four nights and five days of sailing we are finally at the Bahamas, in a small marina in Freeport at Grand Bahamas Island. The atmosphere and the surroundings are much like in the US, it is really apparent that we are close to their border and that this is a popular destination for Americans. Since we couldn’t solve our problem with the B2 visa we now have another plan to get ourselves and Xavante into the states. The waiting time for getting an appointment on the American embassy was three months, and we felt that we couldn’t wait so long. After lots of calls to different coast guards in Miami, Key West and Fort Myers we now have a plan, we are letting some friends of ours with green cards sail the boat from Freeport to Fort Lauderdale. So on Wednesday the 20^th of January they will arrive in Freeport and take Xavante across Thursday morning. We, “the original Xavante crew”, will spend one night at a hotel and then take a commercial flight to Fort Lauderdale and meet up with Xavante there. Obviously these regulations has made this trip a bit more complicated than we expected, however the rules must be obeyed despite how silly they seem. In Fort Lauderdale we will continue our sailing and hope to reach Fort Myers approximately three weeks from now, around the 5-7^th of February.

Anyhow, the last couple of days sailing was great. We had some bad weather in the beginning. Heavy rain and strong winds. However, the weather got better and we had some fantastic days of nice winds and sun. We did some fishing and got really lucky! One big Dorado and one Tuna fish! Malin and Elina cooked an explicit dinner.

Finally, all we do know is to wait for the new captain with crew to arrive in Freeport.  Meanwhile, we will clean the boat and make her ready to take on a new crew. We will also try to find some cheap flight tickets to take us across. Hopefully, we will be in the United States next time we update the blog again…





When we left Dominican Republic everything was soaked...




Ove



Our tuna!



tuna sashimi for lunch!



Bengt, with a new hairstyle, swimming



Malin & Elina surfing after the boat



Ove almost got flushed on to the boat



Bengt the slayer



We had grilled tuna with ovenbaked potatoes and a garlic sauce for dinner! Yummy!