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Pictures and reflections - West Plana Cay

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After we spent a week waiting out a storm on Mayaguana, we sailed to West Plana Cay.  After being a little under-whelmed by Mayaguana, West Plana was beautiful and wild and adventurous.  There are no regular human inhabitants, but there was evidence that humans come intermittently - there are several deserted lean to's and shelters that show ongoing human use.  There were also several ship-wrecks, including a commercial fishing boat. The island also has a large population of goats, and a local on another island told us that this is why people go there regularly - to hunt the goats.  He explained that putting a herd of animals on an island was much more convenient than trying to create a fenced-in pasture for livestock on a bigger island.   People also go there for the intermittent harvest of cascarilla bark (used to flavor Campari and vermouth). This island had an AMAZING beach - broad with pristine coarse white sand.  It sloped up to a natural berm, and after climbing that, yo
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Pictures and reflections - starting with Mayaguana.

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As we sit in social isolation, we are trying to spend some time going through our pictures.  Our goal is to post pictures from the last 2 months (when we had no data), or good pictures that we missed in the past.   These pictures are from Mayaguana, a small outer-island of the Bahamas, with about 200 people living there.  People there are mainly fisher-people, and the coral reefs are struggling likely due to all the human activity.  Despite that, the water was an exquisite blue and so very clear. We spent 6 days in Mayaguana waiting out a nasty storm.  We used our very shallow draft to anchor in just 3 feet of water, very close to shore, but still had so much bouncing and rocking as the wind gusted into the 40's.   These photos are of the day before the storm started - it was very calm, and we snorkeled the reef closest to our anchorage: Getting ready to snorkel.  I posted this one because of the amazing clarity of the water and the fact that the ocean disappears beautifu
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Pants! and all the other tribulations of coming home (by Annie)

Hello all!  We arrived in the U.S. on April 4 th , and now (one week later) we are almost home.  We expect to be in Madison by tonight. This morning, we had to put on long pants for the first time in a VERY long time.   One of the unexpected consequences of ending our journey early was that we didn’t quite get the endless summer we had hoped for.   We left Madison last June, had some fall weather in October and November, but then throughout the entire winter experienced another summer in the Caribbean.   We thought we would get back to Madison just in time to usher in the next summer.   Alas!   We have returned during the spring and now will have to dig out pants, coats, gloves, etc.   No one will notice our tans now! Weather aside, our trip has ended with quite a bang.   Some of you know that we ended up <basically> fleeing the Bahamas.   Initially the country seemed like a safe place to hide out – no early cases of COVID, lots of uninhabited islands, etc.   But as t
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We are in Florida

Hello all, We arrived safely in Florida yesterday.  We are so thankful to have left the Bahamas before they completely closed their borders.  Again, will do other trip updates soon.
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Another quick update... coming home early

Hello from the Bahamas! As many of you might know, we have decided to cut our trip short and will be back in the USA within a week or so, and back to Wisconsin by May.  We would love to sit out all this chaos on the boat, especially since it provides a natural social barrier, but we don't want to be stranded in a foreign country, and I feel the need to jump back in and help as much as possible. We will have to delay our homecoming party (it was going to be epic) but look forward to seeing some of you in small safe settings.  As soon as we have good data speeds and connectivity, we will do a giant photo update and also write about some of our best and zaniest recent adventures (including shark encounters, sunken planes, and being chased by six police boats at once - yes, six!). Our love to all. 
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quick update

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Hello friends and family! As of about one week ago, we have been in the Dominican Republic.  It is a very different world here than Puerto Rico.  It is definitely a developing country, with the predominant mode of transportation being motorcycles, no chain supermarkets, just "colmados" by the side of the road, and cheap but incredibly tasty chicken/beans/rice for sale at small nameless stands everywhere.  We did an overnight passage as a family to get here - Jack is writing a post about that so more later. While sailing here, the DR government is very strict about where we can go.  But for the last two days, we were at Haitises national Park.  This is perhaps the most spectacular place we have been to so far.  It is rumored to be where Jurassic Park was filmed.  There is a huge cave system there, and we visited three of them.  Absolutely breathtaking. We basically have little to no phone, and very little internet here.  Email remains the best way to reach us at present. More
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Changes, again. By Annie

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Changes, again. We are seven months into one year of travelling.  Whew!  This has been a lot of travelling, although different from normal travel insofar as we travel with our house now, and don't have to pack for each new destination.  After sailing/moving nearly every day between June 2019, and November 2019, once we all made it to the Caribbean, we just wanted to stay in one place for awhile.  We spent about six weeks in Culebra, which we all regarded as our home away from home for that time.  This was interspersed with two one-week trips to St. John (including stops at St. Thomas on the way there and back each time).  This was followed by three weeks in Vieques.  During this time, we also had FOUR week-long visits from various family members - Rogge's mother, my sister and her family, Rogge's father and step-mom, and my mother.  Lots of fun to see family and catch up. As of last week, we are on the mainland of Puerto Rico, moving along the southern coast.  We are m
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