Greetings from Long Island.

We are still in Thompson’s Bay near Salt Pond. Sunday we didn’t leave the boat as we clocked winds at 38 kts making the bay a little too bouncy to be out in the dinghy. We all curled up with good books. Noah finished Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix. The cold front brought the temperature down to 64 overnight, the coldest we’ve seen since arriving in the Bahamas.

By yesterday morning, the wind had calmed to below 20. Checked in on the Cruiseheimers radio net this morning and heard, “Side by Side,” another boat checking in from here say they had a ten year old celebrating a birthday today. I mentioned we had an 8 year old aboard and they called us on the VHF after the net and invited Noah to the birthday party. They were worried that there wouldn’t be many kids to help celebrate, but there turned out to be eleven kids at the party out of the 24 cruising boats anchored here.

Turns out that the crew of Side by Side is from Saratoga Springs, NY. Marc and Angie Johnson with their kids Sabrina and Parker are out cruising on their Manta 42 catamaran. Noah was impressed that Marc was the dentist in a music video by one of his favorite groups, The Zucchinni Brothers. The party was very nice with cake and even ice cream. The kids all went ashore in the afternoon to work on a fort and tree house at the beach.

After dinner, Jill &and Wayne came over to Intuition to play Sequence. Noah was invited to movie night on Side by Side. No one had any trouble falling asleep.

Every morning at 0700, the Bahamas Air Sea Rescue Association (BASRA) has a radio net where they gather weather reports from boats scattered throughout the islands. Yesterday’s report from here was from a boat that was on their way out, so I contacted the coordinator via email and received the instructions for reporting. This morning I reported the weather from here.

We hope to explore beyond the beach here today. There are no cold fronts in the forecast, so we shouldn’t get chased out by the weather right away.