Another real time update

Howdy everyone! As you know, our blog posts are a couple weeks behind real time, so I am popping in to give you a real time update on what we’re up to.

We are docked in Hampton, VA, making our final preparations to go offshore — but we have recently made a change to our winter plans. Instead of heading to the Caribbean this season, we will be heading to the Bahamas. We found out a couple of weeks ago that our insurer would not extend our coverage to the Caribbean, which was a very unexpected surprise. It’s a long story, but we ultimately decided we will ditch our plans to sail to the Caribbean and instead head for the Bahamas, which are already included in the navigational limits for our current insurance policy.

We still plan on leaving with the Salty Dawg Rally, but we have shifted our destination from Antigua to Great Abaco. There are around 20 other boats heading to the Bahamas as part of the rally, and we have also met a bunch of boats (lots with kids!) who are not part of the rally but will also be heading to the Bahamas this season.

The Salty Dawg team has started tracking everyone already; some boats have already left from various starting points, but Oestara is not likely to leave until middle to end of next week, depending on weather. Here are the links to the trackers:

All the Salty Dawg Rally boats, heading to various destinations in the Bahamas and Caribbean: https://forecast.predictwind.com/tracking/rally/sdsa-caribbean-rally-2023/

Just Oestara: https://forecast.predictwind.com/tracking/display/Oestara/

Over the last week or so we’ve been researching the Bahamas and all the places we can go, and we think it’s going to be a pretty neat place to hang out for the winter months. (Did you know there are more than 700 islands in the Bahamas?!) Beautiful clear water, sandy beaches, great diving and snorkeling…we’re pretty stoked.

All of that to say: we are still sailing, still excited, and still bound for warmer waters very soon. We look forward to sharing our Bahamas adventures with all of you!