The next few days were fun. It was the third time through the Miami area in a few weeks for Amanda, so she had a better idea of where she was going. But this time, she had no plan of heading for the Keys again.

The Bahamas aren’t terribly far to the east of them, but are a little tougher to get to than the map would indicate. The Gulf Stream races up the strait between Florida and the Bahamas, and it moves pretty quickly, so boats making the crossing have to compensate for the current. What’s worse, if the wind is in the wrong direction, mostly northerly, it sets up steep, short seas that are not fun to ride through, especially on a boat as small as the Rag Doll.

Amanda knew from several sources that the accepted way to make the crossing was to get down south of the Miami area, somewhere around Key Biscayne or even farther to the south, and then wait for a day when the winds were favorable. She saw no reason to argue with the accepted wisdom; after all, while she was a pretty experienced boater and sailor, this would be her first real crossing, and the first in the Rag Doll. Plus, it would be the first such crossing for Zack, too.

But when they got down to the south of Miami the weather reports weren’t favorable – northerlies were predicted, the worst wind direction, and they were bringing winter cold with them. There was nothing much they could do but to find a good place to anchor while they waited out the weather. A couple times they found a dock for a few hours so they could get out on land, stretch their legs, and get a meal that hadn’t been cooked in the Rag Doll’s cabin.

However, it wasn’t as if their time was wasted. Although Amanda wanted to get the crossing made since it was something of a challenge for her, she and Zack had plenty of time to spend together without distractions, except for playing with Beffy, who wasn’t a distraction at all.

Finally, after several days, a front came through and brought with it a wind shift, and the promise of favorable winds. “Well, Zack,” she said after listening to the weather report a bit. “I guess that means we can finally get out of here in the morning.”

“I don’t mind sitting here with you,” he told her. “But I have to admit I’m looking forward to seeing what it’s like over there.”

At first light the next morning, they pulled in the anchor, stowed it in its holder, then shook out the Rag Doll’s sails and headed out to sea.

Amanda could be about as sarcastic as anyone else about weather reports. She was of the opinion that the people putting out the forecasts got it right, at least most of the time. But the times they got it wrong were the times it would hit you on the chin.

Even though they were still pretty early, as soon as they got out on the ocean they found the wind direction was considerably different from what had been predicted – it was out of the east, instead of the west, and it was pretty strong, maybe fifteen knots. That meant instead of running more or less downwind, they were going to have to be heading into it. Worse, there were some pretty large waves out there, larger than she was used to, anyway, even on bad days on the Great Lakes.

Given the wind direction, she gave some thought to just turning around and waiting for better conditions, but they’d waited enough as it was. She thought perhaps the waves they were taking were being caused by the shallow waters surrounding Key Biscayne, but as they got farther offshore and into deeper water they were continuing to build.

Still, it wasn’t that bad, and it was what the Rag Doll had been built for, anyway. But still, she asked Zack for his opinion – he was a seaman, after all, even though he still didn’t know much about sailing. “It’s going to be a rough ride,” she told him. “And it’s going to be wet. We can go back and try it again another day, or we can fight it out.”

“It’s your decision to make, but I can take rough,” he said. “Besides, I was getting a little tired of sitting around waiting.”

“OK, we’ll continue on,” she replied. They kept pressing on, battering into the waves, with clouds of spray coming over the bow as it buried itself over and over. The dodger helped deflect most of them, but they were still getting wet despite wearing foul-weather gear.

Several hours out they noticed a banging coming from the bow. Wearing a safety line, Zack crept up to the bow to discover that one of the lines keeping the anchor from banging around had come loose. That meant he had to find some other odds and ends of rope to tie it back into place while the bow was giving him a bronco ride. He received numerous waves in the face while he was doing it, and was completely soaked by the time he got back to the cockpit. “Well, I guess I needed the bath anyway,” he told her as he headed below for some dry clothes.

They were not making good time heading into the heavy seas and the wind, and it took them all day until Bimini, the nearest of the Bahamas, appeared before them; they’d been keeping an eye on their slow approach on the chart plotter. At least the waves died down a bit now that they were out of the Gulf Stream, and the ride settled down. There were still some waves crashing as they approached the channel entrance, which was narrow and hard to pick out. For better control they took the sails down and ran the motor to get in.

Slips in Bimini were expensive, but after the bashing they’d taken all day they decided that it would be best to have a little peace and quiet that night to recover. It turned out that the customs office was close to the marina where they had a slip, so while Zack turned to cleaning up the mess the Rag Doll had gotten into during its battle with the Gulf Stream, Amanda went and signed in. Once they were all legal, neither of them felt much like cooking, so they went to a nearby place and had some dinner in chairs that were not moving.

Bimini was nice, but they wanted to see more of the Bahamas, so after a day to recover they decided to move on to Nassau. Amanda had been pretty sure that considering the distance they weren’t going to be able to get to Nassau without being out overnight, something she’d rarely done, so they left in the late afternoon so they would be well out to sea that night.

Again they found some substantial wind and waves, but at least on their stern this time – the weather forecast they’d heard before leaving Key Biscayne had been right, just a day off. Once they got around South Bimini and onto the shallow water of the Bahamas Banks, the waves even settled down quite a bit and they had a beautiful sail. As the sun crept toward the horizon, they were surrounded by water in every direction without even a hint of land – but the water was emerald green, and very rarely more than ten or twelve feet deep.

They wound up sailing all night, changing off to get them through the small hours. As the sun was coming up they saw Andros Island to the south, and along in the afternoon they pulled into Nassau.

Nassau was interesting, and at the heart of the Bahamas, but they soon tired of the touristy atmosphere, and after a couple days they were on their way again, just going to the next place that seemed interesting.

They stopped at several islands, sometimes just for a night, sometimes for two or three days if the anchorage seemed to be good and there was something to see. They started to get familiar with some of the other boats cruising around the area, and the people on them. A couple of times they were happy to be in a good anchorage when winds of twenty-five or thirty knots were blowing, sometimes with gusts even higher.

The Bahamas in the wintertime proved to not always be the tropical paradise that they had expected – after all, it was winter there, too. Very often strong weather fronts marched through, turning calm bays into roller coasters. Sometimes there were thunderstorms, with strong lightning displays.

But there were nice, warm days, too – never quite downright hot, but pleasant. One such afternoon they were anchored in a tiny bay with no one else around, and Amanda figured she’d never have a better chance to break out the shiny blue micro-bikini she’d been saving for such an occasion. It definitely got Zack’s attention, which was what Amanda had wanted out of it!

While they’d spent plenty of time being intimate with each other ever since Zack had come aboard the Rag Doll, it was hardly all they did to fill their days. The waters of the Bahamas were very clear, and they spent some time snorkeling when the mood hit them. Occasionally they went for short hikes on the low, flat islands, just seeing what there was to see. Once in a while they got into the dinghy with its tiny outboard motor and explored places too shallow for the Rag Doll. And sometimes they just sprawled out in the shade of the Bimini top, letting the breezes blow over them, sometimes talking, sometimes reading, just enjoying being with each other.

Two weeks after leaving Key Biscayne, they were in Georgetown on Exuma Island. The anchorage there wasn’t very good, and every time the wind shifted direction, which was often, they had to move to a new anchorage.

By then the calendar was starting to have an effect on them. They realized they were making a fast pass through the Bahamas, trying to get a taste of everything. However, the clock was also ticking on Zack’s leave, so it was there they decided to head northeast for San Salvador, where Columbus was said to have had his first sighting of the Western Hemisphere, and then start working their way back to the northwest.

Several days later they were in Dunmore Town on the long, narrow Eleuthera Island. The Rag Doll was riding at anchor in the very protected harbor, while Amanda and Zack sat in a small shoreside restaurant shooting the bull with several other cruisers who had their boats in the harbor as well. One thing that had slowly come to impress them was that when they were at such gatherings they were almost always the youngest people there, unless some of the other cruisers had their kids along. Many were much older than them, ranging up into their sixties and seventies.

This wasn’t surprising, once they stopped to think about it – it takes money to go cruising, and Amanda had taken a very determined shortcut to getting both the Rag Doll and the time and money to spend the winter with it. They got very familiar with several of the couples, most of whom they’d run across elsewhere in the Bahamas, such as a couple from Toronto who had sold a successful business to be able to buy a small catamaran and live the life they dreamed of. It made Amanda think a little bit – well, more than a little bit.

“Most of those people have worked for years to be able to do this kind of thing,” she told Zack that evening. “They had the goal to work towards, and were pretty serious about it. Now I grant you I’ve had this goal since I was small, and I took advantage of what I had to be able to do it, but as much as I like this kind of life, I can’t see doing it for the next, oh, fifty years or so.”

“I have to admit that this is something I never even thought about, until I met you,” Zack told her. “And I know that it’s going to be all too soon before I have to wake up and go back to Jacksonville and the Coast Guard. But you’re right, I don’t think I’d be happy doing it the rest of my life, either. I think your idea of working in the summers and going sailing in the winter has a lot of merit, but I can’t help but think that it’s going to get old after a while, too.”

“It probably will,” she agreed. “But there’s time to think of other things to do, too.”

They were sitting there throwing that idea back and forth, not getting much of anywhere with it, when Amanda looked up and saw a familiar sight. “Hey, look!” she cried. “That’s the Moonshadow! That means Adam and Audrey must be here!”

It soon proved that Amanda was right – six weeks after leaving them at Key Largo, it was indeed her friends. He’d heard about the two of them and their adventures and had hoped to meet them.

It was tempting to hop in the dinghy and go out to meet them, but Amanda could see they were busy getting the anchor set, lashing up the sails, and setting up their Bimini top. But when Adam and Audrey got in their own dinghy and headed into shore, Amanda and Zack were there to meet them.

The four of them soon wound up in a little seafront restaurant, talking about their trips and some of the things they had seen along the way. Zack got to hear a lot of stories about Adam and Audrey’s time on the Moonshadow, and the two of them learned a lot about him, too.

Amanda did have one question: “Audrey, have you made any progress in working things out with your kids?”

“Not really,” she replied. “Not long after we left you at Key Largo, I decided to call home, just to be in contact with them over the holidays. Bertie seemed a little more reasonable than he had been the last time I spoke with him, but Josette was little less upset than ever. I was led to believe that I’m still an affront to her idea of propriety.”

“That doesn’t sound much better,” Amanda shook her head.

“It isn’t, really,” Audrey replied. “More and more I am coming to the conclusion that I shall have to just do what I wish to do, and try to ignore them. I must admit that after that rather impulsive wedding of your brother and his girlfriend, Adam and I have given some thought to just doing something similar and presenting Josette and Bertie with a fait accompli.”

“I don’t want to be the one to give you advice,” Amanda said, “since I really don’t know enough about it to be able to make an intelligent suggestion. But I’ve always understood that you should do what you have to do to work out your own happiness.”

“Oh, I agree with you,” Audrey grinned. “On the other hand, when you get to be Adam’s and my ages, the need to marry to preserve a family is much less great than it is at your age. Perhaps we shall just carry on as we are now and not worry much about propriety. If nothing else, it might twist Josette’s tail enough that sooner or later she will have to accept reality.”

“Well, however you do it, I hope it works out for the best for you.”

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