Hi everyone,

I thought I'd update you on what's going on with us down here. We are presently on the dock in Aruba waiting to head towards Panama and transit the canal. Next stop after that is the Galapagos Islands! Should be very good diving and some great hiking.

Since our web site hasn't been updated (still some computer problems) I figured I should fill you in on where we've been.

After Bermuda, I flew home for 2 months and Bill, Alex, Sergei, and Nick kept going. The US & British Virgin Islands were the next stop. Sergei flew home from the BVI and then it was Bill, Alex, and Nick on to Anguilla, St. Maarten, St. Bart's, Saba, and then Antigua/Barbuda. I rejoined the boat in Antigua in January at the same time that Nick flew home. We had some friends down to visit and then continued to Montseratt, Guadeloupe, Isle Des Saintes, Martinique, St. Lucia, Bequia, Mayreau / Tobago Cays, Grenada, Isla Margarita / Venezuela, Bonaire, and then finally, to Aruba.

Things are going well and no real big weather to speak of. We did have a 30 minute squall off Martinique with 60 knot winds that lasted about a half hour. Died down after that and all has been clear since then. We actually have had to motor sail most of the trip from Venezuela to Aruba. Hopefully, the winds will fill in when we hit the Pacific tradewinds.

Best moment so far: dolphins at night in the bow wake off the coast of Venezuela. I was on watch at around 7 PM and the sea was very calm as we sailed at around 9 knots. I looked off to port and saw a number of green streaks approaching the boat. The phosphoresce was very active that night and everything was glowing green in the water as the dolphins flipped, zoomed and jumped for about 1/2 hour. I got Bill and Alex up and we just watched and whistled to them. They are remarkable creatures and incredible to watch.

We are trying to set up a mailing list so that we can keep in touch with everyone that wants to be updated until we can work out our computer glitches. If you want, you can subscribe to our mailing list and get e-mail updates when we write them. Here's how you do it:

1) send an e-mail to us with the subject line stating "OOB mailing list"

2) on the first line where you start writing text, type:
subscribe outofbounds youremailaddress
so for us to subscribe it would be:
subscribe outofbounds crew@outofbounds.com

3) if you ever want to unsubscribe, just do the same process from #1above down but type:
 unsubscribe outofbounds youremailaddress

Hopefully this should work. If not, try again in about two days. Since we were in SAIL magazine and Soundings in Feb., we have received close to 300 emails. We try and answer them all, but sometimes the e-mail address we reply to is not working. We are getting a lot of "User Unknown" messages when we try to reply to some of you.

Also, when we hit the Pacific, our e-mail service will most likely be delayed by 2 -3 weeks. So don't be worried if you don't hear back from us right away.

All right, that's about all. Thanks to everyone for their advice, comments, and well wishes. We really do appreciate you taking the time to check in on our website.

Cheers,
Jeff for the crew of Out of Bounds
Oranjestad, Aruba
Latitude 12 degrees 31.00 North
Longitude 70 degrees 02.30 West