We began our trip in September 1994, taking Little Gidding from Lake Ontario, through the New York State barge canals, and down the Hudson River to the Big Apple. We sailed the New Jersey and Delaware coasts to Chesapeake Bay and then followed the Intracoastal Waterway to Florida. In our first year out we took the "thorny path" from the Bahamas to the eastern Caribbean, ending up in Venezuela. We spent another year cruising the island chain, returning to Venezuela for a second hurricane season. From there we sailed west to the Dutch ABC islands, Colombia, and Panama. We cruised the western Caribbean for two years, spending a hurricane season in Guatemala’s Rio Dulce.

Returning to North America in the summer of 1998, we bounced back and forth between the Chesapeake (summers) and the Bahamas, Cuba, and Mexico (winters) for another couple of years. In December 2000, we did a direct shot from North Carolina to St. Maarten in the Caribbean and worked our way back to Trinidad, where we spent the 2001 hurricane season. In 2002, we returned to the Bahamas via the Venezuelan offshore islands and the Virgin Islands, and then headed back to Florida and Chesapeake Bay for the summer. We continued to cruise the US eastern seaboard, the Bahamas, and Cuba. Two winters ago, we did another tour of the northwestern Caribbean, departing from Florida and travelling to Cuba, the Bay Islands of Honduras, Guatemala, Belize, and Mexico. After spending last winter in the Bahamas, we took Little Gidding all the way back to chilly Lake Ontario, where we'll be based for the summer.

Our future cruising plans are about as solid as butter in the tropical sun. We'll point the bow south again this fall and see which way the wind blows us. Every once and a while David threatens his west coast relatives with the prospect that we’ll go through the canal and end up in the Pacific northwest.