Five months went by really fast.

We had planned to stay in Florida for a full year at least, but as soon as it started getting really hot, we got itchy feet and started thinking about heading North again.

Over our 5 months in Florida we worked, Tristan played Little League Baseball and had a fantastic time, and Trixie won over the hearts of all of the other liveaboards. We quickly became well known in the marina for having some awesome kids. The kids made some money selling drawings on the boardwalk, and made some friends with the couple other boat families that were in our marina for a time.

Tristan was on the Marlins little league team with a great group of boys. He looked so handsome in his uniform and he improved so much throughout the season. For a kid who hadn’t touched a baseball glove or bat in over 2 years he had some catching up to do, but he did great. By the end of the season he had a couple of hits, 2 scored runs, 1 RBI which started a rally for his team, had made an out by catching a fly ball and was the most team spirited kid on the team.

Trixie road her bike all around the marina, mastered starting and stopping by herself, but has yet to master the back-peddle brakes on her bike, her sneaker toes are much flatter now. She devoured books and started learning how to read. She can now sound out most 3-letter words and some longer ones. She tells everyone who asks that she’s in 1st grade (who needs kindergarten anyway?).

Ben was working 50 hours a week at the restaurant on the marina property. I also worked there a couple nights a week doing prep in the kitchen.

As Tristan’s baseball season started to wrap up (his team ended up at the bottom of the league…) Ben brought up the idea of heading North for the Summer. The heat was starting to intensify, and we worried about surviving (comfortably) the summer in Florida on a mooring without AC. We briefly talked about heading to Rhode Island for the summer, but finally settled on Solomons, MD. We called up the marina where our old marina manager from Beaufort, SC had moved, and they had a couple slips open for the summer. The best part – they have a pool. We booked our slip and started making plans for our departure from Stuart.

We had the boat bottom cleaned, looked for a weather window, and took off for 3.5 days offshore after not really moving the boat for 5 months. Part of us wondered if we were ready for a long offshore trip after being stationary for so long, but the trip went off really well. As usual, we motored way more than we hoped (and planned for).

Origionally the weather window looked as if we could possibly make it all the way to the mouth of the Chesapeake in one go. We had a friend sending us weather offshore, and as weather does, it changed. The wind we were supposed to have only lasted through the first day. We had a beautiful 6 hours of sailing in the gulf stream, before the wind died and we had to motor for the next 48 hours. The biggest problem with this was the amount of fuel we had on board. With one fuel tank still out of commission, we left Stuart with 60 gallons of diesel. At the end of the 48 hours of motoring, we had about 10 gallons left, and over a hundred miles to Beaufort, NC.

We decided we simply HAD to sail. With not much wind, and all of it behind us, we pulled out the spinnaker we hadn’t used in almost a year. After sorting it out, we got it up and flying and turned off the motor. We lost some speed, but at least we weren’t burning diesel. Around midnight the wind started to pick up, and I knew it was time to douse the spinnaker. This is a skill we haven’t quite mastered, and we almost had to cut it away and loose it into the ocean. We were able to wrestle it to the deck and shoved it unceremoniously into its turtle bag. It was not a fun experience.

With the motor on again, we kept chugging through the gulf-stream, hoping the wind would hold through the morning when we could put up some sails again. We didn’t want to try to put up sails in the dark, and we don’t sail directly down wind well anyway. I ended up taking the full night watch, getting to see the full lunar eclipse, and passing through a couple lines of squalls. I had to close up the companionway for the first time in a very long time with the boards to keep the rain from getting down below at one point.

Once the sun came up we were able to get the sails back up and turn off the engine to conserve our fuel for the motor into Beaufort. At this point there was no chance of going around Hatteras so we knew we were bailing at Beaufort, plus we really needed fuel. We were able to sail all day that last day, all the way to the entrance channel to Beaufort. We stopped only to fuel up and then headed up the ICW. We ended doing our fastest transit of this section of the ICW (the only section we have now done 6 times) completing it in basically 2 days. We did some of the ICW at night for the first time ever, and its something I don’t think we will do again. We went from south of the Pungo-River canal all the way to the Virginia Cut lock in one day, tying up to the free dock at midnight.

After sleeping in a bit the next morning, we continued on our way North and made it about 1/2 way to Solomons. We got quite a bit of awesome sailing in, some at only 1.5 knots of speed, but it was a calm, beautiful day. We arrive at our new marina the next day around 8pm and executed our first ever backing into a slip, and it went so smoothly!

We had arrived at our new home….for now.

We have made it all the way down to FL, and chosen a ‘home for now’ in Stuart, FL. We are at Sunset Bay Marina on a mooring and settling into our new community. The marina is aptly named as the Sunsets here are fabulous!

We arrived here just before Christmas, and had a great 3rd Christmas aboard. The kids got all sorts of new fun things, a baby bathtub and water-proof baby doll for Trixie, a solar powered robot that can be built 13 different ways for Tristan, and both of them got new swings to fly from the halyards on. We also got a few new family games that we have all enjoyed playing repeatedly!

Our buddy boat ‘Mug Up’ stopped to visit us for the Christmas holiday. We traveled all the way from Annapolis, MD to Cumberland Island, GA with Mug Up, spent Halloween, Thanksgiving and Christmas with them, and we were so happy to see them again before they headed over to the Bahamas for the season.

The kids are well known in the marina, and we have heard many comments about how well behaved they are, and adorable too of course!

Tristan is starting baseball soon with the local little league, he is on the ‘Marlins’ team and very excited to play again after 2 full years off.

Trixie makes friends basically everywhere she goes, she is outgoing and friendly and walks right up to kids of any age and introduces herself. She has made a couple of younger friends here at the marina (kids who visit frequently but don’t live here) and at the local playgrounds too.

The kids are still living their best life, sailing friends’ sailing dinghy, making friends with another boat owners puppy, dying their hair crazy colors, seeing turtles swim by our boat, drawing, swinging from halyards, and climbing trees. There is a great climbing tree at a local playground and even Ben has climbed it (to rescue a stuck disc).

Ben got a job at the swanky restaurant on the marina grounds, ‘Sailors Return’ and has already impressed management, of course. We plan to be here for awhile while we refill the cruising kitty and do some boat projects too. The marina is a great place for live-a-boards, they have bikes available to borrow, a 3x weekly bus that goes to all the stores one might need (grocery store, hardware store, boating store, etc.), events for boaters (movie nights, happy hours, trivia…) and we have already met so many wonderful people.

You know what’s fun? Smelling diesel on your boat and not being able to figure out where it coming from.

Did we spill a little when filling the tanks last? Did we forget to throw away the cloth we used to clean up after filling? Or is there a leak somewhere?

If you guessed #3 you would (unfortunately) be correct.

After a couple days of smelling diesel, and not being able to find the smell (we looked in all the regular places) we finally found it. In retrospect I’m not sure why we didn’t find it sooner, because it was in one of the places you would expect – the bilge under the diesel tanks.

It would seem our port diesel tank has sprung a leak somewhere. Looking for the leak is basically pointless, as we can only access about 10% of the tank walls, but we still did try to find it with a creative set up of headlamps and mirrors. It didn’t work.

Finding the leak wouldn’t have really helped us solve the situation anyway, but humans are curious creatures and we really wanted to know WHY there was diesel leaking into our bilge.

The reason (we think) is that the port tank, which is a vintage 1983 model, had finally rusted itself a hole. We were told this happened with our starboard tank in the past, which is why the starboard one is a newer fiberglass model. In the back of our minds we knew we might have to deal with this someday, but part of boat ownership is hoping that someday isn’t today.

When then went through the cycle of our typical doomsday thought pattern that associates most issues we find with the boat. We start at the reasonable thought that abandoning ship is the best option, transition to ‘we must find a yard to haul out and fix this now no matter the cost’, then we flip flop to the equally reasonable ‘if we just ignore it, it will go away, right?’, slide back up to ‘maybe we can ignore it until we get to xyz place, then we can worry about fixing it’ and finally settle on ‘we can fix this ourselves, lets get to it,’ typically accompanied by a big sigh and a healthy round of Googling what other people have done in this situation.

When we finally arrived at the realization that we had to deal with this now, we then had to figure out A) how to open and empty the tank and B) where to put 40 gallons of diesel. (Of course the tank was full, we had JUST filled it.)

With the help of our buddy boat(Mug Up), we were able to acquire 4 empty jerry cans (2 of ours, after emptying them into our other solid tank, and 2 from Mug Up, after they emptied their into their tanks). Mug Up also had an awesome diesel transfer pump they lent us, and after removing the 12 bolts and 3 hose connections from the top, we took our first look ever at the inside our diesel tank. The borrowed pump made quick work of filling the 4 jerry cans with 20 gallons of the diesel.

A trip back over to Mug Up took care of 17 of those gallons, and then a stop at the other (previously unmet) boat in the anchorage(Noos 2) took the last 3 from that round. Our new Canadian friends on Noos 2 were able to take an additional 5 gallons from the next round of pumping, which after filling our jerry cans again left us with just 2 gallons in the tank, which we later emptied into a brand new jerry can purchased at West Marine later that day.

Crisis averted, no abandon ship necessary!

However, now (with our 2 new 5 gallon jerry cans) we only can carry 60 gallons of diesel, instead of the 90 that we could previously carry (two 40 gallon tanks and two 5 gallon jerry cans). This greatly reduces our range under motor, but it will have to do for now. Removing and replacing the diesel tank is a job that can not be done underway, and we aren’t sure when we will get the chance to do it. Someday – but not today.

We have been in the Bahamas for a month and a half now! We crossed over on November 28th and have done a lot of exploring since.

We started in the Abacos, and were there for 3 weeks. We saw lots of sea life (turtles, sharks, jellyfish, lots of fish, lobsters) and spent some time with kid boats we knew from the US. We did lots of snorkeling, and helped some friends with some hurricane Dorian debris sorting. The Abacos are recoving from Dorian, but there is still a lot to be done. We loved Hope Town, which has recovered pretty well, although the lighthouse isn’t open for visitors yet.

Right before Chrisitmas we crossed the the Berry Islands, and spent a full week hiding from the wind in a great little anchorage we found. While it was open to the West, there were miles of shallow banks that helped tamper the swell. We did drag anchor on Christams morning, with 25 knots from the west, but our trusty Rocna caught us again before we reached the rocky cliffs behind us. Once daylight broke, we moved farther away from the rocks and held fine for the rest of our time there.

Hoffmans Cay, where we spendt Christmas, was one of our favorite places. We visited 5 different beautiful beaches, had 2 bonfires with other kid boats, swam in the blue hole a couple times, and saw lots of turtles!

We moved South before New Years, but didn’t like any of the anchorages in the South Berries for the New Years Blow, so we crossed to Andros Island on Dec 30th. We hadn’t planned on visited Andros, but we are glad we did. Its the largest island in the Bahamas, with land mass larger than all the other island combined! Its bordered on the East side by the 3rd largest Barrier Reef in the world, and is the location of the only freh water river in the Bahamas. Andros has copious amounts of fresh water, and we added 40 gallons to our stash, even though our 1 gallon per hourr water maker has been keeping up with us just fine.

We explored Captain Morgans Cave, and looked for lost Pirate Treasure, and got a tour of North Andros from a lovely local named Lillian. She drove us around for a full day, taking us to the Blue Hole National Park, the Seminole Indian settlement, a cute seaside resturaunt called Sammy’s, and the grocery store. After a week at Morgans Bluff we moved down to Fresh Creek, about 1/2 way down Andros, and tucked inside the reef.

At Fresh Creek we visited the Androsian Batik factory, and all got new Bahamian shirts made right there. We also snorkeled the reef, and played on a gorgeous beach.

We cross to the Exumas after a few days at Fresh Creek and stationed ourselves at Allan’s Cay for a full week. The anchorage was well protected, except for all the other boats that seemed to anchor way too close to us, in a fairly large and empty anchorage. The way the currents work in this cut, boats swing in all directions, and we had to ask a few people to move to avoid possible collisions.

Our last day there we met a lovely couple on Amalia of London, and leared that they were the creators of No Foreign Land. For those of you not familiar, No Foreign Land is a website designed for tracking boats. If you want to follow us on our journey go to noforiegnland.com and create an account, then you can look up our boat and follow us. There is a new story feature that I plan to utilize that will let me put pictures and notes about the places we visit.

We are now anchored South of Norman’s Cay in the Exumas, and plan to head to the Land and Sea park for the next few days. I was in this area 26 years ago on Whisper, and I’m excited to revisit some of the places we went. We will be out of internet range while we are in the park, as it is about 40 miles ofo unihabited islands.

We left the Chesapeake and headed down the ICW on Nov 2nd.  We had a package to pick up on the way out, and with the 20 knot winds, ended up in a sticky situation trying to get out of the marina.

After recruiting help from the marina staff, we were able to pull out into the wind and head down the ICW.  We made it to the top of the Dismal Swamp and anchored outside the first lock. 

The next day we went through the Dismal Swamp, and remembered why it wasn’t our favorite, despite how pretty it is.  We ‘bumped’ at least 20 submerged items, and scrapped one over hanging branch on our way through.  The over-head branch broke our wind direction and speed instrument on the top of our mast.

Up the mast I went to check it out, and of course it was broken beyond repair, so we ordered a new one to be sent to Beaufort, NC for us to pick up on our way through.

Three days later we arrived in Beaufort, NC around 2pm and picked up our new instrument.  We hoisted Tristan up the mast to install it, and he did a great job.

Then, as the wind was favorable for only a couple more days, we headed offshore, spending only 2 hours in Beaufort, NC.

As we exited to the Atlantic Ocean, the sun set and darkness set in.  After a quick dinner of Annie’s Mac n Cheese, the crew all went to bed and I stayed up for the first watch. 

Around 10pm the wind picked up a bit, and Ben came up to help me raise the main sail, with a single reef.  We prevented it out to Port and shut the engine off.  We were sailing!

We sailed through the night, with slightly rolly seas, but great wind directly behind us.  We averaged about 5 knots with the single reef in the Main. 

It was our first sail through the night without the engine on, a milestone I have been anticipating for a long time! 

We sailed all through the next day as well, and were visited by a pod of Dolphins right before sun-set.  They played in our bow wake for over 1/2 and hour, and there was a tiny baby dolphin that was super cute!

I hadn’t slept well the night before, so Ben opted to take the first watch and I headed to bed around 7pm. 

Of course there can only be so much of a good thing, and around 8:30pm our luck ran out. 

We were still downwind, with the main reefed and prevented out to Port, when a squall hit out of nowhere and our 15 knots of wind directly behind us became 27 knots of wind on our Port beam. 

With the sail all the way out to Port, and prevented, the wind change strained the preventer hard.  I turned the engine on, and as I was strapping on my harness to head upstairs to help, the preventer snapped and the sail and boom crashed Starboard. Then the wind switched back to behind us and the boom crashed back to Port.

We jumped into action, I pulled in the main sheet, as Ben turned us up into the wind.  Then I took the wheel while he went forward, harnessed in, to drop the main sail.

The squall was over very quickly, but as we no longer had a usable preventer, we didn’t want to leave the sail out, and we were nervous about another squall hitting.

We turned back downwind, which felt much calmer with the wind behind us, and we motored through the night.  We had planned to rig a new preventer in the morning and sail through the day.

As morning broke, we looked at the weather again, and decided to tuck into the ICW at Charleston, SC.  As we had no desire to stop in Charleston, we just started down the ICW and made it all the way to Beaufort SC.

We stopped for the night anchored just outside our old marina, Lady’s Island Marina, where we spent 5 months last winter.  We planned to get in, anchor, go to shore and shower and use the car to do a grocery run, then head down the ICW more the next day.

Just as we got the dinghy in the water, it started to rain, and our plans got all wet.  After some discussion, we decided to take a full day off in Beaufort, do showers, laundry, a big grocery stock up while we had access to a car, and take the kids the the playground across the bridge they we used to go to.

We got all the chores done, said hi to some people we knew, and then picked up anchor and went through the Lady’s Island Bridge, that we had walked and driven across, but never passed in our boat.  There is a free public dock on the other side, right in front of the playground, so we tied up for an hour to let the kids play.

The playground had been completely revamped since we were last here, and it was awesome!  The kids had a ball running around, investigating all the new equipment.  They were the only kids on the playground wearing masks, but they are both really good about keeping them on.  We were also the only adults wearing our masks, a blatant sign that we were back in the South, where cases are skyrocketing, and most people don’t seem to want to try to prevent catching it by wearing a mask.

After an hour on the dock, we left to anchor, as the dock is day use only.  We then continued down the ICW the next day, and have anchored in the Florida  Passage in Georgia.  Tomorrow we head to Jekyll Island to pick up some more packages, and then onto Cumberland Island where we plan to spend a day or two exploring. 

We have had quite the summer!

We left SC in mid-May with brand new batteries and a determination the skip the ICW on the way back North.

A mishap that was perhaps a blessing in disguise, changed that plan only 1 day into the trip, and we ended up entering the ICW in the same place we left it on the way South. The Cape Fear river.

I say it may have been a blessing, even though it was scary and mentally exhausting due to the weather we avoided by ducking into the ICW when we did. We also were able to grow and learn as a family and as a crossing couple. Our beloved home still bears some of the marks of our incident, but we are all safe and that is what matters most.

It took us a little over a month to make it back to Maine, and we were so happy to be home again! We spent a few weeks in Portland before heading for the mid coast.

Long story short, we ended up giving up our summer morning and cruising Penobscot Bay for the summer instead, meeting a slew of kid boats along the way and changing our plans many times.

We are now headed south again, with the Bahamas as our destination this year. There are kid boat aplenty who are also headed there and we can’t wait for the crystal blue waters, Sandy beaches, and COVID free boat flotillas with friends all around!

We are currently in the Chesapeake, actually exploring this year, instead of just passing through like we did last year! We plan to be here for the rest of the month of October before continuing the journey South toward warmer waters!