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Happy New Year!

Hey friends!

Wow..another whole year. Another crazy year. So much has changed in these last few months but let’s start at the very beginning…it’s a very good place to start.

     In January, mom and dad were thinking about possibly looking at boats, then possibly sailing for a couple of years, and then possibly homeschooling. And come February, we were looking at catamarans in freezing snow and ice. And by March, we had a boat. A beautiful 37 foot catamaran. All of April and most of May were a blur of cleaning and selling most everything along with tackling school, swim, and cello. And on May 20, 2017, we became boaters. Moved out of the house and headed up to Sheboygan to start our new life on the boat. But here’s the thing. That was May 20, school ended June 6. So for a couple of weeks we drove an hour and a half to get to school and an hour and a half back. How fun. But hey come June 6, I graduated eighth grade -yay!

      Now, this is when the craziest, most fun filled summer of my life began. It all started with a trip up to Quetico to paddle the Boundary Waters with Venture Crew. I loved every minute of that trek and got to spend so much time with so many amazing people. Two days after I got home we started the drive to the Poconos to spend a week with cousins. Always love seeing those goofs so as you can imagine, I had a blast. After that week came to an end we headed to the east coast to visit old Girl Scout troops and my happy place, Grammie’s beach. Had an action packed few weeks there seeing some of my closest friends, cousins again, and family. Phew haha that was a lot but oh man the adventure hasn’t even begun.

      We headed back up to Racine, Wisconsin, -where our boat spent the summer- and had about a week at home….for the first time in forever. We had a nice time to relax for a lil bit and Sally, dad, and I got to see the one and only Jimmy Buffett at Wrigley so woohoo! Aaaand then, another week in the Boundary Waters spent with family.

      After quite a bit of traveling, we settled down back in Racine and took daily sailing lessons to prepare for the upcoming years. We had lots of fun meeting many characters we will remember forever and sailing is almost always fun. It’s always exciting when it involves the police coming after us and multiple turtles or capsized 420’s right? Haha oh boy I could go on forever but fast forward to October. October 9 we left. Let the adventure begin! As most of you probably know we successfully made it down all of the rivers with only a couple tows and engine break downs…

      We spent Thanksgiving in Florida with grandparents, cousins, and lots of Florida sunshine. We all have so much to be thankful for! Dad and I also attended the Hurricane Benefit Concert starring Jimmy Buffett, Toby Keith, Kenny Chesney, Jake Owen, and Caroline Jones. Super fun night filled with amazing music. One to remember forever.
We are happily spending the holiday season in Florida with grandparents. What a way to end the year. I hope that y’all have had amazing years filled with love, joy, and happiness. Wish for nothing but the best for the new year. May your days be filled with love and luck. Fair winds and following seas friends. 🍀❤️

Happy New Year!
Heidi 🎉

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Happy Holidays

A post by Mark
Hi all,

I started writing this about a week ago – I think on Christmas Eve – finally getting around to finishing it… we’ve been busy (all good stuff).  Here goes…

Merry Christmas from Naples FL. While our original plan was to be in the Bahamas for Christmas, we are very happy to be in Naples – visiting with Oma and Opa (Julie’s parents) and Grammie (my mother). We arrived around the 15th – its been nice to have a home-base for a while. We have been really fortunate – Jerry and Janet Belle (friends of my in-laws) have been super generous and have let us keep our boat on the dock in front of thier house. We can’t thank them enough!

Over the past two weeks, I’ve been able to get a lot of jobs done around the boat.  I rebuilt the fresh-water system – so now its working better than it ever has!  I also rebuilt a few winches and completed a few other small projects.  Its much easier getting things done when you have regular access to a car!  We also got to enjoy time at the pool, Willie had fun at the neighborhood dog park, and we all have had a good time.

Until about 3 pm today, we through we were leaving for Key West tomorrow – but at 3, we got the updated weather forecast for the Keys – not good.  Big wind (25 to 35 kts) and waves (up to 7′) forecasted for next Mon to Wed.  Also, the forecasters are saying that it won’t be safe to head from the Keys to the Bahamas until next weekend (at the earliest). So, while we could leave tomorrow (Sunday) and be safely at anchor in the Keys before the weather hits, we figured we’d have more fun here than hunkered down at anchor next week.   We’ll head South once the weather clears…

Wishing you all a Happy New Year –

Mark

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Our First Passage

Hi this is Sally! I am going to tell you about the last two CRAZY days of our very first passage from Mobile to Clearwater. When I say CRAZY, I mean over 25 knot winds, pounding waves one after another, CRAZY. Normally, I don’t get seasick but when you’re trying to sleep and you keep slamming down with the waves it gets really tricky to fall asleep. So after a beautiful day sailing, our first night on passage I was still up at 5 am! Two hours of sleep and a stomachache…

The second day on passage was wavy. I took an hour long nap, ate dinner and cake, and the waves calmed down. Now the interesting and crazy part is:  I get in bed but since I took a nap I’m just not that tired. Then, here comes a big 65 lb Willie jumping on me since I was in my mom’s and dad’s (and Willie’s) room ‘cause the motor was on in my room. BANG, at 10 pm the big waves start coming again. Now my whole room is slamming into the water again, GREAT!  This makes it 10x harder to fall asleep because EVERY SINGLE TIME the boat moves, Willie sticks his head up and whimpers.  That is impossible to ignore and I find myself comforting the dog. 11 pm still trying to fall asleep. Ok I’m asleep now.

The third day on passage, I wake up at the sound of rain. I find a HUGE wet spot under the window right where I’m sleeping. I close the window right away.  Down the hall ahead of me, I also see there’s a leak in the window so water is pouring down. No not the usual rain, waves coming over the boat. I’m about to puke at this point from all the bumps.  Uh oh, I see a bin in the TOILET which the top had somehow managed to come off and stuff was everywhere.  So, a toenail clipper is floating in the toilet and on top of that I can’t get gloves (theres a possibility that tools can crush me from the cabinet that the gloves are in!). First things first… waves are pouring on me so I get a bucket for the leak “Theres a leak in the boat!” I yell. Luckily, the bucket solves the problem for now.  Back to the toenail clippers… before I grab them I tell Lucy “ get the hand sanitizer ready!” Total GROSSNESS. I already am very seasick so I head outside (that normally makes me feel better).  Next thing I know, I’m fast asleep. I wake up. Go back to sleep. I can’t believe my watch— it’s already 12pm! I read I little then Heidi, Lucy, and I watch Just Add Magic. We’re all still getting used to passages…

Bye for now,

Sally

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Should I have been wearing a helmet?

A post by Mark

The other day – I witnessed a relatively rare astronomical event (I think).

It was the end of our 3 1/2 day passage – around an hour or two after sunset.  We were about 2 or 3 hours from the marina in Clearwater Beach – the end was finally in sight.  I’m at the helm – cruising on auto pilot and just scanning the water for stuff – mainly, other boats – as there were no other obstructions in our path.  I take a quick look at the instruments, look up – and out of the corner of my eye, I see a bright green flare landing in the water.  Quickly, I scan the horizon to see where it came from.  I’m about to turn the boat towards it – thinking I’m going to assist in some sort of rescue.  I can’t find anything, so I call down to Julie to come up and to help me scan the water as well.  I was shocked to see the flare – as I hadn’t seen anything in the water anywhere near where it landed.  After 10 minutes searching with our spotlight, we see nothing and conclude I must have just been seeing things – especially since all marine flares are either red or orange.  I guess the lack of sleep was getting to me.

After another 10 minutes or so, I finally convince myself that I was seeing things.  Just then, the Coast Guard transmits the following over the radio:
‘This is Coast Guard station St. Petersburg – Notice to all mariners along the Florida coast from Key West to Pensacola.  Please be advised that there is meteorite activity in the area, and all mariners are advised to use caution.’

Holy cow – I think I just saw a meteorite hit the Gulf – and not too far from us.  Pretty cool.   Ranks pretty high on the list of things I didn’t expect to on this trip.

As a side note – we had a pretty good chuckle about the Coast Guard advisory…  Exactly how does one use caution to avoid a meteorite?  Do we just duck? Wear helmets?  What exactly are we supposed to do?  Plus – they were about 20 minutes too late.  Chances are we won’t have to worry about this again.

Until next time…

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On the Road Again

A post by Mark
Hi all –
It has been a while since I wrote – I’ll catch you up with the latest.
Last I wrote, we had just gotten to Mobile.  Interesting part of that day… on the way towards the marina, we hear the following on the radio “Catamaran leaving the Mobile River, this is the US Navy – Over”.  Yikes…. Way on the horizon, we see a big grey mass.  Turns out, its a Navy ship on the way into the river.  After a quick conversation, we agree with the US Navy that we’d go to the right side of the channel – staying clear of the ship.  Here’s what we saw going passing by…   It was pretty cool.

So, we ended up in Mobile much longer than we planned…  In Mobile, we needed to get the mast put back-up on our boat.  We thought we were scheduled to have it installed a day or two after we arrived.  Turns out, we weren’t scheduled until 6 days later.  The delay is especially bad because we wanted to be in Naples FL the weekend before Thanksgiving to spend the week with Julie’s parents, my mom, and Julie’s sister and kids (aka – the cousins).  During the delay, we did a bunch of small jobs on the boat – the biggest of which was to try to get the fresh water in our tanks tasting better.  By the end of the trip down the river, our water tasted downright bad!  This job seemed relatively straightforward – but has turned into an ongoing debacle which is still not fully fixed – as it seems that every time I fix one part, another issue pops up.  Two things are making this particularly challenging… 1) its a boat – and everything is just harder to fix on a boat.  It’s as if the designers try to put the things that break most often in the most difficult places to reach. 2)  We only have access to a car for an hour or two every day or so (sometimes less often).  Oh well – its all part of the adventure! (I need to keep reminding myself of this – especially when I’m in the middle of the job.  As I side note, I think I have created a few new swear words while contorted into ungodly positions on the boat – or at least created unique combinations of the oldies but goodies).

Anyway – back to the story….  Our plan was to get the mast up and pull the boat of the water to change the anodes – pieces of zinc under the boat that protect the engine and propellers from corrosion.  The folks at the marina told us that they could pull boats out up to 22 1/2 feet wide – which is good – since we are 22 ft 2” wide.  Turns out, they can only pull boats 22’ wide, which we found out when we got stuck pulling the boat into the lift bay.  Ugh….  Time for plan B (note – after a few tries, we’re now on plan D or E – we are fixed for now).
After we got the mast up and sails on the boat, we tied it up good and rented a car and headed to Naples.  We spent a good week in Naples – it was really nice to see everybody and relax for a few days (or try – sometimes – as it was a sometimes hard to relax knowing that there was still a bunch of work to do on the boat 10 hrs away).  Thanks to everybody for a good visit!
As Heidi mentioned in her post, she and I drove to Tallahassee for a day to see the Jimmy Buffett / Kenny Chesney / Toby Kieth / Jake Owens Hurricane Relief concert.  It was pretty cool – a lot of fun seeing all these together in various combinations.
In Naples, we ordered a satellite hotspot for our boat – a device that will allow us to get weather on passage and turns our phone into a satellite phone.  It was supposed to ship overnight – so it should have gotten to our boat by Monday – or Tuesday the latest.  It showed up Friday – further extending our stay in Mobile.   On Saturday, we finally left Mobile.
We headed out towards Naples – which is a 4-day passage.  We knew this was an ambitious goal – but we planned our path so that we’d be pretty close to shore and could head in to one of several ports along the way if we wanted to shorten our journey.
The girls are writing about the passage in depth – but here’s the synopsis… it was a bit rough.
The first day was nice and calm – as forecasted – until about midnight – when the wind and waves decided to kick-up.  It calmed down again in the morning – and again,  got really windy and wavy around 11 PM.  It also shifted – bringing us parallel to the Florida peninsula (instead of towards it like we wanted to). In the morning, we decided to head upwind towards shore – which added extra time to the journey.  We also lost one of our engines.  About this time, we decide to head to Clearwater FL instead of all the way to Naples.  We arrived in Clearwater around 10 PM – tired, but in one piece.  The next morning, we learned that our engine issue was just a line wrapped around our prop – so it was an easy fix.  The past few days, I fixed a few minor things that broke on the passage and spent way too much time trying to get our fresh water system fixed (still no luck – I’m going to have to replace the entire system when we get to Naples – ugh).  We’re in Clearwater for another few days while we wait for some storms to roll through.   Then – off to Naples.
I’ll try to be better about writing more regularly…
Until then –
Mark