This cruising season proved very different for Phillip and me. For our first nine years cruising, when we headed out for offshore voyages, Phillip and I, aboard Plaintiff’s Rest, had always left out of our home port of Pensacola, FL and either shot straight across the Gulf of Mexico down to the Keys (or straight … Read more Our First Time Cruising Down the East Coast (NC to FL): Top 3 Lessons Learned
The thought gutted me. I felt a thick, black goo filling me from the inside as my throat tightened and I blinked back tears. Immediately when the word was first spoken to me … “totaled” … all I could see in my mind was her holding on, her bucking and groaning against the dock that … Read more Our Niagara’s New Adventure – Elle est Vivante!
Time. It’s slipping. No, it’s skittering, skyrocketing away. Whatever new warp speed we have found ourselves in—be it a product of COVID, today’s information-overload era, the rapidity of global change, or just age (I’m almost forty)—it has told Phillip and I one thing: If the world can change entirely tomorrow, it matters more than ever … Read more Plaintiff’s Rest Overhaul – The Short List
I can’t tell you how many times Phillip and I have left Palafox Marina, whether it was headed out to our favorite anchorage, Ft. McRee, or just for a day sail, or sometimes to shoot all the way out into the Gulf and head south to the Keys, Cuba, the Bahamas, or beyond. There was … Read more Leaving Palafox Marina … Maybe Forever
When the Tuesday 4 pm forecast hits, the heart of every boat owner in Pensacola thumps to a lurch. What had previously forecast as a minor hurricane poised to make landfall on the Louisiana-Mississippi border, 150 miles to the west of us, is no more. For whatever reason, the forecast is, unfortunately and unprecedentedly wrong. It is now clear we … Read more Ch. 2: Sally Wreaks Her Savagery, in the Dark
It never ceases to amaze me how easy it is to take the privileges and good fortune we have for granted. While the fact that travel, dining out, attending concerts, plays, or other fun events, even meeting up with friends, old and new, for happy hour are no longer options for the foreseeable future, never have … Read more Our Corona Crusade: Sailing Home While the World Locked Down In Our Wake!
Phillip and I will both eagerly, happily, readily admit it: We are 100% fair-weather sailors on our boat. While there are definitely longer, more intense passages we still want to make in our lifetime—sailing around Cape Horn, for example, sailing in the Indian Ocean, we’ve even thought about doing a leg of the Clipper Race—we probably … Read more Ever Been On a Sail You Just Want to End?
It’s not just a rubber transport, it’s more of a magic carpet. Looking at the photos from our time at Devil’s-Hoffman in the Berry Islands, Bahamas, I felt inspired to share a little about … the magic of a dinghy ride. For those who haven’t yet bought a boat, or haven’t yet set off on an … Read more The Magic of a Dinghy Ride
I would have never thought I would use the word “inundated” when describing the Berry Islands, but unfortunately, one of them is. Have any of you seen Coco Cay? Formerly Little Stirrup Island, the island was purchased by Carnival Cruise Lines and turned into just that: a carnival. We’ll get there. Thankfully, many of the … Read more Back to the Berries: Our Most Isolated and Inundated Stops
“What was one of the scariest moments of your Bahamas trip?” a fellow cruiser asked us the other night during our first post-Bahamas reunion. Ironically, he had asked Phillip first while I was in the restroom, so he got to ask me separately and it was quite interesting for Phillip and I to see how … Read more Auto Turn Notto: What Almost Prevented Our Bahamas Departure