We upped anchor at 8:30 AM to make sure no issues with being ready for the 9 AM bridge opening to exit the Simpson Bay lagoon at St Maarten on Sunday June 7, 2020 in the year of the ‘Rona. I was fully mentally ready to jump in the water and get to work if the anchor was stuck or something. Missing the opening would set us back until at least 2 PM and have some implications with the weather planning I had done. Plus there was another boat exiting we had communicated with to stay in radio contact during …
Author: zdunc
Don’t Take the Typical Exumas Route-A Tale of Two Bahamas
Tale 1: Two years back we left the US for the Bahamas with a plan of seeing the Exumas of which we had heard so much. Like many cruisers, we had plans of going at least to George Town, had read our Van Sant book, and had our route in mind from studying our Explorer Charts. We picked our crossing window and after a few days made it over to New Providence Island like most guidance says. Sure, a lot of people say to skip over the Nassau area or New Providence all together, but the typical Exumas route is …
More Boat Work – Final Bahamas Prep Projects in Jacksonville
After all the boat work we did in our couple months in Annapolis, you’d think we’d be all caught up. Right? Wrong. Boat work is a constant. The harsh salt water environment we are in 24/7 insures that. The fact that our boat and diesel engine are 39 years old doesn’t help. Previous owners surely have done a lot of maintenance in the past, but they seem to be masters at maintaining the easy to reach, easy to see things. The harder it is to see and get to, the more likely it has never been touched. So, one task …
A Tale of Two ICWs
If you’ve been following along with us here on the blog or watching our YouTube channel, you know that we took the slowest approach to going north on the Atlantic ICW possible. This past spring we stopped at virtually every city or cool anchorage along the way north. We saw so many awesome places while meandering up the ditch with zero passages on the outside in the ocean from the Florida Keys all the way to Norfolk, VA. We did it that way because….well because the purpose of the trip was to see a bunch of places we hadn’t seen …
Boat Work – Pre Season Projects in the Chesapeake
With a couple of idle months until the end of hurricane season, it was time for us to do our annual maintenance-a-palooza on Holiday. We had been watching the usual increase of leaks of various fluids from various sources, and aging parts were glaring at us from the running rigging, to the engine, to the sails, to even a thruhull in the bathroom. There were some upgrades and improvements to make boat life better, and, of course, there was the regular preventative maintenance of the onboard systems to take care of. Our fourth big refit was to occur at the …
Hurricane Season in the Chesapeake Bay
Check out these maps and the info below to get more insight into our Youtube videos of our 3 and a half months cruising the Chesapeake Bay. It was our first time going into the area by boat, it was hurricane season, and we didn’t really know what to expect. We were there from July 1st to just past the middle of October. Well, after most of our cruising being in Florida, specifically the Keys and the west coast, some Bahamas, and then the ICW, I can tell you that I never knew just how limited my anchoring choices per …
Places, Stories, and Thoughts of the Atlantic ICW Catfish Point, NC to Norfolk, VA (Mile Zero! Final ICW stats!)
June 24-June 26, 2018 3 days. 103 days since start. 83 nautical miles. 1138 total since start. Catfish Point to Elizabeth City 39 nautical miles. 1094 since start. 9 hours mostly sailing The theme of our passages as we finished the previous blog post was the big water areas of the ICW and Outer Banks where we could sail and also where we needed to watch the weather more carefully. This leg would conclude those areas as we did the second half of the huge Alligator River and then crossed the Albemarle Sound (the next largest body of water after …
Places, Stories, and Thoughts of the Atlantic ICW Mile Hammock Bay, NC to Catfish Point on the Alligator River, NC
June 12-June 23, 2018 12 days. 100 days since start. 182 nautical miles. 1055 total since start. Mile Hammock Bay to Beaufort, NC 37 nautical miles. 910 since start. 7 hours motoring Recall from the previous post that Mile Hammock Bay is smack dab in the middle of Marine Corps base Camp Lejeune. We stopped here because it was a nice protected anchorage around our typical 35 nautical mile distance from the previous stop. We also stopped here because it allowed us an early morning start to go through the live-fire training section of the base that the ICW goes …