Bahamas enroute to Turks and Caicos

Posted on February 9, 2019 by Dave

We’re off again!

We left Melbourne FL, stopped for a day in Ft Pierce, sailed the coast past Miami, then 56 hours later we anchored at Highbourne Cay in the Exumas. I’ll bet that trip is an unofficial record in the sailing world!

We are slowing making our way toward the Turks and Caicos Islands where we will plan our trip to Panama.

Ready to leave, full of fuel and food:

Everything packed away:

Nice to be underway. ICW between Melbourne and Ft Pierce:

Leaving Ft Pierce. This is a cargo ship taken by ICE which will now serve as an artificial reef near Ft Pierce. The ship had 2000 bricks of cocaine on board.

Leaving Ft Pierce:

Nice to be underway…

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Underway!

Posted on February 6, 2019 by Dave

…we’re underway again! Update during our next pause…

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Splash

Posted on January 26, 2019 by Dave

We’re back in the water!

We have a ton of work to do before our departure so I’m just posting a few pics for now. Click the pictures for full screen.

We launched Thursday, and since nobody was launching Wednesday afternoon, they put us in the slings early. They lifted us a few inches so we could paint the bottom of the keel:

I’m thankful the paint had several hours to dry because launch day was a mess. A weather front came through, lightning, thunder, driving rain, cold…very nice day. I arrived early and made last minute preparations for our 0900 launch.

And just like our haul out a few months prior…at 1030 we were moving!

The rain was tapering off but it was still wet, cold, and windy, which I assume is why the three people that volunteered to help me didn’t show up! LOL! Fortunately Dave the yard manager and his assistant are exceptional and helped me get my lines tied off.

Our Simrad chart plotter finally quit so we replaced it with a B&G Zeus 3 and WOW! We have only just begun to use it but so far it is amazing! …and it’s touch screen!

…six days…

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Closer and Closer

Posted on January 20, 2019 by Dave

The boat is really coming along nicely!

We’re putting on the final touches in preparation for departure.

Click on the pictures for full screen view.

New lettering:

As mentioned previously, we applied three coats of Awlgrip Oyster white on the topsides and Aristo blue on the water line. The paint finish is better than we ever hoped for, I love Awlgrip. We also raised the last ten feet of water line several inches, that came out almost perfect as well.

We finished the bottom paint…AAAgain! We sanded the previous “last bottom job we are ever doing” down to the barrier coat and applied three coats of Petit Ultima SR60 ™. Petit Ultima has been the best performing bottom paint we have used.

We sent the propeller and shaft out to be gold plated, because burning money is fun. Actually the gold is the sun reflecting off the Propspeed ™ antifouling…which is almost as expensive as gold… New zincs too:

The hull, is ready to go back in the water!!! …which is good because we are launching on the 24th!

More to follow~!

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Provisioning

Posted on December 14, 2018 by Dave

Between Amazon and Walmart Pickup, provisioning is a breeze!

We just picked up our order from Walmart and everything went well. I don’t think we can go back to traditional grocery shopping. We placed a huge order two days ago, chose a late morning pick up for today, arrived at the store, they brought out our order, we left…it was soooo easy!

Normally, after a big shopping trip we are left emotionally scarred but today we laughed the entire trip home!!

Pick a spot and let them know you’re there:

They bring out your order:

All packed up. Because our order was so large we inventoried while they brought out other orders. We had one small error which they corrected very quickly. Not bad at all considering we had over 400 items!!

Done!!

All we need now is our fresh food!

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