After a ten year hiatus on land (Five years in San Jose, Ca and five years in Austin, TX) we moved back onto the water! Logan and I picked up a few crew – Tucker (8), Lucy (6) and Charlie (5) and moved aboard S/V Tideye, a Leopard 42 sailing catamaran. The past few months in Charleston have been spent outfitting and boat and prepping for ourselves for some adventure and now we are ready to set sail!
Here is our new blog: Tideye.com
It’s official. Stella Blue has been passed on to her next captain. It was a lot of work and a little emotional, but we couldn’t be happier or more excited for all of the adventures she will see with Ed.
If our original plan had been to circumnavigate the Bermuda Triangle in a year, WE DID IT!!! Even though this wasn’t the route that we thought we would take, as we approached the dock at Charlotte Harbor Boat Storage we couldn’t have felt any prouder. We left this same boat yard last year on March 18th. 5,384 nautical miles and 440 days later we returned – WOOHOO!!!
It wasn’t the last sail – for us OR for Stella Blue – but something funny happened while we were in Marathon. All of a sudden the reality of where we were and what was about to happen became tangible. Only four more nights sleeping in our beautiful floating home?! Hauling Stella Blue out of the water and putting her on the hard for hurricane season?! Living as landlubbers in the US?!?!?! What on earth is going on here? Not yet…let’s go SAILING! So we dropped the ball in Boot Key Harbor, Marathon and set out on a 24 hour sail to Ft. Myers Beach. There really isn’t such a thing as an uneventful passage – we dodged squalls, performed engine maintenance underway, and sailed the heck out of our kick ass boat.
After a year of failure, we finally landed a beautiful mahi mahi while trolling with a ballyhoo in the gulf stream. On our two day passage from Nassau to Marathon, we decided that if we couldn’t sail then we would turn it into a fishing trip. The forecast was for winds under 10 knots for the entire voyage, and we got that. Two days of motoring turned into two beautiful days at sea and some excellent luck on the rod and reel.
Stella Blue has been tugging at her dock lines. She’s eager to break free from the comforts of a marina and sail out into the open ocean…and so is her crew! We have been waiting for what feels like longer than three weeks for a seemingly impossible weather window to cross that nasty piece of water called the Gulf Stream and make landfall back in the good ol’ US of A. Waiting has finally paid off and we are prepping for a two day sail back to Marathon, FL.
The Mistake: Allowing our toe rail (and other exposed teak on the deck) to go untreated for one year.
The Challenge: Strip every weathered curly piece of old varnish off of the rail, sand until silky smooth, apply oil oil and more oil, and make it through the week without burns and with our fingers and sanity intact.
The Outcome: Have a look at the photo above. Success.
Logan and I are happily typing away on our laptops from the comfort of “Club Pyfrom” this morning. As the regatta wound down in Georgetown last week, we took a look at the weather and decided to hightail it back up to Nassau to visit with our friends Sheree and Richard. This past week was a total whirlwind of our final days in the Exumas highlighted with some sailboat racing and a few spectacular sunsets.
Logan and I were SO excited to share one of our favorite Bahamian spots with our friends Jenny and Taylor that we woke up way before the sun to get Stella Blue all shined up and looking her best. After our buddy Dimitri gave them a proper welcome with a Stella Blue sign at the airport, Elvis Water Taxi delivered our friends across the harbor right to the cockpit! (Princess Ding-a-ling has a lot of heart, but the wind was honking and we thought it might be nice for them to arrive with something dry to wear that week.) We popped open a couple of Kalik beers and got pumped for the next six days of splashing around in Bahamian waters.
Stella Blue is anchored off the beach at Chat N Chill once again. It took us 7 months and ~3000 miles to wind up back here and we keep asking ourselves why we ever left. Fresh conch, neon water, white beaches, and friends in every direction not only make this place oodles of fun, but it also feels like home.