Our plans to play in the Buckskin Mountains on the southern Utah/northern Arizona border fizzled when, just a few days prior to departure, its 10-day weather forecast read like a broken record: rain-rain-rain-rain-rain. Plan B was Las Vegas and I was not very excited about it. Red Rocks Canyon, a [...]
Read More"We haven't seen a winter like this in over twenty years." Our next-door neighbors Forest and Gina didn't grow up in Wyoming, but they've been here long enough to be considered "natives". So when they tell us that this is just about the worst and longest Wyoming winter they've lived [...]
Read More
Passage Weather: winds from N/NE 5-10 knots, waves 1-2 feet Pocket Grib: winds 5-10, waves 1-2 feet NOAA: winds 5 knots from N, waves 2 feet Chris Parker: Go for it Our weather apps, the government, and even the cruiser’s weather god himself, Chris Parker, have given their blessing for the next day’s crossing of the Gulf Stream. Even though […]
The sun sets, pink and pissed behind us as we motor out of the Lake Worth inlet leaving West Palm Beach behind. We head south almost immediately, hugging the coast; the Gulf Stream runs quite close to Florida in these parts and we want to steer clear of it. Wondering about the Gulf Stream? It’s this crazy current that runs around/through the […]
There are only a few things worth drinking to at ten o’clock in the morning. For example: 1. Completing an epic offshore sail (one, small Dosarita then nap time) 2. Hair of the dog (maybe, if it’s a Bloody Mary) 3. The engagement of your dearest friends. This morning, we drink to number three! A most heart-felt santé (cheers) to Tom […]
We were hoping to jump off at Fort Pierce and sail down to Miami but the weather offshore is nasty. So instead of staying at our Fort Pierce anchorage for who-knows how many more days waiting for a better weather window to head offshore, we take off down the ICW. We are antsy to head further south and to finally […]
We’ve been at it for three months. What are we actually doing?
We’ve heard talk of this place from the very beginning of our journey. Velcro Beach: a mythical land where hot showers never run cold, trash is easy to dispose of, buses run frequently and are easily accessible; locals stop on the side of the road to offer you a ride to the grocery store and wine flows from the drinking fountains between the […]
Gone are the days of the soft, electronic chime of my iPhone gently waking me for the day; my new alarm clock is gritty, mechanical, and loud: it’s the windlass. And right now it’s grinding and whirring as it spins, collecting our anchor chain: it’s time to go. Stéphane cannot wait to test out Super Mark and it’s time to […]
We are up early on Thanksgiving morning, pulling anchor, hailing the drawbridge to confirm their 7am opening, and hailing the St. Augustine Marina to secure a spot on their dock for fuel and pump-out. Fully fueled and pumped-out, we make our way down the ICW for Daytona Beach and our new autopilot – Mark 2.0, or Super Mark: he is […]
We’ve heard stories of people taking a bus ten miles to a Walmart, buying food and supplies for many months, having to catch a cab back then shlepping bag upon bag of groceries from street to dock to dinghy to boat. That’s a lot going on. So when we found the St. Augustine Town Dock – free for a day […]
Stéphane and I have been told if there’s one place in Florida worth seeing it’s St. Augustine. And after spending a week in Jacksonville, a place definitely not worth seeing (but thank you very much for the free dock), we felt we owed it to ourselves and to Florida to explore one of its more authentic, historic towns. We arrived in […]
Since we are only headed a short ways south of Jacksonville, we take this stretch on the Intracoastal. Destination: St. Augustine. The Intracoastal Waterway (or ICW) runs from Norfolk, VA to Key West, Florida. And then there’s another section of it that runs along the Gulf Coast. The plus to taking the ICW is that you can avoid sailing out in the […]
Our laptop is cured! So, here’s a photo catch-up: less words, more photos.
Still waiting on laptop to be fixed so no pics for this post (boo! We all know pictures are more fun than a bunch of words)… Alas, here we go: I awaken to the mechanical groan of our windlass as it winds our anchor chain up and out of the water and into Free Range’s anchor locker. It’s early but […]
After sailing most of the morning along the ICW, we motored the last ten minutes to Cumberland Island, GA and the most beautiful, peaceful anchorage yet. This place, it’s like a ghost story waiting to happen. Live oaks, twisted and gnarled, shaggy in their Spanish moss, loom ominous over narrow tracts of sandy beach. Plenty of space to maneuver and […]
We check the weather. We check it again. We check it on multiple websites and apps to be sure. We REALLY want to sail on this next passage! The weather calls for wind 15-20 knots, seas 4-7 feet for several days. This means we can sail! We wait until ten o’clock in the morning to leave Charleston so we can […]
Charleston is an historic, unique, funky, fun town – at least the part of that was in walking distance for us. From our anchorage, a three-minute dinghy ride got us to the dinghy dock and then a mile walk to the Charleston downtown and groceries, hardware store, library, etc. A lot of the streets are cobblestone and the homes […]
Sarah Logemann, my very best good friend from middle and high school (and twenties and thirties and onwards), came to visit Stephane and I in Charleston with her awesome husband Adam and their three super fun and frisky children Laurel, Addison, and Henry. I haven’t seen Sarah and Adam in probably ten years! Their daughter Laurel was the first baby […]
We stopped at the Bridge Tender Marina in Wrightsville Beach around eight o’clock in the morning and filled up our diesel and gasoline (for the dinghy) and topped off our water tanks. On the way over we hailed the marina to tell them we’d be there in five minutes. Oops! It took more like twenty…everything looks so close together on […]
It’s been a relaxing week in Wrightsville Beach; a nice change of pace from the non-stop work/projects of the last six weeks. Although we are still working on minor projects, our new focus is on weather (our first question when we meet fellow cruisers: where do you get your weather?), navigation, logistics, and anchorages (i.e., where is the best place […]
This past week in Wrightsville Beach has been our first experience with how cruisers interact with each other. Here’s how it works: you get in your dinghy and you motor over to your neighbor’s sailboat and you call out or knock on the hull if they aren’t outside. And then you’re like, “Hey, neighbor! We’re in that boat over there! […]
Explore Beaufort = check Meet fellow cruisers = check Spend a sleepless night at anchor because of the crazy current = check Good weather window = check So, we’re ready to take off for our first night passage from Beaufort to Wrightsville Beach. We plan to be under weigh by 5pm so we start prepping the boat at four o’clock […]
Im writing from the North Atlantic Ocean!!! A few thoughts on our first night passage. It is 5:30am, I took the first shift from 8 till midnight, Sara took the wheel from midnight til 4:30 am and now I’m back on. We looked for a night that wasn’t too windy to do this passage so that it would be easier. […]
Oriental has been our home for six weeks. Tomorrow we leave. Six weeks ago when we started our sailboat search, we had only heard of Oriental because of some boats we’d seen listed online. We had no idea that Oriental was “the sailing capitol of North Carolina” nor did we know that of all the places we could have […]
This evening we bid our last tie to land adieu: The Rogue is ours no longer. A nice, young, North Carolinian couple bought The Rogue-ster and I hope she does as good for them as she did for me. Knowing we would be without wheels from here on after, we made last-minute trips to the grocery store for more provisioning. […]
His eyes shoot open at 3am because his brain is wide awake speaking to him of all the projects that are yet unfinished. So his brain drives his body out of bed and into action. As I lay dreaming in our warm, cozy v-berth, Stephane works away on this project and that project, trying to keep quiet so as not to wake […]
After roasting in the cockpit on more than one occasion, we thought it best to get a bimini made. A bimini is like an umbrella on steroids: it shades you from the sun but it is mounted to some major metal which, in turn, is mounted to the boat so it’s super sturdy. I don’t have a good “after” photo but […]
After several curdled milks and some iffy dinners (Me: “you sure that’s still good?” Stephane: “I can eat it first. If it’s bad, we’ll know within ten minutes or so.”), we decided to pull out the Tropikool refrigeration cooling system and get a different/new one. Before installing our new refrigeration unit, we decided we needed to decrease the space in […]
Dan drove down from Suffolk this past weekend to hang out with us on Free Range. So fun to have my little brother as our first overnight guest! I cleaned out the quarter berth (which was good because was fast becoming “the junk drawer” of the sailboat) and got it ready for Dan. We worked on projects until Dan got in […]
We took the afternoon off and drove to New Bern, NC- about 30 minutes away. New Bern was founded by a Swiss family (thus “new” Bern – Bern being the capitol of Switzerland). New Bern’s flag is just like Bern’s flag – red/yellow with the “Swiss bear” on it. We checked out “Hurricane Jack’s” marine consignment (still searching for […]
The Grizz (Winnebago View - active duty)
1,800 miles and counting
The Hungry hippo (Popup camper - retired)
1,200 miles
The Gruffalo (Tow behind camper - retired):
12,000 miles and counting
The Baby Bison (Tow behind toy hauler - retired):
7000+ miles
Maine > New Mexico + adventures in between
The Great White Buffalo (5th wheel camper - retired):
3,000 miles
Free Range (Slocum 37 sailboat - resting; getting overhauled in Nova Scotia):
Traveled 2,400 nautical miles from Oriental, NC > Antigua (end of the road).