As we’ve passed our 5-year anniversary of moving aboard XYZZY, our blog publishing is finally
resuming, but this time as a cruising blog, rather than a building-a-boat
blog! As you can surmise, from the long
gap in posts, living aboard and cruising has certainly kept us occupied and
we’ve enjoyed every minute of it! (Well,
OK, not every minute…certainly not the hundreds of minutes spent in the
port engine compartment-it is too tiny to qualify as an engine “room”). Do we still like the live-aboard life? Will
we keep living on a boat and wandering the world?
The answer is an unqualified “Yes”-at least for now.
When we moved aboard, in February of 2015, we
made a pact that, if either one of us wanted out (or “off”, to be more precise),
we would stop and go back to being landlubbers.
So far, there has only been one time when this bridge came close to
being crossed, and that was directly related to the hundreds/thousands of minutes spent
with that port engine, but thankfully we seem to have worked around that
problem.
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| XYZZY on the ICW |
So what have we been doing in the five plus years since our
last blog post?
Well, we did get to the Bahamas that first winter after our launch (2015),
and cruised the ICW (Intracoastal Waterway) up and down the US East coast for
two more years after that, each time spending the summer in the Northeast and wintering in the Bahamas or the FL Keys.
During the summer of 2016 we got as far north as Kittery, ME and were so
astounded at the raw beauty of northern New England, that the following year we
got an early start going north and were able to spend almost three months
exploring Penobscot Bay before being chased south again.
After two years of the somewhat predictable stops
along the ICW, the exciting tingle of exploring new places and faces struck
again and we fell in love with Maine!
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| The Atlantic ICW Route |
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| A Serene Maine Sunset |
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| XYZZY in the New England Fog |
2018 found us traveling back to the Bahamas for the winter,
but this time with a different purpose in mind: after a fantastic Atlantis
Christmas with both sons’ families and Dennis’ mom, we raced through the central
Bahamas down to Georgetown, our ultimate destination that winter being the
Virgin Islands.
In Georgetown, Exuma, we
met a group of other cruisers intending to head south, formed a Facebook group, and
started learning about the "thorny path"-basically, island hopping down through
the Bahamas to Turks and Caicos, and then on to the Dominican Republic, Puerto
Rico, and the US and British Virgin Islands.
The Thorny Path earned its well-deserved name because it involves
heading straight into the prevailing east-to-west winds, as you progress from
island to island, not the most comfortable point of sail (see photo below)! A cruiser's bible of the same name by inveterate sailor Bruce VanSant appears on every boat's bookshelf by this point in their adventures.
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| Atlantis - Paradise Island, Bahamas |
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| Island Hopping Route through the Caribbean |
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| Why the Thorny Path is 'thorny" |
As we chatted,
provisioned, learned, and enjoyed Georgetown, we kept an eye out for a weather window
to cross the Turks Passage and get to Providenciales. It should be noted here that
Georgetown is AKA “Chicken Harbor” because many cruisers make it that
far, and then either stop and hang out for months, turn around or sell their boats! It is about as far
as one can go without committing to overnight passages, and of course, the aforementioned Thorny Path. Our chance to jump came fairly quickly, and we beat feet to the
Turtle Cove Marina in Provo, capital of the Turks & Caicos.
The next stop would be the Dominican Republic, but the
weather gods would make certain we spent sufficient time (nearly three weeks)
getting to know the Turks and Caicos first!
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| Passage to Turks & Caicos |
Other boats from our Georgetown enclave had traveled with us on
our first leg, and we jointly compared thoughts on our next move to the DR, intending to leave as a group when the weather looked good.
Our goal was to get to Samana, DR, far enough
down the east coast of the island that the next hop to Puerto Rico would be
relatively smooth.
We all arrived in
Samana, DR within a day of each other, and enjoyed the fabulous resort marina there
while we planned our jump across the infamous Mona Passage to reach Puerto
Rico.
As happens with cruisers with
like-minded itineraries, we formed some very tight friendships, which I knew from past experience, would last even as we all eventually went our separate
ways.
The Mona Passage crossing was thankfully uneventful and we were able to arrive in Puerto Real on the western shore of
Puerto Rico after less than a week in Samana. We began to travel along the
southern coast of Puerto Rico, enjoying new cultures and experiences along the
way. Only one more island hop to get to the US Virgin Islands!
To prepare for that passage, we stopped in Puerto Del Rey
Marina, located in Fajardo, on the Puerto Rican eastern coast, to provision and tend to
some boat repairs. Here we ran into
Terry and Amy, friends we’d first met on our way down the ICW the
previous fall-they just appeared out of the blue in a slip two docks over! (I know I should be over being so surprised
when this happens, but it amazes me every time-this meeting people by chance we
last saw hundreds or thousands of miles away!)
At this point, early April of 2019, we had already spent three months tiptoeing to the brink of the Virgin Islands. How on earth would we have time to see any of the VIs
and still get back to the US East Coast by June 15th, our insurance
hurricane season cutoff date?? We were beginning to despair of our plan to see the Caribbean. However, one of
the cruiser friends we’d met in Turks had put a thought in our mind: why go all the
way back to the States, only to come back and do it again the next year?? Why not just keep going? He had hauled his
boat out right here in Puerto Rico two years earlier, and it had done very well,
even though “IrMaria” (hurricanes Irma + Maria) chose that summer to blast through.
Hmmm….it was starting to sound like a good idea! It would give us additional time to
explore the Virgin Islands this year, and post-hurricane season we’d be able to
start up where we left off, and continue further down the Caribbean island
chain. Who could argue with that logic?
So we revised our insurance for a plan that would approve a
summer layover in Puerto Rico, made a
haulout date of June 15th with the marina, and sailed east to enjoy ten
additional weeks wandering through the US and British VIs. Our friends Amy & Terry came to the same
conclusion, so we knew we’d be seeing more of them as well!
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| Terry & Amy on World at Bay |
Returning to Puerto Rico in early June, we had
XYZZY hauled out and consigned to the
care of a local caretaker, who would watch over her and take appropriate
action, in the event of a storm during the summer.
But now...we were essentially homeless!
What would we do all summer, until it was
time to come back in October and continue our Caribbean adventure?
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| XYZZY tucked away for the summer |
Our plan: We decided to road-trip our way around the Eastern
US, going to many of the places we’d only seen from the water, visiting friends
and family along the way. And we added a life-long bucket list item: three
weeks in Italy!
Off we went, to live out
of backpacks and Space Bags for the next five months while our boat waited
patiently for us in the blistering Puerto Rican sun.
We did have a wonderful summer, sometimes staying with
friends or family, and gaining Platinum Status on Hotels.com and Hilton Honors,
the Hertz President’s Circle, and many points with American Express.
We spent time in Rome, Florence and Venice, and even met new sailing friends at a fabulous hotel in Florence! It was both amazing and exhausting; definitely
worthy of several blog posts all on their own, but by mid-October we were happy
to be back with our boat, ready to continue our trip “down island”.
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| Dessert as an art form |
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| Homemade Limoncello |
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| The canals of Venice |
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| The Venice Seaport |
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| We dared to drive in Italy! |
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| A Sailing Friend in Florence |
We spent the time until New Year’s 2020 in the now familiar
waters of St. Thomas and St. John, and set sail to Sint Maarten (Saint Marten) the second week
of January.
Our plan would be to travel
slowly through the Caribbean Leeward and Windward islands over the winter, along
with Terry & Amy aboard
World at Bay,
getting to know even more amazing people and places!
Stay tuned for PART II!
