Urbanna, VA The decision has been made and our weather guru has confirmed that we should take the outside route home and should make our Urbanna target sometime Wednesday afternoon/evening.  We have a great crew that are ready to once again begin our watches of four hours on and four hours off.  Sometimes it is difficult to sleep during the day but we find you have to force yourself to take some down time so that you are sharp for your next watch.  Some of us were better at that than others but we got the job done.   Next stop is Urbanna.  We are on our way and we have four nights and five mornings with sunsets and sunrises and many beautiful miles of blue ocean waters. Patiently waiting and watching…….counting down the miles, the hours and praying that with each day the weather will continue to cooperate so that we make our target date home.  And there it is…..the sign I always look for……the Norris Bridge let’s me know we are home.

Stuart, FL  We have two more locks to go before we head into Stuart to pick up fuel.  I have learned more than I ever wanted to know about locks.  Some would raise us 12 feet and others lower us.  Having your lines and fenders ready are paramount.  Turn off the radar….shut down the engines….life jackets on and constant communique with your captain…..that is the life of the deck hand aka Admiral! Next stop is Stuart.  We have a dolphin escort into town as we wait for the fuel dock to open up.  As Jackson Browne would sing…..We were “running on empty” as we guzzled a few gallons of fuel.  After fueling we head under the last of our bridges which we would need to wait for an opening….the Saint Lucie Roosevelt Bascule Bridge.  With Cooper at the helm it could be an interesting pass. Our night would be spent at anchor awaiting an early morning rising for another offshore passage that would take us straight home to Urbanna. Having checked in with C...

Moore Haven, FL  We will leave St. James and begin our trek along the Caloosahatchee River to Lake Okeechobee.  We begin the morning with Cooper and Jaxon having a moment with Barry.  Seems Cooper really needed Barry to listen to him.  Meanwhile I am at the helm while Greg takes the bridle off the anchor and we begin our long day.  This is Greg’s happy spot……enjoying being behind the wheel and being on the water.  Navigation on the rivers and lakes is quite different than ocean cruising with bridges, locks and shallow waters. The next 60 plus miles would be spent watching height boards at each bridge. Through our last lock of the day, we decided to tie up for the night in Moore Haven and take the boys for a stroll.  The storms have been hit or miss all day and it is good to settle in for a night of sleep before heading offshore in Stuart. Jaxon has been waiting all day for his birthday celebration.  We all sang as he looked at us like we had lost ...

  Saint James City, FL A day off and we have a few items to attend to in town.  Our first item was to clean up a bit from the days out on the ocean.  As luck would have it I found that even though I had no fishing tackle on board, the fish were flying in.  Now if I only could bring myself to really fish aboard….somehow Jaxon and Cooper are enough to handle…..fishing will be off the dock of the bay or waiting as we did here for one to jump aboard.   Next we would work on our dinghy deployment.  Our dinghy is a Rigid boat with a 30 HP outboard.  Needless to say we need a crane to lift it off the upper deck and lower it to the water.  With Greg at the controls and three of us supervising it is bound to be flawless.  We had two on the upper deck and two on the lower deck making sure this went off without incident.  A thing of beauty.  Splash it went and with the turn of the key Greg had fun giving it a test drive.  With the dinghy ...

  Kemah, TX to Saint James City, FL We pushed away from Robert and Carolyn’s dock Thursday at approximately 10:40 am. All systems were working perfectly and our plan was to pick up fuel and anchor at the Teacup anchorage in Galveston.  Picking up fuel was an easy maneuver and settled my concerns about how to handle this vessel in tight quarters. Our first attempt at anchoring proved to be just as easy and we were soon enjoying a few moments contemplating the past month and everything that had transpired to make this happen.  It was a great start. We were off by 9 am to head out the mouth of Galveston Bay and begin our trek of 750 miles across the Gulf of Mexico. With paperwork awaiting some notarizing of our signatures in Florida, we aim for Saint James City and the Coconut Cabana. Our dear friends Parker and Liz would be arranging a notary for us and we could anchor in San Carlos Bay right outside their front door. The seas were confused quite a bit.  We had several...

Kemah, TX All good things……must come to an end?????  Our news is that Ti Amo will be sailing to a new home this summer.  We will miss the sport of sailing, but look forward to our future.  We know that she is in great hands with her new owners and we look forward to helping them get acclimated to Ti Amo and getting her to her new forever home. While the decision to sell Ti Amo was a tough one, the purchase of our new vessel was an easy one.  Sauvy B became known to us through an acquaintance we made on our last trip to Florida.  We were in Saint Augustine when we met Bill and Shelly Kessinger on Holokai, a Selene 53.  We somehow invited ourselves aboard their boat and enjoyed a tour thinking all along there was no way we would ever find a Selene.  As luck would have it, Bill and Shelly knew of one coming on the market in their home area.  Once we got home and made the decision to look at Sauvy B located in Kemah Texas, we were on our way to take o...