First on our travel itinerary was New York – a work trip for me. We were holding an Employee Appreciation Conference where we flew in the entire team from around the country for the first real in-person event since Covid.

Because we arrived for the weekend, and despite David having to work, we were able to do a bit of exploration of the city and get some good meals in, including re-visiting Atera, which was just as spectacular as when we had been there last several years ago.

For me, the week was jam packed with several leadership working sessions and then the main event, including coordinating for a group of 20 people to get Covid tested and visit several locations throughout the city. It was amazing to get together with the team and we had a couple of really fruitful days.

On Friday afternoon, we flew out of NYC headed west to Seattle. This time, David had a work event to attend. It was his birthday on the weekend and we celebrated by meeting up with various friends on Saturday and family on Sunday. Anna and Aaron hosted all the de Regt siblings for a delicious brunch, then we went for a walk around Gasworks since the weather was beautiful. In the afternoon we went axe throwing with Brent and Elizabeth which was very fun and surprisingly challenging!! Finally we capped off the day with an excellent dinner with both sets of parents at SYC. This was almost exactly 2 years after we had our Bon Voyage dinner at the SYC before we moved onto the boat!

For the rest of the week, we were both pretty busy with work schedules and visiting with different people each night. We try to see as many people as possible when we visit with Seattle!

On Friday night we headed back to the airport for our red-eye flight to Prague, another David-work leg of our journey.

David spent the remainder of our time in Bimini working on a few other boat projects including installing a light fixture over the island in the kitchen and a new Sirius weather receiver on our antenna. The wind remained strong through Thursday, but there was a weather window on Friday so we decided to head back to the US to make sure that we would arrive on time in Stuart and Hinckley for our scheduled month of maintenance and boat projects including a new fridge and hopefully finally solving our starboard engine vibration. The entire ride home was smooth and we pulled in to Hinckley before sunset.

We spent about three hours nervously and frantically calling every border security agency in the country since our app-requested border clearing never actually was approved, and weren’t sure we could legally land in the US. We eventually managed to reach someone at an airport who said we could clear customs there in the morning, and then nervously just … took the boat to the marina without any sort of actual crossing approval. Then, late at night, the app updated over to us being approved without any interview, and we slept more soundly.

We needed to drive back down to Ft Lauderdale to pick up our alcohol for the storage unit, and coincidentally it was the same weekend as the Miami boat show, so we decided to make a day-trip of it. After a delay picking up the rental car, we headed towards Miami. We primarily wanted to check out the vendor booths to chat to Spectra (the watermaker folks) to complain out our broken-on-arrival brand-new watermaker, and Webasto (the new a/c system folks) since the guy David had been emailing with wasn’t very responsive.

After walking around the vendor hall, we headed towards one of the marinas where we hoped to walk around on a few power cats. We did not visit any that felt like better uses of space than Highwind! As we were heading out, the sky opened up in a torrential downpour that lasted for about 15 mins. We ducked in a tent to wait it out before heading back to the car.

One of our SYC/MBYC friends has a second home in Miami and was hosting a yacht club happy hour for the boat show. We headed over to his place, which had an amazing view of Biscayne Bay and enjoyed some good company with friends.

After happy hour, we rushed to the storage unit just in time to clear out our alcohol before they closed for the evening.

For the rest of the week, we spent our time at the Hinckley marina on the boat preparing for a large number of projects to be taken care of on the boat over the next month while we do some traveling for work. Primarily, we are hoping to install a bow thruster, replace and relocate the fridges, and hopefully solve our engine vibration issue. We had various folks on the boat throughout the week assessing all the different projects (probably about 15 different projects in total) while we worked our day-jobs, and also prepared the boat for the work. At the last minute, the folks at Hinckley decided they wanted to haul Highwind out of the water on Friday rather than next week, so we changed our flights to New York and had a mad scramble to finalize everything before heading to the airport!

For the first half of our cruise, we had some small waves – 2-3ft which made the ride a bit bumpy but nothing that concerned us. Once we got far enough into the crossing, the waters evened out due to some protection from Grand Bahama, so overall the trip was relatively smooth. We pulled in to the dock at the Grand Bahama Yacht Club and cleared customs with enough time for me to join my afternoon customer calls and wrap up the working day for me (David had the day off). Matthew and David headed into town on scooters to pick up some provisions and see if they could find SIM cards and a cruising/anchoring guide. For the evening we walked to a nearby restaurant for dinner.

The predicted wind storm was solidifying into a longer-term storm (Sunday through Friday) at this point. Matthew had to be back to an airport by midday Thursday to get back to the west coast, and with only having one day to get anywhere before winds came in, we didn’t really want to go all the way to the Abacoes in a single day to hang out in the wind and then hurry over 200 miles back to the US after a week. Our explorations had determined that there wasn’t much to do on Grand Bahama, so we decided to change things up and head down to Bimini to spend our week. We had a full Saturday with decent weather predicted, so we picked one anchorage to spend the day at before retreating to the populated island of Bimini for the week. Matthew had to change his flight from Freeport to Bimini, but it gave us the best shot at having more of a Bahamas-ish experience for the week of wind.

The next morning, we had another fairly early wake up, and headed out for our crossing. As we were passing Bimini where we needed to slow down a bit, we pulled out the ice-cream maker that was a boat-warming gift from David’s sister Anna. You put the ice-cream in the middle, fill it up with ice and salt and then tow it behind the boat for churning. We were a bit concerned that it wouldn’t work well given that the water was about 80 degrees, but we gave it a go anyway! It actually turned out to be pretty successful in thickening the recipe (nutella banana), so once it was done we stored it in the freezer for later that night.

We arrived at the anchorage, Honeymoon Harbour, just after lunchtime. It was beautiful – the water was so clear I could see the anchor hit the bottom and the chain lay out on the sand. Matthew and I immediately pulled out the snorkel gear and jumped in, while David set about flying the drone for some video/pics.

I usually am a bit nervous about snorkeling since I have a fear of fish, but it was just so warm and beautiful, I really enjoyed myself! We swam around the bow and took a look at the anchor to confirm we had a good hold and then we swam towards the beach and started to see fish and even a sting ray. I wish I’d thought about charging up the gopro batteries to get some underwater shots. I didn’t want David to miss out on everything, so we swam back to the boat and I encouraged him to get changed and jump in.

Once David had joined us, we swam all the way up to the beach where a bunch of day-boaters were partying. It turns out this is a well known spot to see the stingrays – because partiers feed them from the beach, so they swim right up to the beach when people are around.

After walking around a little, we swam back to the boat for a snack and a drink on the stern.

We enjoyed an amazing BBQ’ed flank stake fajita night with a beautiful sunset for the evening.

We knew that winds were predicted to pick up in the early afternoon the next day, and between us and Bimini there was a wreck that was supposed to be excellent for snorkeling. The wreck is the Sapona which was a concrete boat, so it’s pretty unusual. We pulled the anchor and started heading north. The winds started to pick up sooner than expected so by the time we reached the wreck we were in 1-2 ft swells; however there were a few other snorkel/dive boats at the wreck, so we decided to go ahead with the swim. After two failed attempts to anchor, we decided that Matthew and I would head to the wreck while David stayed aboard the boat and held off. We suited up with lifejackets and fins and swam over. There weren’t many fish around the wreck, but it was fun to swim in and around.

We had a quick swim back to the boat and a frantic pull out onto the swimpstep before the boat drifted too close to the wreck and then we were headed up to Bimini. The wind started picking up even more as we were pulling into the marina and it basically didn’t stop for the next 5 days.

After we had tied up and checked-in at the marina, we decided to explore a little, so we headed to the west side of the island to check out the beach. There was a coconut drink vendor, so we all got a drink and enjoyed the beach for a while.

The next day, Matthew and I decided we wanted to do some more swimming and there was a spit of land on the other side of the boat, so we suited up and hopped in the water.

When we were a hundred feet or so from the boat, we heard some people from shore yelling at us to get out of the water. I thought maybe there were trying to tell us that we were in a boating channel (we were), but I’d tied a fender around my waist so that we would be visible. I shouted “Why?!” and they responded “Sharks!”. Yikes – you don’t need to tell us twice!! We quickly swam back to the boat where David hauled us out of the water and then not minutes later, two enormous, maybe 5ft wide, spotted sting rays (supposedly dangerous) and a huge 6-7 ft shark swim by the dock right by our stern!!!!!!!!!

Okay, so I guess we’re not doing any more swimming for the week. We decided instead to hop on the local ferry from North Bimini to South Bimini to explore. We walked to the Sands resort, but everything there was closed. Someone told us about a nature walk that was a little further down the road, so we headed for that. Almost as soon as we entered the trees, David and I were instantly swarmed by mosquitos, so we quickly ran back to the road! We thought about looking for the “fountain of youth” but we’d been told it was a bit of a walk and ultimately just a well on the side of the road, so we instead decided just to head back to the boat! It was the superbowl in the evening so we headed to the local spot for watching while eating some amazing ribs.

The next day, in the morning the self-named “Lobster Man” visited the boat and sold us 6 lobster tails for a very reasonable price. In the afternoon, there was a huge rain storm, so we stayed inside the boat. David worked on a few boat projects while Matthew and I played board games.

Later that night, we prepared our lobster two ways – boiled and broiled, with some fresh corn and freshly made (by me) sourdough bread. What a feast! We liked the broiled the best, since we’d covered it in melted butter and garlic before putting it into the oven.

The next day, the rain had stopped, but the wind was still blowing. We decided to visit the “Dolphin House” a local treasure of the island. The house is built entirely by hand by one man, Ashley Saunders, made with materials that he finds on the beaches of the island. When he was unable to make concrete, he would even grind down conch shells to make it. One floor – an entire two bedroom apartment – is complete, and the second floor was still being constructed, so you could see the work in progress. It’s certainly one of a kind – it is entirely filled (literally every inch) with tile, mosaics, and motifs, even incorporating empty bottles and other beach flotsam.

After visiting the dolphin house, we waked to the north end of the island where there is a Hilton resort, which boasted several pools, hot tubs, and a swim up bar. After we had arrived, we paid our non-resort-guest entrance fee and headed out to the pool. Unfortunately, it was the windiest day so far, with winds 20-30kts so it was actually a littler cooler outside and the pool was not heated. We decided to order a drink at the swim up bar anyway (Matthew had never done one!) even though the bartender was literally telling us we were crazy! Since it is not the height of their tourist season, which starts around Spring Break, the pool was empty and they basically closed up the bar after we were done.

Matthew and I decided to swim the length of the pool, which turned out to be enormous since it spanned the entire length of the hotel, and then we decided to head up to the rooftop pool where there was supposed to be a hot tub. Unfortunately the hot tubs were all drained and it was even windier on the top of the building. We decided to cut our losses and head back to the boat.

The next morning would be Matthew’s last as he was to leave us before lunch to head to Bimini for his flight. In the morning, Matthew and I decided to walk to the southern point of the island, where we found a blowhole and got an amazing shot of Matthew.

As we were heading back to the boat, it started to rain, so we ran all the way! We then took Matthew back to the ferry since the airport is on South Bimini and said goodbye. It was so lovely to have Matthew on board – his first visit on Endeavour-Highwind. Despite some disappointment with the weather, we really enjoyed our time together!

David recalled that one of his colleagues lives in Miami, so we invited them to join us on the boat for an afternoon. We met them at the yacht club, then headed back out into the bay to anchor for some swimming. We had a lovely afternoon and then headed back to our dock at the Yacht Club for the evening.

We were arriving after hours at the dock (in absolutely no wind and no current), so there was nobody to hand a line to. I made a bit of a stupid decision and climbed over the railing to jump off to the dock. Unfortunately, I didn’t quite make it to the dock and ended up hanging from the dock trying unsuccessfully to swing my legs up. I had my lifejacket on, which made it difficult and eventually I slipped off the dock and into the water. Luckily, this was a fixed height dock that was very high above the water, so I ended up under the dock and not crushed between the dock and the boat. David heard me splash in (I was wearing my headset) and put the boat into neutral. A few seconds after I submerged and came back up to the surface, I was momentarily confused as a whooshing sound started…it was my lifejacket auto-inflating. I managed to swim back to the boat – keeping both my prescription sunglasses and headset on, while also still hanging on to the dock line (I wasn’t going to let that get caught in the props again!!). With the lifejacket inflated around me, David had to come down to the swim step and haul me aboard. I immediately jumped back into gear and we safely docked the boat. Luckily I escaped injury-free, with just a few scrapes on my leg. I guess we gave David’s colleague and her husband a good show!

Later that evening, after the adrenaline had worn off, David and I went for dinner up at the Yacht Club, where we had a great meal. Afterwards, David started preparations for the water maker install by spending the entire night removing the old water maker.

The next day, he installed all the components of the new watermaker (we didn’t need to be hauled this time, since there was already a through-hull from the previous water maker). Unfortunately, after we turned it on, it started it’s initial cycle and then stopped and would not be restarted :(. Chatting on the phone with Spectra we learned we needed to go through their very slow warranty process before they would give us any kind of replacement parts, or a new unit. This would mean that we’d need to be careful with our water consumption while in the Bahamas with Matthew, which isn’t the end of the world with our 200gal water tank; we were just a little disappointed that it didn’t work out of the box – now the second time this had happened to us with Spectra watermakers!

David had also just figured out where the level gauge for the fresh water tank was, which had been giving us issues since we bought the boat. In an effort to adjust the gauge to fix it, he broke it completely, so we now had no water gauge at all, while water-conserving in the Bahamas. When it rains, it pours.

Meanwhile, we made plans to leave Key Biscayne and headed north to an anchorage between Miami and Ft Lauderdale. We had posted the old water maker on a cruisers forum for free if someone wanted to try to resurrect it instead of us just throwing it out. We found a taker and a couple arrived by dingy to collect all the pieces. We invited them back over for drinks after work and had a lovely evening with them later!

Along with the watermaker, we’d also ordered a liferaft for the boat. They’re basically set up to automatically deploy if the boat goes under water, or you can manually deploy it easily if you’re going down and need to abandon ship. Between that and a waterproof bugout case of stuff that we’d set up, if we had something go wrong off shore or deep in the Bahamas, we’d have a few days of supplies and satellite communication to get rescued, nestled into our liferaft bobbing around in the ocean.

We had made our marina reservation in Ft Lauderdale for Wed through Sat, with the hope of a weather window for heading to the Bahamas. Since we’d made plans in advance, we were able to direct a batch of packages to the marina which arrived just as we did. We’d been holding packages for a month with us being on the move constantly without plans, so there was quite a lot of stuff.

We had rented another car in Ft Lauderdale, primarily to arrange for a storage unit to stash our liquor collection, since we read that we could only take one bottle per person of alcohol into the Bahamas. This was lucky because David was able to use it to drive the broken water maker engine back to Miami to start the warranty repair process. The next few days passed in a blur of working, and final travel coordination including arranging for COVID tests for travel.

Matthew arrived late on Thursday and since we’d been watching the weather all week, we made a game-day decision to head out on Friday instead of Saturday as planned due to heavy winds and waves over 6ft predicted later in the weekend. I had to last-minute take the day off on Friday, but we really didn’t want to miss that weather window.

We woke up at sunrise on Friday morning, hoping for smooth sailing for our crossing.

Leaving Key West, we headed to an anchorage outside of Big Pine Key. We planned to do a few hops up the Keys on our way back to Miami/Ft Lauderdale where Matthew would fly out to join us. We set up on anchor for a few days and it was quite a bit different than the business of Key West!

One evening we hopped in the dingy and went to Kiki’s Sandbar – basically the only restaurant near us – which had a dock for us to tie up to. There was live music playing and we had a delicious seafood medley including 3 kinds of fish, conch fritters, and shrimp prepared 2 ways!

Later in the week, another Looper couple joined us in the anchorage, so we visited them by dingy one evening and hosted them aboard Highwind the next. They are about to complete their loop in North Carolina.

We next ventured to Tavernier, where we managed to get a spot in a marina for a couple of days of strong winds that were predicted. It also happened to be the week that my boss, Steve and his wife were visiting Tavernier for vacation! We met up with them for lunch and hanging out on Highwind (for which we took no pictures!).

After Tavernier, we headed north to an anchorage just past Key Largo on Barnes Sound. We were completely alone in the anchorage and were treated to some amazing sunsets.

Finally, we headed north to Biscayne Bay, were we set up on anchor once again. That night, as we were relaxing after work, we heard a random boom of fireworks, which turned out to be some kind of private show from a barge about 200 feet off our stern!

We were trying to decide whether to meet Matthew in Miami or Ft Lauderdale for heading to the Bahamas on a vacation week, but due to an upcoming boat show in Miami, no marinas where available and I did manage to get a spot in Ft Lauderdale so that sealed the deal.

We had about a week before Matthew would arrive, and David had managed to arrange with the re-seller from whom we had just purchased a water maker that we could pick it up directly from his warehouse (just outside of Miami). We also looked at a map and discovered we we just outside of the Key Biscayne Yacht Club. I managed to organize reciprocity with SYC and so we planned to stay in their marina for the weekend. I also booked a rental car through Turo (an app we just discovered were people rent out their cars). Everything went smoothly and later we were back at the marina with all the parts for the new water maker.

In the extremely heavy rainfall (the most that we’d seen since we moved onto Endeavour-Highwind), we discovered several leaks – one collecting on the staircase to the pilothouse and the other in the guest bathroom. David managed to trace the bathroom leak all the way up to our bedroom where the seal on the window had clearly been disintegrating. He dismantled the window and the wall panel and we discovered the wall panel had completely rotted/dissolved and it became clear where the water was coming through.

To find the source of the leak on the stairs, David had to remove an entire wall panel and we discovered that the water was coming in through the seam where the pilot house joins the base of the boat.

Once the rain had stopped in the afternoon, David started picking out all the old sealant between the two layers of the boat, so that we could let it dry a bit before re-sealing. We also re-caulked our bedroom window.

Hopefully that would solve these rain leaks, though we need to rebuild the wall around the window in our bedroom, but without easy transport to a hardware store on Key West, we weren’t about to bring a new large piece of plywood to the boat. However, to prepare, I set about ordering some samples of foam-backed vinyl for covering the new piece, so that we can color match with the existing fabric on the boat (which we have learned is not made any more).

David and I had decided to remain in Key West for the rest of the week after Mum and Dad left, so we got back to work. It was warm enough that we turned on the A/C. Just before the weekend, David took a look down in the port engine bay, where we had just installed a new dry bilge system to match the one in the starboard side. Unfortunately, there was a bunch of water in the bilge. Since we hadn’t cruised anywhere, we figured it couldn’t be from a leaking shaft seal. David thought it might be dying hoses from the A/C, which hadn’t been replaced since the boat was built 15 years ago. He started dismantling the wall and we discovered a large crack in the hose that ran up the rear port corner. We were able to buy some replacement hose from the West Marine around the corner and it was a relatively easy job to replace. Sweet!

We turned the A/C back on. A few hours later we checked the bilge again…oh no, it was full of water again. We looked again at all the hoses and found another crack that was spewing water everywhere – only this time it was the hose that runs the length of the port side to the battery area behind the fridges – behind the couch and Hannah’s office desk. We extended our stay in the marina so that I could go back and buy the rest of their hose, and David set about finding access to the house, which unfortunately required dismantling two window panels, the entire couch, and sawsall-ing a panel behind the couch!

We were able to replace the hose, then left everything open with the fans on overnight in the hopes of getting everything dry. We woke up early the next day to reassemble the living room and head out to begin our journey eastward!

David also found the perfect spot to mount my rooster!

We arrived in Key West on Friday afternoon, so we had a whole weekend ahead of us! Saturday morning, we decided to wander to the State Park/Fort that is on the tip of the island. The fort was pretty interesting and the view was beautiful. Later in the evening we had a lovely meal, and did an escape room. There’s one escape room on the island, and the guy working it lives on a boat on anchor and was fun to chat with. We said we were here for a couple weeks and we’d be back to do the other two rooms later on. Sunday we wandered around and tried several bars and restaurants, discovering that the area near the marina was not actually the activity center of the island, it was actually down Duval street on the south end of the island, which we never went to last year. Oops.

We had invited David’s parents to join us on the boat, but unfortunately they were not able to come. My parents had just learned that their new boat was going to be massively delayed in its delivery, so they decided last minute to hop on a plane and join us!

We were working for the first few days of the week, so after they arrived, they largely enjoyed themselves doing several walks around the island, but we did manage to go to see a famous Key West drag show at La Ti Da. It was a one-woman show with live singing and was extremely entertaining!

The next weekend happend to be MLK day, and both David and I had Monday off. Earlier in the week, the weather looked like it might be good enough for us to head to Dry Torguas, which is 70 miles offshore and requires a 3 day weather window. We had tried to visit last year, but did not make it due to poor weather and instead spent a rocky night at Marquesas Key before heading back to Key West! Unfortunately as Friday rolled around, the weather forecast hugely deteriorated overnight, and unfortunately we decided to just stick around in Key West. We did have to move marinas after our first reservation ended – all of 200 ft across the harbor!

On Saturday we had great weather, so we took a walk all the way down Duval Street to the “southernmost point” in the US and saw lots of the famous Key West chickens. Luckily our boat out in the marina is far enough away from land that we do not hear the roosters crowing at all hours of the day :).

I decided that I wanted to buy a souvenir to commemorate our wake crossing in Key West!

On Sunday the predicted storm rolled in, and in about a minute, it went from being humid and warm to pouring rain and strong winds. Luckily the wind was coming directly to our starboard where there was a 170ft mega yacht which mostly protected us from the wind!

We discovered a couple of leaks in the boat from the excessive amount of rain (more rain than we’d seen ever!), and spent the rest of the afternoon tracking down their sources by tearing apart walls in our bedroom and along the stairs in the salon in the process. When everything dried out in the afternoon, we we did some patching up.

On Mum and Dad’s last night, we went out for sushi and for the first time in my life ordered a sushi boat. It was incredible and delicious!

We had a lovely week with Mum and Dad and said goodbye to them while David and I got back to work, planning to remain in Key West at least through the end of the week.

After New Year, a wind storm was predicted for the next couple of days, so we stayed put on our friends dock and set sail later in the week when everything was calmer. We spent one night on anchor (which happened to be my birthday) preparing for our next hop across the Gulf all the way down to Key West.

Since we had made our plans so late in the year due to not knowing anything about were we might be able to get work done on the boat, we had managed to make reservations for a couple of days at Conch Harbor Marina, a gap of 2 days, and then another couple of days at Galleon Marina. Marina space in the month of January in Key West is at a premium!

We had a beautiful weather window, with the winds picking up in the next few days. Our reservation in a marina in Key West would not start for a few days, but as we were crossing, we called ahead and luckily someone had changed their plans and we would be able to get into our slip early!

The Looper term for completing the Great Loop is “crossing your wake”. That is to say you cross over the path you left behind when you started the trip. As a member of the America’s Great Loop Cruisers Association, once you cross your wake, you get to swap out your white Looper flag for a gold one. Even though we changed boats at the beginning of 2021, we has boaters had boated continuously from Key West northwards. Therefore we declared our wake crossed once we pulled into our slip in the marina.

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(We may also have a mini celebration at Ft Lauderdale, where this adventure began, and again at Stuart, where Endeavour-Highwind will cross her own wake).

When David said to me, about 3 years ago, “I think we should move onto the boat and do the Great Loop”, and after he explained what that was, I was hesitant and skeptical. It wasn’t that I didn’t love boating…we’d just come home from a just-over-a-month trip up to Canada on the boat, where we’d left wanting more. It wasn’t that I thought we’d go mad with each other in the tiny living space. I think what scared me at first was the tiny kitchen, the tiny closet, the lack of laundry machines etc. In short, all the small household/life responsibilities and practicalities that are mine in our marriage. All that is fine on vacation for a month, but to live full time? Not to mention it would mean moving away from our friends and family, and leaving behind Divine Movement and my role there as an instructor.

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However, once the seed was planted, the idea began to grow. David started planning how we could get internet on the boat reliable enough for us to work remotely. He started envisioning how we could remove a couch and convert a space in the salon into a dual work station. There wasn’t really one moment for me when the trip became a reality, but slowly the vision began to take shape and then I was asking my boss for approval to work remotely for a year!

After months of planning and some crazy last minute logistics of actually shipping our boat out to the east coast (read here about that!), we few one way to Ft Lauderdale to begin the adventure.

And then, about 2-3 weeks into the trip, Covid-19 had spread enough through the US causing complete lockdown. We changed our plans, spent the summer in Maine, headed back to Florida for the winter and started over in 2021.

How do you summarize two years of adventures? Visiting new places, the fear of meeting new people, the loneliness of digital nomading in the middle of a pandemic, the feeling of seeing family in person for the first time in a year, getting vaccinated, finally meeting people and making friends, seeing the beauty of this country, seeing the ugliness of this country (Trump flags, Thin Blue Line flags, an assault at the capitol), visiting places from favourite novels, boat projects, hosting friends and family on the boat, the food, swimming from the boat, locks, dingy trips, an 8 month summer, visits back to Seattle, tropical storms, perfect seas.

And throughout all of this, I am so lucky and privileged to have been side by side with my best friend and my love. He fixes the boat, he fixes the internet, he wows all dockhands with his control and maneuvering of the boat, he has comforted me through some difficult times, he will always take a selfie with me when I ask. We’ve laughed and we’ve been silly, we’ve struggled and we’ve persevered. I cannot imagine living this nomad life with anyone else.

We had been told that the boat yard would be closed for the week between Christmas and New Year. Even though we technically weren’t supposed to be living aboard, we spent the night on the dock and slept in late the next day since we’d arrived home from the airport so late.

We fired up the engines and set off towards Longboat Key where we were planning to meet up with some friends who also own an Endeavour. We had met them back when we still had the Meridian, but were looking at Endeavours. They pulled in to the slip next to us and graciously let us tour their boat.

The new shaft seal seems to be working fine now, but we still have a small vibraion on that side of the boat. This suggests to us know that we might have bent the prop shaft…perhaps back in Cocoa when I got that line snagged around the prop :(. Unfortunately due to the arrangement of the shaft savers and our props, the only way to examine this is another haul out to completely remove the shaft from the engine. Luckily we are already trying to organize a haul out in the spring for some major projects, so we’ve just added this to the list.

As we were nearing the Longboat Key Moorings Resort, David noticed that the water temp was in the seventies. Knowing that I love the water, he encouraged me to go for a quick swim before we entered entered the marina.

When we arrived in the marina, we realized that it was actually a full resort that included a free shuttle to their main complex which had a big pool, poolside restaurant and bar, private beach, and other amenities. Since it was late-ish in the afternoon, but still very hot, we decided to go for a swim in the small pool by the marina before meeting up with our friends for dinner.

We had a lovely evening to cap off our weekend before we started work for the next day. Since we both had a light day and we wanted to take advantage of the weather and the resort, we played hooky for the afternoon and took the shuttle to the main resort area. We had a lovely half-hour relaxing on the beach before swimming in the ocean and then some snacks at the poolside bar.

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The rest of the week passed relatively uneventfully and we began to make plans for where we would ring in the new year. Since we were planning so last minute, all the marinas in the Ft Meyers area were fully booked, but our friends from Bella Vita, who had just installed a new dock outside their new house, invited us to stay with them! We enjoyed their hospitality (and their pool and hot tub) for the New Year weekend. We had a lovely low-key dinner with them on New Year’s Eve.

At this point, we are extremely close to “crossing our wake”, which is the term used by Loopers when they complete the Loop. For us, we have decided this will be in Key West, since this is the furthest southern point from which we boated with Meridian-Highwind. We will probably also give a nod to Ft Lauderdale where this entire adventure began, and to Stuart, where Endeavour-Highwind will have fully completed its loop. We started out the year in the Florida Keys and have visited places both old and new as we cruised up the East Coast and this year went inland to explore the Great Lakes and the inland waterways. We’ll talk more about the Great Loop as an adventure in our actual “Crossing our Wake” post, but this is a post marking the end of 2021. I feel so lucky to be able to have the life that we do and to be on this grand adventure with my best friend.

This year we were able to get vaccinated and experienced dining indoors anew. We visited museums, were less afraid to meet new people, and we experienced the different attitudes towards Covid through a good portion of the US. We flew back to Seattle and saw family in person for the first time since we moved onto the boat.

This year we said goodbye to Meridian-Highwind and began a new adventure in what many call our “floating condo” the Endeavour-Highwind. We have been thankful for the additional room giving us both a dedicated office space for our work. She’s not been without her technical issues, but overall we are very happy catamaran owners.

This year I got to meet my colleagues in person for the first time ever, and I got to be a NY commuter for two days. David also met some of his colleagues in person for the first time and we took our first international plane flight since the pandemic for a work trip to Prague.

We are so thankful for everything that makes us able to live this life and to the science that created vaccines so that we could see friends and family in person again. We hope to be able to see more people this year, and host more people to join us in our adventures. Happy New Year!

We arrived in Seattle on the weekend and spent our first day in an early Christmas celebration with David’s family . The remainder of the week was busy with seeing David’s sisters more and visiting with friends. It’s always a bit rough for me when we are back in Seattle while working since it means working EST hours from PST – very early mornings! It was quite a busy week in the pre-holiday season, but we neglected to take any pictures!!

The following weekend, we drove out to Big Sky with Eric and his puppy Barli. He had invited us to stay with him at his house on the mountain, which is amazingly beautiful. My parents also joined us there and we had a wonderful and relaxing week skiing and enjoying company. We were later joined by Brent and Mary, their 6mo old daughter Ember, and two huskies, Si and Troy.

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We had organized flights back to Florida from Bozeman on Christmas Day. However, due to all the staff shortages from Covid, we found out before we boarded our first flight that our connecting flight from Atlanta to Sarasota had been cancelled. We managed to get on standby for a flight from Atlanta to Tampa, which wasn’t far from Sarasota and would still be uberable back to the boat.

When we landed in Atlanta, I saw a text from Matthew that his flight to Ushuaia had been delayed and he was still in the Atlanta airport! Due to various scheduling constraints, we had not been able to see him while we were in Seattle, and he was heading out on a month long adventure to sail to Antartica on a 100 year old tall ship (https://www.barkeuropa.com/follow-the-ship).

We hopped on the airport train to his gate and were able to say a quick hello before he started boarding. A lovely treat for me!!

Since it was Christmas, all but one of the restaurants in the airport were closed, so we waited in a huuuuuuge line in time to get the dregs of what they had left for our dinner. We waited patiently at the gate and managed to get seats on the flight. With the flight delays and such, we arrived back to the boat at 2am. The yard had told us not to liveaboard the boat, but at 2am we weren’t gonna move, so we just left in the morning.

It was a little bit of a different Christmas than we usually have, but it was wonderful to see family and get a little skiing in after none last season.