Maiden Voyage

Karen:

It’s been a really busy week for us. We spent the first 5 days in a hotel, getting the boat setup and put in the water. Costco, Home Depot, Walmart runs, and sampling the fast food of St Augustine. 

We then successfully launched the boat on December 19th and grabbed a mooring ball for 2 nights to get our bearings.

December 21 at 6.30am we launched on our first passage on the North Atlantic with the goal of reaching Brunswick, Georgia, where we have a marina slip booked for 2 months. We soon found out that we had greatly underestimated this trip. A 25 knot headwind and 8 foot swells mean we were making very slow progress. Everyone was seasick 2 hrs in, and we realized quickly what we expected to be 12 hrs would be an overnight journey. My first night ‘sail’ (we motored). We hand steered most of it - which is exhausting - and ended up making a few rookie errors that resulted in a punctured dingy (now garbage), davits sheered off, Starlink broke off, and we hit a breakwater at 1am outside Jacksonville. Michael and I spelled each other off at the helm to have a sleep that was interrupted by various alarms going off. By daybreak we decided we’d had enough and pulled into Fernandina Beach, anchored up and ate for the first time in 36 hrs, slept, and took stock of our trip. Off to a bangin’ start to say the least!

We are now waiting for the winds to change in our favour to make the last leg of our trip. We have no way of getting ashore, and are waiting for the gas barge to open up tomorrow so we can refuel. We feel humbled, grateful for all our gear and our Beta engine, happy to be together, and a whole lot saltier.

A boat without scratches hasn’t left the marina