2023-2024 Season Stats October 25, 2023 – September 18, 2024 (or October 10, if you count the time we lived on the boat in Belfast) Since we started tracking our miles in September of 2022, we’ve recorded 5,150 miles, and we estimate that since we started living aboard, we’ve sailed at least 6,500 miles. It’s […]
We’ve been living in this odd limbo – not quite cruising, but not quite land-dwellers. After the excitement of dealing with the shaft issue, we spent the weekend on the dock so we could begin preparing to move off the boat. I packed up a bunch of summer clothes that we don’t need, bedding and […]
We pulled into our slip on Friday morning, and at first I was so excited to be back. However it was admittedly strange… I couldn’t help feeling a little like an outsider. We’ve been away for so long, and we didn’t really see anyone all day, so it didn’t feel that much different than pulling […]
I’m quite sad to share that our beloved FRIB 330, Squall, left us suddenly this morning around 11:30 am. She passed quickly from a burst seam in the bow. We knew her time was running short – a PVC dinghy doesn’t have a hugely long lifespan when constantly exposed to sun as she was, but […]
We live in a tiny home, and what we bring aboard matters. When outfitting a boat, there’s so much to think of – gear, spares, provisions – and it all takes up space. There are very few things aboard Windara that don’t serve a purpose, and we’re constantly revisiting what’s aboard and what we really […]
We weren’t able to extend our slip at Marker 8, and the Municipal Marina couldn’t take us until Sunday, so we anchored out Saturday night. With the help of our friends, we left just before low slack. Our original thought was to anchor over by the Vilano Bridge, but the anchorage was pretty busy, and […]
This week, I’ve been really stressing about getting everything ready to go. Our original plan was to leave as soon as Chris got back from New York. Normally I would have been ok with this, even though we’d be cutting it close to sunset and the ebb (outgoing) current would be running decently. But we’ve […]
In frustration last week, I started this post with the working title “Sometimes Boat Life Sucks.” (And sometimes, it DOES suck.) I still want to share some of those thoughts here, because the reality is that life, boat or land-based, isn’t always sunshine and roses. I’m struggling a bit with this – I want to […]
We seem to have two boat work seasons – our spring stop in Deltaville and our pre-cruise prep season. That’s the chaos we found ourselves in right up until departure. One of our ongoing projects has been dubbed “the Windara weight loss program,” wherein we attempt to figure out what the previous owners left us […]
We decided to leave Tuesday night and anchor in the Rapphannock so we could visit Merroir, a restaurant our friends introduced us to last year when we were in Deltaville. Our anchorage had been so quiet and well-protected that we didn’t realize how windy it was in more exposed waters, and it was rolly enough […]