Easy second leg to Tahiti beach today, flew the drone as we were coming in and when we were landing it and going 6-7kts it hit Andrew’s hand and tumbled into the water 🫠 Oh well, we made it and excited to spend the week back in the Abacos!

Crewing on Southard Love for the maiden voyage to the Bahamas! She’s a Marlow 78ECB and she sure is preettty. Towed a 39ft Contender because both of them will be living in the Abacos for the year with a few hops back to Key West. Minimal issues considering it was the first time this boat has had a long trip in a few years. Tomorrow we’ll head into Hope Town & spend the week hopping around the Abacos on the contender. So nice to be back in the Bahamas & it’s time for a Kalik!! 🍻

Made it to Grenada for haul out! Getting some work done on our boat while we’re gone at Spice Island Marine and leaving it in great hands!! Staying on the boat on the hard for a night before we fly back to the states. Going to miss the Caribbean but fun things planned in the Bahamas and Florida Keys for the month 👀

Raced SV Traveler (we won… duh) down to carriacou for a few nights hanging out before we head south to haul out. Said bye to some buddy boats heading to the ABC islands, and some heading to Trinidad. Finally visited paradise beach club to paint our afterglow sign for the wall

We originally had plans to slowly island hop down south unless a big storm was coming through since we didn’t have plans to haul out until October. Last minute change of plans, we decided to make a big hop south towards Grenada because we’re flying out to go take a different boat from Florida to the Bahamas! Then spending a few weeks in key west since we haven’t been there since we sailed off. Finally caught up with a bunch of friends in Union Island for 4th of July party on Traveler 🤙🏼🍾🇺🇸

So curious on everyone’s thoughts of who was approaching our boat in the middle of nowhere… It was coming on 1 day and 15 hours at sea, around sunrise, when we were smack dab in the middle of Dominica and Martinique. I was on watch while Andrew went to sleep an hour before, and it was around 6:30am. We were in 8ft seas with 20-25 kts and just a reefed main out. I saw a small ~24ft panga parallel to us going the opposite way around 500 yards away. I didn’t think too much of it, but woke Andrew up from a weird gut feeling. We hadn’t seen any boats in the almost 2 days sail so was weird to suddenly see that small boat that close. After Andrew got up the panga made a 90 degree turn coming straight at us. It was so rough their bow was flying into the air and to us it made no sense why they were so far offshore. They got within 200 yards of us before they turned off back on their track. It was 2 guys and we assume they turned back because it was too rough to go dead into the waves. I got a short video of the boat.. what do you guys think?? We can’t figure out what in the world was going on, but all we know is it scared the shit out of us seeing them come at us & we felt like they were definitely a threat😳 oh, and this all happened the morning of Andrew’s birthday 😂 Anyway, the rest of the sail was totally fine, worse weather than forecasted but our first time in forever flyyyying and we reached our max speed ever at 10.1kts! So fun to finally have a beam reach and making our best time on a passage yet. Excited for the rest of the sail south 🤙🏼 Now that we’re close enough to Grenada and are able to have a quick sail down, we’re going to take our time exploring the next few islands on the way down.

Short trip over to St Barths before heading south to Guadeloupe. Not sure if we will be here for a night or 2 or a week, we’ll see what the weather does 🤷🏻‍♀️ Slooowly made our way around the northeast corner of SXM and finally got to that bean reach sail we have been waiting for forever. After around a year of moving dead into the wind it sure felt good having the best wind angle and actually going towards our destination. Celebrating Andrew’s birthday this weekend so might treat ourselves to the fine dining we’ve heard of in this fancy town 🇫🇷🎂

After ~6 months in the Virgin Islands it sure does feel good to make it to a new island!! Very uneventful sail, which is usually a good thing. Weather was as forecasted and had a long tack 20nm south and arrived in the exact amount of time we expected. Excited for the baguettes, cheese, & French wine!! 🇫🇷🥖🧀🍷oui oui

Left St John with the plan to stop in the BVI for a few days before crossing to SXM, but at the last second we decided we might have a good weather window to just sail straight to SXM that day. We got just past Virgin Gorda and the weather was worse than forecasted (~8ft seas and 20-25kts of wind) and at this point the sun had gone down, and somehow going straight into the rough seas our brand new dinghy got messed up in the davit and was looking like it was going to flip over. We decided to turn around and get on a mooring by the Baths to lower it and stay for the night. Now our plan is to wait for a better window on Thursday and hang in Virgin Gorda for a few days Sometimes it’s just better to turn around when things aren’t going as planned 🤷🏻‍♀️

Definitely didn’t come in first but we also didn’t come in last (close to it though) 😂 Chased bubbles all the way to Willy T and ready for a raft up party and maybe some Willy t tattoos! If you’re in the area come party with us 🤙🏼

First leg of the Chasing Bubbles regatta!! Started in the lead and ended way behind 😂 prioritized drone shots over winning but watch out for us on the way to Willy T today 👀 Fun downwind sail with some very hungover crew from the epic floatchella Challenges today were snorkel shots and someone off the back of the boat when we were crossing the finish line

Not the 2 hour downwind sail we planned on having sailing from Jost to Normans today 🙂‍↔️ As we got towards Thatch Island Cut we were going to bring in our head sail to get a better angle and go through the cut but noooope after 2 wraps the head sail furling line was jammed 🫠 Andrew undid the entire line multiple times but it still kept jamming, so eventually we just jibed through the cut and figured we would deal with it later. From Thatch to Normans Andrew went back and forth trying to fix it on the bow then eventually pulled it in by hand on the bow and we got it in. Not sure why it happened but fingers crossed it doesn’t happen again when we sail tomorrow 🤞🏼 Anyway, now we’re spending the day at Willy T 🏴‍☠️ (and I’m not getting the tattoo this time 😅😂)

Checked in at West End (because we had to check Isla in there) then headed to Jost for a night or two! We got engaged 2 years ago today and we’ve been together for 4 years this month 😌 Started off our first day at Jost with a floating spa massage 💆🏻‍♀️ & then heading over to Soggy Dollar & Foxy’s Not sure if we’ll stay here a few nights or hop around other spots in the BVI before heading back to STT Monday. Drop a suggestion of where we should stop!!

Our group had their dream charter booked for NYE in the BVI for 5 nights and while their first captain cancelled because the generator wasn’t working and the boat had no AC, then the 2nd captain they had canceled the day before their trip 😳 Our friend saw on a Facebook page that they were desperate for a captain and mate so she called us and asked if we could get to the BVI within the next 24 hours to run their trip. Within an hour we got Isla to the vet for her health certificate, packed up our boat, left it on a mooring in Red Hook STT and took the ferry over to Tortola the next day. Had to work with the group to get provisions on such short notice but we made it over and were able to give them the best New Years trip ever!! Had so much fun showing them around the BVI and of course, they loved Isla. Got lucky and had the best group with the best attitude & spent the last 5 nights on a cruise around the islands 🇻🇬 Oh, and I happened to run into my cousins at Bitter End on NYE 😂🤯

Stop 1 on our surprise date day.. Cruz Bay St John 🥰 We haven’t been over to St. John since we sailed over and this island is what made us fall in love with the Virgin Islands almost 2 years ago! Took us a while to get back but so excited to explore again Still don’t know about stop #2 and where we’ll be sleeping tonight 🤔

Moved around from Water Island to Sapphire beach because some friends told us about a full moon party over here tonight Anyone else usually show up to a party with their entire home? 😂

Finally made our way to St Thomas, we visited St Thomas/St John 2 years ago (right before we got engaged) and didn’t want to ever leave. We looked into moving here but it didn’t work out and months later we bought Afterglow and talked about one day sailing here. Hooked up to a mooring on water island for a few days & can’t wait to explore where we’ll be living and working for a bit (with sailing trips to the other islands from time to time). If anyone knows of some charter boats hiring let us know! We’ll be freelancing to make some $$ to continue funding this cruising life

Spent the night anchored at Culebrita before heading back to Vieques for a few nights to hang with friends before we sail off to the USVI for a while Finally had the perfect sail we’ve been waiting for for months 🤌🏼 12-15kts of wind going downwind cruising at 6-8kts.. chefs kiss sailing