Manjack Cay, Bahamas > Stuart, FL Beautiful calm day on the bank, pretty easy gulf crossing. Conditions collapsed so we motored the whole way (booo) but the jib did make a brief appearance. Kyle’s first Gulf Stream crossing, my seventh, and Totem’s fourth! Great last blue water move of the season ✨

Ooop that was a nail biter!! Followed Vahi through at high tide and definitely saw less than our draft on the depth sounder 😳 Next time we’ll just wait for better weather through the Whale! Otherwise, fun to show our guests the ropes on a decent sail from Hope Town to Manjack.

Nothing like dropping anchor in my parents backyard & passing out in my childhood bedroom! Hi mom and dad. Awesome conditions these past few days for our hop from the Exumas to the Abacos. Even cooked beef stir fry for dinner last night! Full sails until about 6am this morning when the wind clocked around directly behind. Beautiful full moon all night long! Motored through the Whale right at sunrise, no issues. Feels good to be back where it all started a little over two years ago when we bought the boat here. Can’t believe we sailed to the DR and back just in the last year!

The most enjoyable sail day we’ve ever had??? Perfect steady beam wind AND our autopilot worked the whole time (for the first time ever). Staging at Highbourne for the night before our hop to Abaco.

Thank you Ragged Islands for some of the best weeks of our lives!! We’ll be back. As for our exit - looong day for not that many miles, but ya win some ya lose some. Our knockoff DR water pump belt finally gave out on us so Kyle sewed it back together FIVE times to keep us kicking. Sailed a lazy 2.5-3kts most of the way and limped into the anchorage on the belts last leg. We found a lawnmower belt to get us into George Town, fingers crossed she’ll hold. Thanks Vahi for the action shots!

Suuuper pleasant beam sail, caught 3 barracuda the size of fourth graders. Timed the cut POORLY but muscled our way through - note to selves, start timing cuts with the tide 🙄 Some big boi bull sharks greeted us, Kyle got swimmers ear, and we took some drone photos for Vahi’s listing

Little sunset booze cruise! Pulled into an empty anchorage and had to jump in 🦈⛵️

Another little motor sail hop north for more playing and fishing w Vahi

Nice little motor sail up to Hog Cay after spending a few awesome days between the Raggeds 🐠

Great Inagua > The Raggeds We were looking forward to a perfect beam wind the whole way but ended up on the nose first day / most of the night, oh well that’s the way she goes! Motor-sailed through the night and finally got a good angle around sunrise. Also a whale sighting at mile 100! Overall a pretty nice lil passage. Stoked to explore the Raggeds!

Redemption feels good!! Last year we did this passage and got SLAMMED by pretty gnarly conditions. We limped into Luperon, Dominican Republic where we stored the boat for hurricane season. When we returned in November, the rains had flooded our cockpit and overflowed into the cabin and it was pretty much worst case scenario - we even talked about quitting sailing. But after a month and a half of very hard work we officially sailed out of Luperon and pointed our bow northwest for the blue waters of the Bahamas again! We watched the first sunrise of 2025 complete with a double rainbow and dolphins flipping alongside us, not kidding!! Absolutely epic, a once in a lifetime memory for sure. Then two hours into our 31 hour crossing, our engine alarms started going off. lol of course. So we threw up the sails and said screw it, we’re sailors anyway! Kyle tracked down the problem under way but we ended up not even needing to turn it on again until we dropped anchor. Conditions all day were perfect and we cruised along at 7+ knots with 4-5ft following seas. It was so nice we even cooked fajitas for dinner! The wind picked up a bit around 9pm for a sportier ride but still nothing scary! We played frogger all night as we crossed the center of the channel with lots of cruise ships and freighters which was a little spooky but no close calls (except with the coast guard who snuck up on us no lights just before sunrise then continued on their way). On longer passages like this one we take turns at the helm with three hour watches. Even though conditions were super pleasant, our autopilot can’t handle following seas so we had to hand-steer the whole time which can be pretty brutal so the shorter shifts allow each other to get enough sleep while also not burning out at the helm. 31 hours at sea, 170 nautical miles. One for the freakin’ log books!! Feels amazing to be back in Bahamian waters.

Dayton > Somers to store Sweet Love for the season! Back to Regalo in the DR in just a few short weeks.

These mountain lake winds are something else! Strong gusts, but otherwise a pleasant downwind sail.

Holy guacamole, what a ride! After leaving Clarence Town in the early hours of 2/18 we had one of our best days of sailing over Crooked and Acklin Islands! We discovered a leak in our fuel hose around midnight which caused an emergency stop in Mayaguana for fuel and a quick repair. Left Mayaguana at 5pm with two other sailboats (sv Cherry Ripe & sv Unity) heading southwest around T&Cs. Super peaceful night of motor sailing. Then engine seized around 7am just west of the bank with no wind - we realized the fuel we got in Mayaguana was bad so Kyle bled the system and we were up and running again within two hours. The front we had been riding finally caught up to us around 1pm and hit us like a wall! 30kt winds and 6ft seas, yikes. Conditions stayed like that prettttty much all night which made for a very uncomfortable ride in our lil 34’ mono. To add to the fun, electronics went down around 3pm which meant no Navionics, running lights, limited radio communications, etc. Luckily we had our Garmin InReach to rely on coordinates and weather updates from my family. Finally made it into Luperon around 8:30am verrrry tired but so happy to be here! Feels great to have accomplished our longest and most challenging sail yet!

Beautiful sail along the coast today down to Clarence Town. Caught a huge mackerel but he got away 🎣

Checked out of the Bahamas & ready to head south! First stop - staging at Long Island to say goodbye to our crew. Lost steering for a few minutes due to a fun lil mistake when reinstalling the wheel after mounting our auto pilot so that was exciting 😅 Otherwise a lovely slow sail in the sunshine and calm seas.