All in a good day’s chaos! The new transmission is finally in, and the world feels right again. Celebrated the victory with a solid glass of whiskey and a toast to Neptune—because why not keep the sea gods happy? Now comes the real challenge: putting the boat back together and scrubbing off the evidence of our mechanical mayhem. Fingers crossed the shakedown cruise doesn’t turn into a breakdown cruise.

Yeah, that’s definitely not the quick-and-done kind of job I was hoping for. What started as a shifter cable swap turned into a full-on transmission surgery—classic boat ownership, right? One minute you’re tightening a bolt, the next you’re elbows-deep thinking, “Well, here we go… but better to handle it now than have the engine decide to take a nap while we’re dodging ferries in the East River. Reliability beats drama any day, especially on the water. Not the kickoff to summer season I imagined, but hopefully smooth sailing ahead is worth the wrench time. Fix what needs fixin’, and sail on.

Great day at Sail GP today in NYC. Awesome racing with a well deserved overall win for Spain. These boats are insane… still would love to get onboard for a spin

Post-Bahamas boat rehab is goin’ full throttle! After four rounds of “what’s that weird black smoke?”, we finally pinned it on our turbo. New one’s in, oil’s changed, and the engine’s purring like a spoiled kitten. Now we’re on to tackling the mysterious shifting issue—step one: swap the shifter cable and pray to the boating gods. Fingers crossed and tools flying!

Another quite eventful day today. Remember the boat that ended up on the beach yesterday (see yesterday’s post)? They towed it back out into the anchorage to just put it about 30 feet from my boat. Who in his right mind f…. does that? After trying to reason with the guy and than swearing at him I decided to pickup anchor and move. This is not ok in my book. If you anchor near another boat be respectful and leave them their room to swing and not have them struggle on deck to put out fenders. All good now and I enjoy the last night here before moving on to Cape May. What better is there than to hunkering down below with the good old kerosine stove going for heat and watching your fave YT peeps (shout out to Bret and Marisa who we met in Hope Town).

This tornado warning for Norfolk that came out of the blue is not what I wanted to see for my anchorage. A tornado, really? I knew it would be blustery but a tornado is a whole different animal. Day started off with a neighboring boat on the beach already and 30 kts of wind again. Until noon winds were building to 40+ and a Tornado warning was issued for the area. I let out more anchor chain since re-anchoring alone in these conditions was a no go. By noon I had the engine going to give the hard working anchor that was slowly, very slowly dragging a bit of a relief. Than by about 1 the rain started and it was pouring until about 5. Now the waters are calm (for the moment) and I can breathe a sigh of relief, open a beer and relax. Only casualty of the day was our beloved lamp that toppled out of its charger in a gust and broke. I hope the next hrs will stay calm before the next blow tomorrow.

Early morning start with a beautiful sunrise. No wind, rounded Cape Hatteras at sunset, most likely have a broken turbo charger on the engine but who needs a turbo anyways. All in all a long overnighter from Cape Lookout to Norfolk, VA. Not the prettiest anchorage but home for the next 2 days. Now urgent food and a nap.

Not a good night at Cape Lookout. 40+ kts sustained winds in the last hr and swell is kicking up. So fat the anchor is holding fingers crossed it stays that way🤞🏻🤞🏻🤞🏻 Just had to add a second snubber just in case. Definitely not a lot of sleep tonight. Let’s hope it’ll let off soon. Not loving these conditions