Salty Kisses

family sailing adventure blog with vlog

social distancing hand wave

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It’s been a while since I’ve written on my blog, in my kids’ words, things have been a bit cray cray (crazy).

Abeona has sold and she’s left a hole in our hearts but it was time to move on. We sold our house in Morrill, Maine and built a new house in Northport (Maine) a whole whopping 20 minutes away. Shortly after the completion of our 1000 sq ft house Carl got a job out of the country on a large luxury sailboat. It was really sucky living away from each other and 6 months in I just couldn’t do it any longer. Carl was scheduled to be in New Zealand for 6 months for a yard period with his job so the kids and packed up and joined him.

our house in Maine

Auckland was amazing, we lived with all the crew and had a professional chef cooking 3 meals a day for us. What a dream!!!

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lifting keel, we got one, cry if you don’t

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Our buddy boat Sea Spice lifted anchor a few minutes before us at our cosy anchorage in South Caicos (Turks and Caicos). They hadn’t been more than 10 minutes around the point before they radioed us:

“….garbage, this is garbage…”

We could still see the tip of their mast rolling around like crazy behind the headland.

Yikes!

High fiving each other for we had chosen a different route.

The coveted short cut.

Abeona has a lifting keel, if I’ve failed to mention this detail in the past, she can go from 7’ draft to 4’ with the push of a button (hydraulic). [Read More…]

… and then there are good days – exploring a Dominican Republic National Park

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“I soo scarr-red” – Crew

As we slowly idled our dinghy into the dark, the kids were screaming with what looked like bats swarming around us. It was dark, stinky and clostrophic. Crew broke into a cry and we knew it was time to chuck her in reverse and make a hasty retreat. As we exited we found out that they were actually small birds and not bats after all. This was the best day EVER!

From my last post you could tell my heart was in the gutter, being swept away with yesterdays trash from the sidewalk.  But today, TODAY all is well in the world again. [Read More…]

plans made in the sand

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We had spent the last 10 hours rolling around off Puerto Rico, the head (toilet)  had overflowed numerous times, soaking the floor with its soupy pee mess then laying to rest in our shallow bilges. Haunting us with its stank for days to come.

Before the sunset that night the girls decided they would corner me in the cockpit while I was on watch. The hot topic was: “how a house is better than a boat”. A few notable points raised were: [Read More…]

marina life

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A few weeks ago I found myself begging the staff at our marina for dockage AGAIN, our month was up but we had a pretty sad looking motor. Our injection pump was in the US along with Carl who was delivering a yacht to Newport, RI, the kids and I were holding down the fort (and cockroaches and ants) while those two major components were elsewhere.

It had taken me begging everyday for a week to get a spot at the famous Nanny Cay Marina (British Virgin Islands) and now we needed another 2 weeks. Luckily the Spring Regatta had finished and the marina was finally showing some bare patches. Success! We weren’t kicked out! [Read More…]