Recently the pace of our sailing life has slowed down. We’ve definitely turned a corner from discovering new places to digging deeper into our favorite spots, which means fewer long passages and longer stay overs. We returned home from St. Martin in late January for several big events. The first was a diving trip to…
Author: Karen Crowe
The Great Escape from Bonaire
First, Time with Friends October 31 means Halloween at home, but for Andy and Karen in 2022 it meant two things: The END of hurricane season and the BEGINNING of a looooonnnnng day of travel! We awoke at 3:45 a.m. to catch a 4:30 a.m. Uber to the airport for a 7 a.m. flight to…
Hurricane Season in Bonaire
(A joint post by Andy and Karen) (Karen) Greetings from Gratitude! We hope all of our sailing friends had an uneventful hurricane season, and that all of our land friends have enjoyed their summer and fall. Gratitude spent hurricane season in a new location: Bonaire, part of the ABCs (along with Aruba and Curacao) in…
Some Work, Some Play: Sint Maarten
Ok, it’s been a hot minute since we posted about our sailing adventures, and we’ve covered a lot of ocean since our last post! Time to catch up. We last left you in Sint Maarten, where we hung out for much of the spring. During this time, we hosted some more friends, did some work…
The Thorny Path We Swore We’d Never Sail Again
If you’ve been reading our blog since the early days, you’ll remember our chronicle of traversing the Thorny Path to Windward – where sailors fight the headwinds and seas to get from the Bahamas to the top of Eastern Caribbean, around Anguilla or St. Martin. The traditional path is Bahamas-Turks and Caicos-Dominican Republic-Puerto Rico-US Virgin…
Good Times in George Town
When we last posted, we had finished up a glorious experience of the Exumas and were headed down to George Town, in the southern Exumas. George Town is a cruisers’ Mecca, with a large beautiful harbor, easy anchoring, the perfect beach bar, and large grocery and auto parts stores for provisioning and repairs. There’s a…
Exuma Cays
When we were last in the Bahamas, in 2019, we sailed east to the Exumas from Nassau. This year we traveled west from Eleuthera, which allowed us to sail deep water in the Exuma Sound instead of nervously eyeballing our way through the coral heads of the Yellow Bank. Highbourne Cay was a day away…
Ode to Possessions Lost at Sea
You sink very quickly, hand tools, such as yesterday’s 13mm socket,But not as fast as the iPhone 8 out of my backpack pocket! You fooled me once, replacement davit winch screw;But the front cockpit cushions got me TWICE! Lost not one but TWO! Goodbye, new blue sun hat.Good riddance, 25 pounds of body fat! It…
Changes in Latitudes: South to Eleuthera
When we last left you, we had just reinstalled our mainsail and were looking forward to using it to head south, towards Eleuthera. I am happy to report that the main is working great! So far, at least. We rose early to leave Little Harbor early on Friday morning, January 21. Alas, about 45 minutes…
Ups and Downs: Cruising The Abacos
“You are now free to wander aimlessly about the Abacos.” This is the sign-off we hear daily from Will, who co-moderates the Abacos VHF Radio Net on Channel 68 at 8:15 a.m. Wandering aimlessly seems to me an excellent description of cruising in these northern Bahamian islands. Like the British Virgin Islands, the Abacos lie…