Our summer was spent easing back into land life while making regular trips back to Charleston to do boat projects and check on things. We also experienced the unexpected loss of our dear friend, Lendy, to Covid, and Andy’s friend, Ryan, to colon cancer. We were friends with Lendy (and Glen) from church, and she…
The Steering Committee
A Joint Post by Andy and Karen (Karen) Hello friends! After a summer of hurricane-avoiding land-lubbing, Andy and I are preparing to return to the pirate life. Gratitude has been docked in Charleston for a few months now, and we’ve been busy fixing things. Like you do. We had our jib (foresail) taken down and…
Waiting Out (Another) Hurricane Season
Ok… It’s been a minute, hasn’t it? We glided into Charleston Harbor in mid May to wait out hurricane season. Charleston is not completely immune to hurricanes, but we’re in a reasonably-protected spot, and it makes our insurance happy, so it’ll have to do. Since then, we’ve been back and forth between home and the…
Crossing State Lines
After leaving Katy and Story in West Palm, Andy and I continued to make our way up the coast of Florida. We anchored in Ft. Pierce for one night and were again unimpressed. I think if you live in Ft. Pierce and own a fishing boat, it’s probably perfect. But if you live on a…
Poetry in Motion
On April 7 we boarded a plane for Ft. Lauderdale and got upgraded at the very last minute to First Class! (Score!) We were headed back to Gratitude to begin this year’s journey out of the Hurricane Belt. For weeks there had been much discussion of where we wanted to take Gratitude for hurricane season…
Hell and heaven: from Key West to Ft. Lauderdale
Since it’s been a minute since our last update, here’s a recap. Karen and I had to rush home recently to help coordinate care for my dad, which meant leaving Gratitude hanging on a mooring ball in Key West. This was far from optimal for several reasons, but we didn’t have a host of great…
Teaching an Old(er) Dog a New Trick
After living at sea for a couple of years, around Halloween 2020, I decided to step a bit out of my comfort zone and pursue my US Coast Guard Captain’s license. It strikes me as a bit odd that you can buy a large boat, climb aboard, and go more or less anywhere in the…
Sailing on to Key West (and into Crisis Response Mode)
When last we left you, we were aboard Gratitude in Islamorada in the Florida Keys. Our anchorage in Windley Key had good holding, nice shore access, and the water was clear and beautiful. My friend, Dan, and I got some spectacular fishing on a patch reef while we were there. (Karen: You can hook-n-cook at…
Florida Keys, Here We Come
Happy New Year, my friends! When we last wrote, it was the end of 2020 and the end of our summer/fall along the East Coast of the U.S. Soon Andy and I will celebrate our second anniversary of living like pirates on Gratitude. Here’s a quick update to catch you up on our most recent…
Cruising the Chesapeake, Part 3: Southbound Once More
Moving On – St. Michael’s and Southward A couple days after my friend Christine’s visit, we said a reluctant goodbye to Annapolis and turned Gratitude southeast toward St. Michael’s, MD. We left a day later than we had planned, resigning ourselves to a new route that did not include the Potomac. We’d really wanted to…