Sailing With Gratitude

Fort Lauderdale, Part 1 (Andy) We limped into Harbour Towne Marina in Dania beach on one engine to have some repairs and upgrades made to Gratitude. There were quite a few small repairs we were having done by the qualified team at Just Catamarans under Laurent’s supervision. We wanted to upgrade our house batteries and…

Day 7 (Thursday, April 30) (We left you with a bit of a cliffhanger at the end of the last post. Here’s a brief recap before we continue… Gratitude is hove-to, moving at about 1 knot of speed, between the Bahamas and Cuba. After a glorious FOUR hours of sleep, I awaken to the alarm…

(This post is the second of three chronicling our trip from the USVI to Ft. Lauderdale, FL during the coronavirus pandemic of 2020. Part 1, covering the first three days, can be found here.) Day 4 (Monday, April 27, 2020) (Karen) We see three ships on Day 4. Two show up on our chart in…

Recently we completed our biggest sailing adventure yet: A 1200-mile, 9-day-long ocean passage from the U.S. Virgin Islands to Miami., FL. I posted a few brief updates on Facebook as we went, but we also both kept notes about the trip. We’d done overnight sails before, but nothing on this scale. We hadn’t planned on…

We recently left the USVI to make our way back to the mainland of the U.S., but before we left we had a few adventures on the magnificent island of St. John. We did not exhaust all the possibilities, because of COVID shutdowns, but we did get a nice little sampling of hiking, snorkeling, and…

(Written jointly this time) Karen: I know we said we’d next be giving you Part 2 of our Caribbean Catch Up posts. And we will! I’ve already started pulling all the photos together and editing them for blog-fitness. But we have a current update on our travels that we thought important to share. We’re leaving…

Hi friends! Below is an account I wrote of our week sailing in the British Virgin Islands, in early March of 2020. This was, of course, before the Coronavirus crisis had really changed much in this part of the world. The BVI has now closed its borders to all foreigners until at least September 1,…

Hi friends and family! We’ve been quiet here lately. It’s been hard to know what to say that would not just add to all the noise out there right now. But today I had an idea for a post that I hope will increase our general sense of connection with one another. So I present…

We finally – finally! – pulled out of Simpson Bay in St. Maarten in early February 2020, after over a month there making boat repairs and upgrades. What a joy it was to sail again! We had 15 knot winds on the beam (hitting our sail at a right angle, which propels the boat nicely)…

We have had some boat projects that have kept us in St. Maarten for several weeks. I haven’t really minded – I really like St. Maarten, and I would stop here again. But after almost a month at the marina, we were getting itchy sails. So we decided, since it would be another week before…