Category Archives: Where?

Places we’ve been, are presently at, or wish to go to.

Caution: Detour Ahead — Part Three

Our visit to Antietam had set us to thinking. Thinking more deeply about where and when would be the right set of circumstances to purchase another home. Not swallow the hook (give up cruising entirely and become landlubbers once again), but establish a base to operate from between trips on Eagle Too. Keeping the boat was important to us. We know we’ll eventually grow too old to continue this Life On The Hook™, but we hope that’s still years in our future.

Maybe the home we’d recently seen was a good fit for us. But the numbers just didn’t quite work. Some calculating told me we’d need to sell Eagle Too to pull it off. And we just weren’t prepared to consider that. So we put the idea away and looked again at the weather with an eye toward departure.

Then I received a momentous email. When we’d visited the model home at Antietam, we’d left our contact information with the sales agent. “Let us know if any good deals come up,” we said, or words to that effect. Well apparently, our ship had just come in. The agent was contacting us to tell us that the builder was close to finishing the house we were interested in, and wanted it sold. So they were dropping the price $10,000, as well as giving us another $10,000 in cash to use for closing costs. I’d already done the math, and had a pretty good idea that this would tip the balance in our favor. We could swing the house, and keep the boat as well.

“Throw in the complete appliance package, including refrigerator, washer and dryer, and put blinds in all the windows, and you have a deal,” we told them, with an eye toward conserving as much of our cash as possible.

“Done,” they replied. “In addition, we’ll pay your first year’s Homeowner’s Association dues,” the sales agent added, icing the cake for us.

So it looks like we’re buying a house. It’s about a 90% done deal at this point. We’re just waiting to hear back from the underwriters regarding our mortgage. We easily pre-qualified, but it won’t be official until we get the final thumbs up from the bank.

So what does this mean for the crew of Eagle Too? Well, we currently have a preliminary closing date of January 14^th, 2019. It will probably take the rest of the winter and the following spring to get our stuff out of storage and into the house, and take care of setting things up. We’re guessing that by the time we’re finally settled, it will be close to hurricane season again, which means we’ll once again be waiting it out here in Pensacola. But maybe next fall we’ll be able to head out once again, for a trip of two or three months. If we can pull it off, it should be a nice compromise and an interesting life, spending some quality boat time in the Keys and maybe the Bahamas, but with a nice home with all the comforts a dirt dwelling provides to return to.

Stay tuned. We’ll let you know as soon as we hear from the bank…

Caution: Detour Ahead — Part Two

2 Replies

The area on the northwest side of Pensacola has grown explosively in the last few years. The primary driver has been Navy Federal Credit Union’s decision some years ago to build a sprawling corporate campus there for their southern headquarters. The complex has grown to over a dozen large office buildings where thousands of people work. The sleepy little two lane state road through the area is in the final stages of being converted to a four lane divided highway with direct Interstate 10 access, and an adjoining section of land (640 acres, or one square mile) that the Navy has used for helicopter flight training is in the early stages of being converted to a major industrial park. People have flocked to the area for the better-than-average wages, good schools and semi-rural surroundings, and homebuilders have taken note, with new subdivisions popping up like spring flowers.

It had been quite a while since Rhonda and I had visited the area, and with little to do while waiting for the weather to improve enough to let us start the trek south for the season, we decided to take a drive one afternoon and see what was new.

With no specific destination in mind, we just let whim and impulse dictate our course as we wandered along rural back roads, investigating all the new construction. In the back of our minds was the recognition that while our Life On The Hook™ had no set end date, we knew we wouldn’t be liveaboard cruisers forever. At some point, maybe in a couple of years, or maybe four of five, we’d want to buy a house and reestablish a home base rather than live as full time gypsies of the sea.

A sign caught our eye. It was a new gated community called Antietam. It sat at the top of a ridge with a western exposure. We loved the location. Most of our lives it seems the homes we’ve owned have come with water and drainage problems, and high on our list of must haves if we ever moved back ashore was a place on high ground with good drainage. If you’re at all familiar with Florida, you probably know that ridge-top property is almost non-existent. At 130+ feet of elevation, Antietam practically sat on a mountain top by Florida standards.

The name resonated with us. Rhonda’s family had strong ties to northern Virginia. Her grandfather’s farm had sat on the edge of the Bull Run battlefield. A development named after a major Civil War battle, with streets named after famous generals, had a familiar feel.

The model home was open. We stopped and took a look. And we learned that Antietam was Northwest Florida’s first Freedom community, a development concept D R Horton designed for what they termed “active adults.” Briefly, the basic idea was to allow the homeowners to travel extensively without having to worry about their homes. All lawn service was provided by the Home Owner’s Association. The houses were all built as Smart Homes, fully internet connected with remotely monitored intrusion and alarm systems. And as a gated community, it was access controlled. So you could just lock the door and leave on extended travel with no worries.

It was as if it had been designed just for our needs.

We were blown away by the model. Somewhat small and almost non-descript from the outside, it opened up to enormous interior spaces with room to spare to swallow everything we’ve had in storage for four years. At just a little over 2,000 ft², it felt larger than the 2,500 ft² home we’d sold in 2014. A house with the same floorplan was already under construction at the highest point on the ridge.

It got us to thinking. Maybe this was what we would want when the day came to move back ashore. We could still cruise, maybe two to four months at a time, but with a comfortable home to return to. A home that we knew would be well looked after in our absence.

We returned to Eagle Too and pondered the possibilities. Now probably wasn’t the time. The boat was ready to head south as soon as the weather broke. We really planned to keep cruising fulltime for at least a few more years. And the numbers didn’t quite work out. The price was just a little bit out of our reach. Maybe we’d check back next season, or the season after that. The most desirable ridge-top lots would all be gone by then, of course, and we’d end up further down the hill, but we’d still have the Freedom Community amenities.

We put the idea aside and refocused on preparing to leave.

Then my phone chimed, and an email arrived that profoundly altered our plans…

Workups and Breakdowns

Ditch Sense

4 Replies

I was going to call this post “Bitchin’ Ditching,” but with four active tropical systems in the Atlantic right now, I just couldn’t make light of what really is a serious subject.

Like many (hopefully all) cruisers, we carry a ditch bag with some essential stuff in it that we think we might need if we ever have to abandon ship. And like many (hopefully NOT all) cruisers, we’ve probably overlooked a bunch of things that we’d need in an actual emergency. We’re working on that, trying to add some things to make the bag more useful. But one thing I know we didn’t have right was its location. Our ditch bag lived on the back corner of a shelf in our aft cabin—a spot that would have required one of us to crawl back on our hands and knees and move other things to reach it in an emergency.

And then I saw a picture of someone else’s ditch bag. It was under their companionway ladder. It was a palm-smack-in-the-middle-of-the-forehead moment. So guess where the new home for our ditch bag is.

To be fair, we’d already been living on the boat for a year before we bought our bag, and this area had already become home to some other items. Since our ditch bag was something we hoped we’d never need, it seemed OK to stick it in an out of the way spot. But now that we’ve been cruising for three seasons and have several OMG weather experiences under our belts (or under our inflatable life jackets, I should say), the need to be able to grab-n-go in a crisis has moved up the priority list considerably.

Another thing I like about this spot is that if we ever end up being boarded by the Coast Guard for a safety inspection, our emergency strobe and distress day signal are easy to reach.

If you’ve been along for the ride long enough, you may remember we wrote in the post Overcoming Tyranny about how we hate being held hostage to arbitrary expiration dates and thus don’t depend on flares to meet our USCG emergency signaling requirements.

Space blankets, a sharp knife, some sturdy shears, a day’s worth of bottled water, some energy bars, copies of our USCG documentation, insurance and passports, a bright flashlight—just a few of the items in our bag or on the list to be added before we head out again this fall. So what’s in your ditch bag? And more importantly, where do you keep it?

It’s Summertime, and the Livin’ is Easy—Ferries & Forts

Galley Notes—Stove Topper

2 Replies

Anyone who owns a boat knows that anything with the word “marine” associated with it commands a premium price. But did you know that a lot of the pieces and parts onboard are actually the same as the ones used in motor homes and travel trailers? It makes sense, since we tell people that our boat is basically an RV that floats to help them understand what it’s like to be a liveaboard cruiser. From water pumps and plumbing parts to locker latches and tank level gauges, power cables and hoses to LED lights and galley items, there’s a wide range of components that you can save a bundle on if you shop for them at your local RV store rather than at West Marine.

For example, the Seaward Princess propane stove on our Hunter 376 was also used in motor homes. So when we went looking for a stove top cutting board (which Rhonda won’t let me under any circumstances do any cutting on!), we found one at our local RV dealer for less than $40 that was custom made to fit.

I might not be allowed to chop and slice on it, but it does really extend the counter surface while we’re doing prep and cleanup, and it just looks great. So if you haven’t tried it yet, take a run down to your local RV dealer and wander around their parts department for a while. I think you’ll be amazed at all the things you’ll see that you’ll recognize and/or could use onboard, and you’ll be pleasantly surprised at the cost compared to marine store pricing.

Eagle Too Gets Some Bling

2 Replies

While in St Petersburg earlier this year, we noticed a boat on our dock that sported a long row of flag decals running along the hull just below the toe rail. Did they represent places the boat had been, we wondered? It would have had to be one well-traveled boat to have hit all those countries though, because most were European nations. and quite a few were landlocked countries. It sparked our interest.

Encountering the owners one day, we asked about the flags. It turned out that they owned a travel agency, and the flags represented the countries they had visited in the course of their business-related travels.

But they weren’t places they had actually sailed to.

It started us thinking though. How cool would it be to begin collecting and displaying the flags of the places we’d sailed our boat to! A quick online search turned up Flag Sticker Shop, which offers affordable and easy to apply UV resistant flag stickers for most countries. We decided our criteria would be that we’d display flags for the countries we had actually sailed our boat to, in the order in which we visited them.

So now Eagle Too has a little bling to show off. We think she wears them really well. I wonder how many more flags we might be ordering in the years ahead? We have room for quite a few!

Getting Things Lined Up

Starboard Side

Port Side

Night Games

2 Replies

During our final night passage on our return trip to Pensacola, in order to reduce the anxiety caused by all the thunderstorms we encountered, we started playing a little game we called “I Can’t Wait To…” It worked like this. Rhonda and I would take turns saying, “I can’t wait to go to (blank) and have (blank).” We’d name one of our favorite restaurants in Pensacola and the meal we were most looking forward to having there. I guess it was partly a reflection of the fact that no matter the charms of the Bahamas, the cuisine leaves a lot to be desired. A few months of conch fritters, conch salad, cheeseburgers, French fries and baked macaroni and cheese, the most commonly available dishes in the islands, left us with some pretty severe food cravings.

Now you wouldn’t think that a little town like Pensacola would offer enough dining options to make the game interesting. But it actually lasted most of the night. When either of us would name a restaurant and meal, we’d both go “Mmmmm,” and then mentally savor the food for a period of time. Sometimes the other person would continue the game after just a few minutes. Other times 15 or 20 minutes would silently pass before the next submission. But regardless, it kept a smile on our faces all through the night, during some pretty unpleasant conditions.

We’ve only been back in town a little over 48 hours, but we’ve already checked three spots off our “I can’t wait to…” list. For lunch the first day, we went to the Oar House for their excellent fresh shrimp baskets. Last night, which was Gallery Night in Pensacola, the monthly downtown street festival, we hit the Sonny’s BBQ food truck for some savory pulled pork. And this morning, we made the hike up to Polonza Bistro for their weekend brunch and some of their excellent Cervantes frittatas.

One with grits and toast, and one with potatoes and a biscuit, please!

We’ll have to start pacing ourselves. At this rate, we’ll complete the entire night’s list in just a few weeks! #It’sGreatToBeHome

That’s A Wrap

2 Replies

Two thousand seventy-nine nautical miles traveled. Three hundred thirty-four hours spent motoring. Two hundred twenty-three gallons of diesel fuel burned. Six hundred gallons of seawater turned into fresh water for drinking, cooking, bathing. Over a dozen islands, Keys and Cays visited. A mainsail repair, a broken topping lift, a deflated dinghy air deck. And of course, a shattered kneecap. But on June 15^th at 9:20 AM, we tied up to the fuel dock at Palafox Pier & Yacht Harbor in Pensacola, Florida, and our 2017/2018 cruising season officially drew to a close.

It’s been a hell of a season. We made new friends, faced new challenges, visited new places, took thousands of pictures and created some wonderful memories. But for the next four or five months, we’ll be waiting out the bulk of hurricane season here in our hometown. The time won’t be idle. After over seven months away, Eagle Too is dirty and a little tired. We’ll be spending a lot of time in the weeks and months ahead cleaning, repairing, upgrading. Getting ready for our next season of cruising and whatever adventures life has in store for us.

Eagle Too and her crew have so far traveled over 6,500 nautical miles, with many more hopefully still to come. For those of you who have traveled with us on some or all of that journey, either in person or virtually via this blog, we’re glad to have you along and we hope we’ll stay connected in the future. While we may not be actively cruising over the next few months, we plan to try to write more about our cruising experiences and lessons and sharing useful info for those who may be preparing to follow in our wake. After all, it’s not pictures of pretty sunsets that prepare you for adventure, but hard information about what to expect and how others dealt with the unanticipated.

Has it been an easy seven months? Not at all. But I recently read a quote by Henry David Thoreau that spoke to me. It said, “There are none happy in the world but beings who enjoy a freely vast horizon.” To me, the worst thing possible is a boring life. But if there’s one thing we can confidently say about this Life On The Hook™, it’s that while it is at times difficult, uncomfortable, even frightening, it is hardly ever boring. And the horizons it offers are truly vast.

That’s all for now. We’re going to take a few days to relax and decompress from some pretty harrowing, storm plagued ocean passages. If you find yourselves in the Pensacola area, please look us up. Till next time, Eagle Too out.

Weather Karma

1 Reply

It wasn’t much more than six or eight weeks ago that I was smugly telling my brother that I could count on one hand the number of rainy days we’d experienced since leaving Pensacola last November. While the folks back home were being soaked by an endless succession of cold fronts, we were living in a climatic bubble in St Petersburg, where some curious quirk of geography brings endless sun. In fact, at one time the St Petersburg Evening Independent, the town’s afternoon newspaper, offered copies for free after any day that the sun didn’t shine. Over its 76 years of publication, they only had to stand by their “sunshine guarantee” three or four times a year.

Even once we left St Pete and finally started heading south, good weather seemed to follow us. We were pinned a few times by some blustery days, but hardly ever had to deal with wet weather.

Everything changed on the 1^st of May. The day after arriving in Salt Cay, Long Island, the sky turned cloudy and threatening, with occasional rumbles of thunder, and it’s stayed that way ever since. Four weeks later, we’re holed up at Bimini Sands Marina while heavy weather generated by TS Alberto blows through. During those four weeks, we’ve been dogged by squalls, chased by thunderstorms, besieged by blustery winds, and tossed about by swells and chop, forcing us to seek refuge in marinas to get some relief. We’ve had a boat near us hit by lightning, ridden out 35 knot gusts, and sat at anchor trying to sleep while the boat pitched up and down at least five feet. I’m not really sure where my sunglasses are as I haven’t needed them in weeks, and I believe our tans are starting to wash off.

I think we’re experiencing weather karma. Some cosmic retribution for being so smug about how fabulous things were initially.

It’s currently blowing 15 knots gusting to 25 with occasional heavy rain, compliments of Alberto. Our best guess is that it will be another couple of days before things calm down enough to let us resume our journey homeward. Yesterday afternoon we walked over to look at the entrance to the marina, and watched breaking waves sweeping into the channel.

A center console fishing boat nosing its way out was launched at a 45 degree angle by the surf. Not a chance we’d try to push our way out through a swell like that. Today is Memorial Day, and the seas are supposed to be running 5 to 8 feet in the Gulf Stream. But they’re calling for two foot seas and 10 knots of SE wind by Wednesday, so we’re making preparations to head back across to Florida. I think we’ll try crossing from here to Fowey Rocks near Miami, and then hang a left in the Hawk Channel to start working our way down the Keys. It’s not the route we would have initially picked, but the weather has pushed us further north than we’d normally want to be for a Gulf Stream crossing.

But that’s a concern for another day. For now, we have some good books on our Kindles, we can pick up TV and FM radio from Miami, and being plugged into shore power means it’s cool and dry onboard since the air conditioning is running, so I think we’ll just have a couple more fruity rum drinks, relax, and wait for the sun to come back out. I mean, it has to eventually, right?