The Lazy Sailors Arrive in STT

June 5, 2020 - Day 7 We left Clarence Town, Long Island, Bahamas at 0800. This time we were taking a different tack. Instead of sailing down the Bahamas Chain, we headed Northeast towards Bermuda. This would allow us to sail with the motor off and make our way farther east before we made the turn south. Our goal was to get close to 65 W longitude and then make a right turn headed straight for St Thomas. It worked, as soon as we were offshore a mile or two, David and Joe put up the sails, turned off the motor and we made 8-10 knots in 6-8 foot seas for 36 hours; however, all this great sailing made it uncomfortable down below. During the first 24 hours, Ashton and I stayed on my bed (aft berth) and ate peanut butter crackers and drank ginger ale. We only saw the guys if they came down for bathroom breaks and happened to peek in on us. We stayed at a 15 - 20 degree heel (leaning that far over for 24 hours) and I ended up sleeping in the space between the bed and the drawers because I couldn’t stay on the bed. All of the sheets and covers made their way into the corner below where I was sleeping as I kept fighting to get back into the bed and stay there. 

June 6, 2020 - Day 8  It was literally a rough night for all of us. Ashton and I down below trying to sleep hanging on and David and Joe taking watch all night. As I heard tale from the guys, when it was one’s turn to sleep, he would take the safety tether and tie himself to a wench to keep relatively upright and not fall while sleeping. In the later afternoon, I was finally able to make it up on deck. Ashton was still down below, but I asked David if he could flatten out the boat some if they could so I could move around. Apparently, no-one had thought to do this earlier and to make the ride a little smoother - oops. Lesson learned for the next time. After getting back up on deck, I was able to let David and Joe both sleep for a bit and get back into the watch rotation. During this time we made it to a little past 66 W longitude and so we started making our turn south. By doing this we lost most of our wind, and by the next morning we were motor sailing again. It would be the last time of the trip that we had the motor off. 

June 7, 2020 - Day 9  As we headed south, the waves started laying down and the the winds became lighter and lighter. Although we were motor sailing, it was nice being able to move around the boat and eat something other than peanut butter crackers. The three of us still took turns (Ashton was still down for the count) with both day and night watch, but we were getting back into our passage rhythm. Of course we couldn’t just keep on with the smooth sailing … Towards the end of my night watch, the autopilot started alarming at me. I was able to get it going again two times, but the third time it just wouldn’t stop. Joe was next on watch and awake, so I had him come up to look at it. He said he would work in and I could head on down. 

June 8, 2020 - Day 10 When I arrived on deck for my sunrise shift, David told me that the autopilot was dead and we would have to hand steer the for the last 500 nm. Luckily, there was almost no wind and the seas were becoming like glass - it was almost eerie how flat it was in the middle of the Atlantic Ocean. Having planned for no wind at this time of year, we had plenty of diesel on board and we weren’t worried about running out, and as long as we kept the RPMs less than 2200 we would arrive in St Thomas with no worries. We didn’t break any speed record this way, but we figured we would get between 120-140 nm a day and arrive in St Thomas early morning on June 11. This was also the day I was able to coax Ashton back up on deck to enjoy the sunshine. A deck shower, brushing her teeth and eating some soup made her a whole new person. We continued to take our three hour shifts and with Ashton back in the mix we each only had to do one night shift. At this point, we all had our favorite shifts: Ashton was 8p -11p, Joe 11p- 2a, David 2a - 5a and I would take the sunrise shift 5a - whenever I was tired of watching the horizon.

June 9, 2020 - Day 11 It’s Ashton’s Birthday!! We were supposed to have already arrived in St Thomas by now, but our few extra days in the Bahamas put us behind. So we celebrated with no bake chocolate, peanut butter cookies and a bottle of bubbly in the middle of the Atlantic. This was also the day that we hit a major milestone, we were less than 200 nm miles from St Thomas. The end was “almost” in sight.

June 10, 2020 - Day 12 Same day, second verse. Today was just like yesterday. No wind, flat seas, no fish (except for flying fish - they were everywhere, including on our deck), and no dolphins. However, we did start seeing some birds that are native to the Virgin Islands and Puerto Rico area. We also started hearing calls from the Coast Guard in Puerto Rico. That had everyone smiling. In addition, we crossed the mark of less than 100 nm miles to get to our destination. If everything went as planned we would be sailing into the Virgin Islands at sunrise the next morning!! It was so hard to sleep knowing we would finally be home in just a few hours.  

June 11, 2020 - Day 13 I woke up before my shift, thinking that David could probably use an extra hand. There had been a couple of squalls during the night and although it gave the decks a good wash down, he didn’t get much sleep. I took over the helm around 4a so he could catch a few zzzz’s before we got much closer. I could see the lights of St Thomas in the distance!! After about an hour, the radar alarm started going off. It was telling me that there were multiple targets directly in front of me … it was all of the little islands in Pilsbury Sound. Yee-freaking-haw!!!! We were almost there!! I slowed us down for a few minutes to allow the sun some time to rise before trying to navigate through this channel that we had never done in our own boat. The final sunrise was spectacular!! As we continued on into Red Hook and our slip at American Yacht Harbor, we called the marina to let them know we were coming in. They met us on the dock and helped us get tied up. First things first - we all jumped off the boat to stand on solid ground for the first time in nearly two weeks. After that - all the food that I didn’t have to cook: Latte’s in Paradise for breakfast, Tap and Still for lunch and ITP (Island Time Pub) Pizza for dinner. Eating out had never felt so good.  

Over the next few days we started re-exploring our new island home. I had to remember how to drive on the left, we needed to shop for fresh groceries, we got Joe back to the airport and on home (he’d been away for nearly a month) and finally took a trip to the beach before taking Ashton out to celebrate her birthday. It was a crazy, wild ride getting from Kemah Texas to St Thomas USVI, but we did it!! We were FINALLY HOME!!

Here is a video of all of the above events from Ashton’s perspective-on her YouTube channel. Give it a subscribe to see more of our lazy shenanigans.

Until Next Time,

Cindy, S/V Verano

Miami to Long Island

Saturday May 30 - We left Miami at sunup headed towards the Gulf Stream. This time we were going to cross the Gulf Stream on purpose so we could get into Northwest Providence Channel in the northern Bahamas. This would set our course to make it make it to the Eastern side of the Bahamas and then onto St Thomas. David and Joe took the first watch and Ashton and I took a nap. By that evening we were in our first new country on our own boat. WE WERE IN THE BAHAMAS!!! There were ships anchored right off the channel where the water depth went from 16,000 feet deep to 45 feet. They weren’t but a few miles away and it was an awesome sight. Since COVID-19 had shut down the cruise industry, the cruise ships needed somewhere to be and it seemed like the Bahamas was that place.

Sunday May 31 - We continued motor sailing through the Northwest Providence Channel headed towards Clarence Town, Long Island, Bahamas. Unfortunately we couldn’t stop and explore any of the beautiful islands because of COVID-19. We had however, applied to the Bahamian government requesting safe passage and we had their approval to pull in at a couple of islands for fuel, provisions and rest if needed. We had to keep to a specific time frame and we couldn’t get off the boat.

Monday June 1 - Our journey continued to take us past so many Bahamian Islands that we weren’t allowed to make a stop, but we made plans to come bak up once this COVID mess was over and vacation on our boat in the Bahamas. This whole part of the journey was beautiful with it’s sunrises, sunsets and viewing the islands from a distance. We also knew we weren’t alone as we passed tankers and more cruise ships. Night watches were easy with the wind and waves and the conditions in the Channel. 

Tuesday June 2 - We arrived at Clarence Town, Long Island at 0900. We pulled up to the fuel dock to refill our diesel tanks in order to make the rest of the voyage since we would mostly be motor sailing. We weren’t allowed to get off the boat; however, we were given permission to sit at anchor in the harbor and swim for a bit in the beautiful Bahamian waters. We had weak cell service, but we were able to text and call our family and friends. It was my sister Stephanie’s  birthday so we sent pictures and lots of love. I made lunch and put up the the 20 pounds of ice that we were able to score from the fuel dock (those who know me know how much I love my iced tea). It had been decided that this would be a fuel/lunch stop only, so around 1300 we pointed our bow towards Mayaguana and set off. 

Wednesday June 3 - We had been bobbing around the Atlantic Ocean headed southeast for about 12 hours when David came below and woke me up. We hadn’t waited for an updated weather route and it came in 2300 on Tuesday. The report said we should wait to leave for a couple more days because we would be slogging and bouncing and making very little headway in the direction we were going with the wind and the waves. And the prediction was totally correct. In this 12 hours we had only made about 60 miles. The nearest island was Crooked Island and we weren’t allowed to anchor there and we didn’t have a way to get fuel at Cooked Island. David and I talked it through and decided that again, the most prudent course of action would be to turn around and head back. This time to Long Island where we would wait for a much better weather window. It was as sloggy coming back to Long Island as it was going out and by the time we arrived back at Clarence Town, we were all exhausted. It had been a full 24 hours since we left this place. We again called our families to let them know our plan and took naps. A nice bonus to us being “stuck” in the Bahamas for a few days, we got to run the generator and have air conditioning for a night and we all slept like babies. 

Thursday June 4 - Since we had permission to be in the Bahamas for rest and fuel, we were comfortable hanging out on anchor for another day. We had a big breakfast, made homemade pizza, including the crust, played in the water, drank the rest of the Texas beer that we had and generally had an extremely relaxing day. We refueled at the dock and got me another 20 pounds of ice. :) Then we all turned in for one more night on the hook to prepare for our last part of the journey. 

Friday June 5 - We were up at the crack of dawn to head out towards St Thomas. This time though, we would take a different route. We would sail to the northeast and when we got close to longitude 65 W we would turn south and finish our course to St Thomas.  

Until Next Time,

Cindy, S/V Verano

Welcome to Miami

Sunday May 24 - Welcome to Miami - Visions of white sand beaches and beautiful people laying on the beach with a fruity drink in hand … AHHHHH … NOPE. Not for us. In addition to COVID-19 and the fact that Miami/Dade County was still not really open to tourists, we had some major things to fix on the boat. Our initial plan was to stay for two to three nights in Miami to give us a chance to look around; however, over the course of six days, we fixed the leak in the fiberglass in the bow, improved the reception we had with the Iridium Go by adding a bigger antenna and replaced the corroded harness on the bow thruster. In addition, we needed to find enough diesel Jerry Cans to carry on deck to get us from Miami to St Thomas. Joe drove all over South Florida looking for cans. Between his driving and the kindness of transient sailors next to us, we finally had enough. 

Miami Beach Marina

Monday May 25- Luckily, my best friend Wanda (who is also Joe’s wife) was able to come join us for a few days. Our first full day in Miami (not counting arrival day) was laundry day. We had piles of stinky laundry that had accumulated over the Gulf crossing and my boat needed to smell better. All five of us piled into the rent car and carried what turned out to be about 10 loads of laundry to a local laundromat (about $60 in coins). In addition to masks on in the hot laundry, the skies opened up and we were in the middle of a huge storm. Water was rising in the streets and quickly was above the door frame of the building. David, Joe and Ashton were outside the door and Wanda and I were stuck inside. The laundry worker couldn’t/wouldn’t open the door to let us out because she was going to flood the room if she did, but we didn’t want to get stuck there and flood the car. We kept pushing for her to open and she eventually let Wanda and I go out through a backdoor into an alley that lead to another shop that wasn’t flooding so we could get to our car. It rained like that all day. 

Tuesday May 26- was spent with Wanda and David working remote. Joe spent his time running around looking for parts for the bow thruster harness and Ashton and I defrosted the freezer and fridge.  As it turns out, my fridge/freezer, in it’s current configuration, doesn’t work as well as it should when we run the engine 24/7 for days on end. The engine is located right next to the fridge box and all that heat kept my fridge at 44-48 degrees and my freezer barely at 32. That meant a lot of fresh supplies that got too warm and then refroze and/or completely spoiled. We threw away a lot of lunchmeat and bacon :(. 

Wednesday May 27- we headed up to Ft Lauderdale where the beaches were open. The day started out beautiful, but buy the afternoon we had clouds and rain again, but we didn’t let that didn’t stop us. We ate at The Boatyard for lunch, where the food was amazing and the view was fantastic. The location had us nestled up in the canals looking at the HUGE boats coming and going throughout our meal. After lounging there, we cruised up and down the beachfront talking again about how different the ocean looks from the land to being out on it. We stopped for drinks on the beach at the Drunken Taco, then walked over to the beach for a few minutes between rain showers. Even with the rain it was a lovely day.

Lunch at BoatYard in Ft. Lauderdale

Also on Wednesday, Miami/Dade County opened their restaurants!! We were able to sit in a restaurant again and eat. You could only take your face covering off while sitting at the table (coming from Galveston County Texas before landing in Miami, we were not required to wear facial coverings anywhere at the time, so this was new to us) but being able to have dinner out and not cook on the boat was so nice!! It was also the day that we started looking for weather windows to head out towards the Bahamas and on to St Thomas. It was looking like Friday or Saturday was going to be our best bet, but because of our previous Friday departure, we decided to only look at Saturday. 

Thursday May 28 - was again a beautiful day. Ashton and I walked around the area to the different stores and did a little shopping. We hit up Target, Ross and Publix for a few things while Wanda and David were working remotely and Joe was either running errands or fixing things. A special treat for the day involved our friends from RumAway, Tara and Travis. They had flown into Ft Lauderdale for some boat shopping and came over to have dinner on Verano. It was such a nice evening and felt so familiar for us all to be together as we used to back in Kemah.  

Friday May 29 - found Ashton and I at Publix again to re-provision for all of the fresh food we either had to throw out or that was used up. There were luckily no limits on meat, cheese or eggs so we were able to buy it all at one time. When we got back from grocery shopping, we had to say goodbye to Wanda. She was headed home, but we planned to see her in St Thomas shortly after our arrival. While Joe took Wanda to the airport, David, Ashton and I took Verano to the fuel dock to get us ready to leave the next morning. It was quite the adventure as that fuel dock was very busy and all of the boats getting fuel were big. It took us over an hour to get on and off the dock and we didn’t hit anything. After settling back into our slip, we had one more dinner out. Outside of the face coverings going into and out of the restaurant, it seemed as normal as could be with live music during our dinner. It felt good. 

Adios Miami!

Saturday May 30 - We left the dock at sunrise and headed out towards the Gulf Stream and the Bahamas. We had our special approval to stop for fuel in the Bahamas if needed because of COVID-19 and we were ready to start the next part of our adventure. 

Until Next Time, Cindy

The Gulf Crossing

After our inauspicious Friday start, we rested up and got a fresh start on Sunday May 17. After a leisurely breakfast, we topped off the diesel at the fuel dock at Galveston Yacht Basin and started out on our journey again. This time there were no storms, or even clouds in the sky. It was a beautiful day. As we made our way out through the Houston Ship Channel, we were greeted by dolphins all around us. It was so smooth in fact, that we decided to start taking day watches right then. I took the first watch and the guys napped on deck. 

Our first night watch was not anything like what I had thought it would be. We were in relatively smooth seas and all I really had to do was watch for oil rigs and tankers on the radar and make sure we didn’t run over or get run over by either. It actually felt rather comforting know that there were others out in the Gulf with us. It was also chilly. I didn’t expect that I would need a jacket and a light blanket on night watch, but I did. I also had my Kindle with me on deck so I could read. I could see the Milky Way like I had never seen it. It was amazing to see all of the stars and then to watch the night transform into a magical sunrise and watch the horizon light up with its pinks, golds, reds and blues. 

The second day was again spent winding our way through oil rigs off Louisiana and we started getting into a rhythm of watches and sleeping. What I learned was that the watch schedule was more to let you know when you could sleep as opposed to just knowing when you had to be awake. I hadn’t ever thought about that. We also found unexpected cell service out by the rigs and we all got to check in with those back on land and let them know how we were doing. 

Joe and I took turns cooking. Bacon and eggs and grits was our breakfast most morning as Joe really enjoys cooking breakfast. We’d then take turns napping during the day. Whoever was at the helm/on watch got to choose what the crew listened to (music, audio books or movies).  

On day 3, David and I were switching shifts and I stayed up to watch sunrise. David put out the trolling lines and it didn’t take 30 minutes before we had a small Mahi Mahi on the line. We reeled it in and put it away to have for lunch. After having fish tacos for lunch, we caught another small Mahi and made creole style fish over rice for dinner. We certainly ate well on this passage. We were also able to sail without the motor for several hours on this day, It would be the only day we could sail without the motor for the entire passage. 

Day 4 was flat and we again had dolphins swimming with us. We also caught 2 more Mahi that we put into the freezer. On this day, the guys discovered a “leak” in the bow that had water coming into the bilge. It wasn’t a huge amount of water, but it was a steady trickle that was causing the bilge pump to go off frequently. They determined it was in the fiberglass and had probably been there since the boat was built, but until we had pounded for hours on end a few days before, it had never been a problem. They were able to temporarily close the hole with Butyl Tape. This kept the water out and the bilge was dry. We decided that it would be good until we made it to Miami in a few days.

Day 5 started off smooth, but got rough in a hurry. We noticed that the waves changed pretty quickly from nice little 1-2 foot to 4-6 feet or more and were confused. Ashton and David were both sick with these seas and it took us a while to figure out, but we had accidentally let ourselves get into the Gulf Stream. Our original plan had been to ride just above the Gulf Stream, as it can get really lumpy when the seas and the wind are coming from opposing directions and that’s just what we had. We changed course to turn directly East, headed closer to the coast of Florida to get out of it and got in touch with our weather routers to see if they had any other ideas. They agreed going East was the best course of action and after several hours we were finally out of the confused seas. This changed our course a little, as our original plan had been to come in at the Dry Tortugas and we would be coming in closer to Key West. 

We made it to Key West and Hawk Channel around midnight Day 5 going into Day 6. The books all say you shouldn’t run Hawk Channel at night, but since The Keys were still closed due to COVID-19 and were not allowing anyone in, we decided we would just push through and keep two people on watch while running at night. This worked well and the Channel was well marked. We still had around 100 miles to go to get to Miami, but we were so close.

On Day 6, we started figuring how much fuel we had left. At this point, we had been motoring for almost the entirety of the trip. We figured we had 16 hours of fuel left and we still had 19 hours to get to Miami. We had just passed Marathon, Florida and Joe and I were looking online and in the passage guides to see if we could find somewhere to refuel. We found two places open, but Key Largo was only open until 5pm and we wouldn’t make that, but Marathon was open and we could get into the marina there. We woke David up and turned around to get back to Marathon. Since we were close enough for cell service, several family members were texting us wondering what was going on. The people at the marina at Marathon were super nice, although we weren’t allowed to step off the boat. It was nice to see/talk to someone else besides the four of us on the boat. We were also able to fill our Yeti’s with ice and get more cokes. 

Once our tanks were full, we headed back up the coast of Florida towards Miami. We had less than 24 hours until we were there and we were all so excited! The rest of the trip was relatively uneventful until Joe and I took the last night watch. David’s plan was to wait until after daylight to get us into the marina, so we planned to slow down once we got close; however, we were watching storms all around us and as we made the turn more to the northwest to head into Miami, the waves got bigger and were hitting us broadside. Some of the waves would take us all the way to the rail in the water. Joe and I were both tethered in with our inflatable PFDs on to keep us where we were. 

Day 7. As we kept watching storms around us, I looked up the future cast radar. It showed storms all day around the Miami area. Where we had been able to see Miami in the distance, it was now covered by clouds. I woke David up for the final run into the Miami Ship Channel and told him what we had found out. We needed to get into our slip before daylight in order to be settled when the storms came. If we didn’t, we wouldn’t be able to get into our slip. So we powered through the rough seas and pushed to get into Miami. 

We had reservations at the Miami Beach Marina. It’s the first marina you get to when coming into that area. The slips were well protected and it was easy to get into a slip once we were there. It was so nice to be tied up and not in big swells. We could see the storms coming, but were safely tied up. At 7am, the guys had a splash of rum and I had a glass of wine to celebrate our crossing and then we all took a nice long nap. We were exhausted, but we had done it! We had crossed the Gulf of Mexico and were into the Atlantic!!

Stats from the Gulf of Mexico Crossing:

Showers - Joe 4, David 3, Cindy and Ashton 2

Fish caught - Mahi 6, Skip Jack 1 (we only kept 4 Mahi since we didn’t have room for the others)

Number of times there was puking - Ashton 1, David 1

Gallons of tea consumed - 12

Ginger Ale and Sprite consumed - 24 cans

Cokes Consumed - 14 cans

Coffee consumed - not very much 

Hot meals - Breakfast and dinner everyday

Cold meals - Lunches 

Until next time,

Cindy, S/V Verano

A Crazy Start

We started our journey from Galveston, Texas on a Friday evening with bananas onboard and David was whistling and Joe said don’t give Poseidon the good rum, use the cheap stuff …

all BAD juju in boat lore. 

A shot of rum for Poseidon before setting off.

Our original weather window had us leaving midday on Friday, May 15, but it didn’t quite happen that way. Our son and future daughter-in-love came to see us off that morning, then my Mother and my niece and nephews came by to see us off one last time. A little after noon, our friends on RumAway said goodbye and headed back to Kemah. Our friend Joe that would be crewing with us, was still trying to pick up a couple of last things for our journey and was running a little behind. There were storms brewing over land and the forecast went from pretty good to really icky. 

Around 2pm, our weather routers called to see where we were and if we had already headed out. We told them we were still in the marina and they told us they “highly recommended” that we wait out the round of thunderstorms coming and then we should be good to head out. We could feel the wind kicking up and we still needed to get diesel so instead of taking the boat over to the fuel dock, we gathered up our jerry cans and pushed them over to get them filled. We pushed about 45 gallons of diesel bark to the boat and loaded them on the rail about the time the storm hit. It lasted about 2 hours as predicted. David and Joe filled the tanks from the jerry cans and around 5:30 pm we were finally on our way. 

Hauling diesel back to the boat.

Before leaving the slip, we looked again at the forecast/future cast on the radar and Predict Wind. Both showed that the storms that were over land would stay over land and not move offshore. As we left the Galveston Ship Channel headed out into the Gulf of Mexico we watched a fantastic light show over land. There was lightening in various colors all across the sky and it was amazing to watch. 

As soon as we cleared the ship channel, I put our pre-made dinner in the oven to get it heated up. I was feeling fine, but had taken a Dramamine just in case. Ashton had also taken Dramamine and was wearing her Relief Band, but as the waves started building to 3-4 feet, she was down for the count. It only took a couple of hours before she was puking off the back. Although I was ok up top, going below was getting rough. Joe has a stomach of steel, so he went down to send dinner up to us. 

Designated puking spot…

We started our first round of night watches that night. Everyone on deck had on their inflatable PFD. Joe went down to sleep for a few hours and David was at the helm. The waves were a steady 3-5 feet and we were beating into them with a head wind, but we were slowly making way. I stayed up top to try to sleep, because down below was bad for me. Looking back I never actually got any sleep that night. 

Around 10pm Joe came back up on deck to take his turn on watch. By this time, Ashton had puked a few times and was doing her best to just lay still and I was still trying to catch a few minutes of sleep. About an hour into Joe’s shift, we heard an alarm. We figured out it was the auto pilot yelling at us because it couldn’t keep a course. The waves had gotten so big we were only making 2 knots an hour. Joe throttled us up and we inched forward. It was pitch black, but you could see the milky wave and all of the stars; although the wind was ferocious at 30+ knots. We could only see the waves from the back of them; however, we were pounding into the waves and would bury the bow to where we could see the lights under water. At this point, David was still asleep and Joe and I discussed whether we should consider turning back, but we figured David was ok with what was going on so we just kept inching forward. 

Around 1am on Saturday morning, David came back up for a shift. He had no idea how bad it was as he was sleeping soundly in the aft cabin. Joe went down to sleep again. After about 30 minutes, David and Idiscussed turning around. We called our weather people and they told us that they couldn’t see the end of this thing we were in and they agreed that turning around and heading for Galveston would be a good idea. So we did. There was one caveat though, a cold front would be arriving about the time we would get to Galveston and it was going to be a big one. 

Once we got the boat pointed back towards Galveston, we stopped pounding and started wallowing. Since we were now going with the waves behind us, we could actually see them coming. Many of them were taller than our arch with our solar on them. That would mean these waves we had been beating into were 10 - 12 feet high, maybe higher. It was quite the rush with Verano surfing down these waves, sometimes making upwards of 10 - 11 knots of speed through the water. It felt good though to have made the decision to get out of the mess we were in. 

Sometime during this night, I had finally convinced Ashton that she would be best down below tucked into a corner somewhere and she ended up on the salon table bed. She said it was easier to hear the normal sounds of things clanking down below than to hear the waves and wind howling and the boat pounding. There was a lot of clanking and things had flown off of every shelf and flat surface and the place was a wreck, but we couldn’t get it put away until we were back in the slip. 

Everything ended up on the floor after being tossed about for 12 hours.

Back up on deck, around 5 am, the cold front hit us with 50+ knot winds and blowing sheets and sheets of rain. Luckily our brand new radar was doing it’s job since we couldn’t see anything through the rain. We buttoned up as many of the enclosure panels as we could but we were still getting wet with the blowing rain. Everything was soaked. After about an hour, we were back down to moderate to light rain and the wind was down into the 20 + knot range. 

At 730 am on Saturday May 16, we finally arrived back to the same slip we had vacated just 14 hours before. The captain and crew were exhausted and fell into a deep hard sleep. We woke up somewhere around noon and sent a message again to our weather routers to see when the next good opportunity to leave would be. The message received was that the next morning, Sunday May 17, would be perfect to leave.

Spoiler alert, we threw the bananas away, left during the day and gave Poseidon the good stuff, after a family prayer for a smooth crossing. We are currently in Miami figuring out what our next plan is. 

Until Next Time,

Cindy, 1st Mate S/V Verano

Getting it All Together

At the time of this publication, we will be in the middle of the Gulf of Mexico on the way to our first stop of Miami. See where we’re at HERE!

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David and I moved to St Thomas at Thanksgiving, 2019. David stayed in St Thomas for nearly four months while I traveled back and forth between the States and the USVI over that same time period. Our original timeline for traveling back to the States had us departing St Thomas on March 31, 2020; however, with all of the COVID craziness, we decided it would be prudent to head home early. We left St Thomas on March 18, 2020 and it was a good thing we did because they started cancelling flights and within a few days our original flight had been cancelled. 

Before we left, we had hired Yacht Equipment Services (Y.E.S) to do a lot of work on Verano. She needed a major facelift if we were to feel comfortable sailing her across the Gulf and into the Atlantic. They did a fantastic job and we’ll go into more of the details in a later blog, but our floating home was pretty torn apart when we arrived home on March 18. We would have two nights to sleep on Verano before taking her to the yard for more work. Our friends Tara and Travis on SV RumAway moved things around enough that we were able to sleep onboard those two nights. 

After getting the mast unstepped for some rewiring and cool additions, Verano was put up on the hard. This was supposed to be a two week project so David and I stayed in an Air BNB in Kemah so we could be close to all of the goings on. After a few set backs and some local restrictions on hauling out and splashing, we finally got Verano back in her slip after three weeks. We would still have to return to the yard to have the mast re-stepped, we were so excited to actually get back on our floating home.

Not knowing what was going to be happening in the world when we were ready to go, I started provisioning for our 14-18 day sail and what could potentially be an additional 14 days of quarantine once we arrived in St Thomas. It was difficult to do as the stores were limiting canned goods, paper goods and fresh meat after the COVID run on the grocery stores. Each day I would make rounds at 2-3 different stores gathering as many cans and dry goods as I could. I stored all of this in the back of my rent car over the course of almost four weeks while waiting for Verano to come home. 

A few days after getting settled back in the slip, Ashton and I carried in ALL of the food and dry goods to inventory and store. It was an all day process but we got it all stowed. We thought that was the end of it, but each day we brought more and more onto Verano as we worked to get our lives settled. In the middle of this, Ashton was furloughed from her job and her divorce was final so she decided to go with us and start a new life in St Thomas so she moved aboard Verano. This meant that everything we had stowed, stored in the forward berth had to be moved somewhere else on the boat so she could get settled in. 

Continuing over the next four weeks after getting Verano back in her slip, we continued to have Y.E.S. contractors working on our boat making it difficult to get much done during the day hours. We spent a lot of time finding other things to do while they had floor boards up and running cables and wiring. As we thought we were finally done with contractor work, we set a date of May 4 to leave. 

We took Verano out for a test sail on May 2 and found that several of the systems had issues. Although it was a nice day sail, it meant that we wouldn’t be able to leave on the 4th. Y.E.S. came back out on May 4 and spent a week fixing our original AC wiring and putting in a new Multifunction Display (MFD) and radar.  We set our next leave date for May 10 as the weather looked it would be a good weather window. Our test sail on May 9 saw another issue and we would have to put off leaving again. Since we didn’t get to leave on the 10th I was able to spend a lovely afternoon with my mother, kids and sisters and their families for Mother’s Day while David stayed on the boat working on boat stuff.

On May 11 our Y.E.S. contractor came back to work through the last issue with David. They were able to figure out what the issue was and fixed it. On May 12 we finally said “See you later” to our friends and family in Kemah and headed to Galveston to wait out our weather window. So now it’s May 14 and we are finalizing all of our chores to leave tomorrow midday. We are headed to Miami where we will stay for a couple of days. Once we have our weather window there we will head for St Thomas. We are so super excited to finally have our journey start! 

Until Next Time,

Cindy, 1st mate of S/V Verano

Where It All Started

So how did we get here? It all started on a Saturday morning in the spring of 1998. It was the first time David and I would ever sail. We were going out with his cousin Sharon, his brother Mike and a friend on Sharon’s Catalina Capri 22’ named Genesis in Galveston Bay. We loaded up a cooler with drinks and sandwiches and proceeded to take 5 people out in that little small sailboat on a lumpy sailing day. Sharon knew what she was doing, Mike had taken sailing lessons in college and David was an avid wind surfer so there was a wee bit of knowledge on the boat. I hadn’t a clue what was going, except that I knew I was prone to seasickness. 

“I hadn’t a clue what was going on except that I knew I was prone to seasickness.”

We motored out into Galveston Bay and put up the sails. It was great sailing around for bit and I was loving it. Then, as I remember, Mike suggested flying wing on wing (setting the mainsail to one side of the boat and the headsail to the other side). While trying to set the sails in this manner, we had an accidental gybe and stuff went flying down below in the little cabin of the boat. People were moving about everywhere and I was trying my best to stay small and out of the way. 

S/V Genesis

While Sharon and Mike worked to regain control of the boat, David went down into the little cabin to clean stuff up. We were still bobbing around on a lumpy bay and there was no circulating air in the cabin. With David hanging his head upside down he got seasick and had to come up top to puke over the side. He was a trooper and finished the cleanup of the cabin when he was done. Once everything was settled, we ate our sandwiches and started sailing again. We LOVED it!! 

Three weeks later, David and I purchased our very first sailboat, a 1994 Precision 28. Her name was Express II. During this time, David and Mike took a close quarters handling class. I wasn’t sure about my role in owning/sailing a boat and what all it entailed, so I didn’t take the class with them. We started taking our boat out with the training David had. He read a lot about sailing and watched videos on how to sail. I was learning from him as we sailed. We took our kids, Ashton and David II out with us and started taking others out with after only a few weeks of sailing. 

One very memorable time, we had my cousins on the boat with us. It was summer in South Texas and that means summer thunderstorms that pop up with no notice. Being the novice sailors that we were, we decided we needed to run from the storm and get back into our slip. Well, that didn’t happen, the heavy winds of the squall line got to the our marina at the same time we did. We were sideways to the end of the dock and the wind was pushing us up against the other boats and their anchors. Luckily our boat wasn’t very heavy and with some help from dock neighbors, we were able to push from boat to boat until we could swing our boat into our slip. That trip to this day is still fondly remembered as “The Perfect Storm”. 

I continued to learn how to sail from David while he continued to read and learn more on his own. We joined our local sailing club, Texas Mariners Cruising Association, and started spending time with others in the sailing community. I even took a First Mate’s Class and learned how to use the VHF, tie some basic knots and feel more comfortable being on the boat. Over the course of two years, we put over 900 nautical miles on Express II sailing back and forth across Galveston Bay. 

Until next time,

Cindy, 1st Mate S/V Verano