Hope's and Howard's Sailing Adventures

Atlantic and Mediterranean Cruising on board Lady M

Charleston, SC to Chesapeake

While we met some interesting folks in Charleston (Germans on a catamaran docked in front of us, and Brits on a French aluminium boat and Ken and Michelle on a 51 ft C&C on the other side of the dock from us), we were ready to depart the heat and the constant motion of the boat against the dock, caused by the changing swift current, wake from passing boats and.. Read More

Charleston, SC to Chesapeake

While we met some interesting folks in Charleston (Germans on a catamaran docked in front of us, and Brits on a French aluminium boat and Ken and Michelle on a 51 ft C&C on the other side of the dock from us), we were ready to depart the heat and the constant motion of the boat against the dock, caused by the changing swift current, wake from passing boats and.. Read More

Saint Augustine to Charleston, SC

We had thought about trying to reduce our total sea miles by sailing directly from St Augustine around Cape Hatteras and into the Chesapeake (a 4-day sail), especially as the weather was quite settled when we were in St Augustine …. but as we didn’t manage to leave on Tuesday, the weather window was shorter, so we opted to go the shorter hop to Charleston. While in St Augustine, we.. Read More

Florida Retirees

Well, who would have thunk it, certainly not me, but I have to report that Howard and I are now officially Florida residents. The exercise of obtaining them involved two trips to the FL Driver License center because as of 6 weeks ago, live aboards like us with only a FL postal address, are also required to register their boat in Florida. Of course we didn’t bring all the boat.. Read More

Saint Augustine, FL

The weather was favorable for departing Port Canaveral on Saturday, even though we were tempted to stay longer and enjoy the good camaraderie there. Anyway, we had a really lovely, relaxing easy sail on a broad reach with winds around 10-12 knots almost all the way to St. Augustine. We knew we wanted to time our arrival at St Augustine to catch the beginning of the flood tide through the.. Read More

Port Canaveral, Florida

It was worth waiting for the weather before crossing the Gulf Stream as we had a smooth crossing, light winds and no thunderstorms. We were looking forward to good sailing wind from Thursday evening per the forecast but unfortunately the wind was mostly under 10 knots and dead downwind, which meant our boat speed was less than 5 knots under sail alone so we ended up motor-sailing most of the.. Read More

Exploring Grand Bahama

Still here in Old Bahama Bay Marina, waiting for more settled weather to cross the Gulf Stream. There are some thunderstorms coming off the US coast that we would rather not encounter, especially at night in the Gulf Stream. So, we have had an opportunity to explore our surroundings a little. Yesterday we took advantage of the bikes we could borrow from the marina/ resort and had some fun on.. Read More

West End, Grand Bahama

Another day of motor-sailing and avoiding rain squalls wherever possible. We encountered more shipping than we had so far in our travels from the BVI. I guess the Northeast and Northwest Providence Channels around the Abacos are major shipping routes from the Gulf of Mexico and Florida. It is very comforting to be able to identify the ships using AIS, which also tells us their speed, heading, nearest approach to.. Read More

Royal Island, Eleuthera

The latter part of our passage to Royal Island turned out to be wet and windy and involved donning our foul weather gear …. more like warm Irish weather than the Bahamas! As forecast, the rain squalls weren’t too severe and had there were no thunderstorms so we were quite happy that both we and the boat could handle it without any problem. We have now designated the engine room.. Read More

On the move again

Having listened to the forecast this morning, we decided to get on the move again. While there may still be some squally weather in our region of the central Bahamas, no thunderstorms are expected. It is still mostly overcast but we have seen some sun and a few dark clouds here and there. In fact, we tracked one of the smaller dark clouds on the radar earlier on today and.. Read More