Blue Turtle Cruising

The Blog

PLEASE NOTE: This post is intended as a guide to Southwest Florida marinas that accept full-time live aboards. This post focuses on marinas from Port Charlotte and south on the West coast of Florida. We do not post rates and availability since they change all the time. For current slip rates and availability, please contact the …

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We’re now on Facebook!

Check out our new Facebook page!

So, I’ve been procrastinating a little on creating a Facebook page for our blog. I have so many websites and Facebook pages to keep track of on a daily basis, I really didn’t want another one. But, I was wanting to post more images taken on my mobile while out and about and I’m hoping …

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We set off for a peaceful Caloosahatchee River cruise on Friday morning, the day after Thanksgiving (also known as Black Friday).  Joining us were my parents (on Island Time) with my two nephews, Jack and Ryan. On board Blue Turtle was Randy, myself, Corey, Sophie, Johnny (Randy’s father) and Gerry (Randy’s uncle visiting from Taiwan). …

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Doors and davits

Doors after first coat of Cetol...and yes, I was too lazy to tape the rounded window corners

We’ve worked on a few miscellaneous projects last week. One of them was to remove the doors and waterproof and repair them. With the summer storms, we quickly realized that the doors weren’t weather-proofed. During a downpour, we would have water coming through a few cracks in the door. Also, some of the wood was …

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Another tiling project

A few of you may have seen the photos posted here or on Facebook about our recent galley project, where we resurfaced our galley countertops with porcelain tile, replaced our faucet and installed a 2 burner cooktop where an old propane stove used to be. Since we had such a great outcome with the tiled …

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Halloween at the marina

Randy and Corey

Halloween has come and gone at the marina, but not without a celebration. There aren’t many kids at the marina, so it was nice for Corey, Randy and I to do a little pumpkin carving earlier in the week. On Halloween day, Randy and Corey went trick or treating in another neighborhood, while at the …

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Trawler galley Project

AFTER: My refinished galley

When we bought the DeFever, it had an old propane stove in it that we immediately knew we’d want to replace. Besides it not being something we would use, it was rusted inside and rattled making a lot of noise. I decided that I wanted to remove it and instead, add a 2-burner electric ceramic …

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Trawler haul out complete!

Turned around and ready to go into the water

So this past week (Tuesday, actually) we put Blue Turtle back in the water. She’d been on the hard for about 11 days at Olsen Marine Services. We had her hauled out to have the bottom painted along with some other repairs: Now that she’s back in the water, Blue Turtle is in good shape …

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Kayaking Estero Bay

Corey throws a nice pancake cast

Since Blue Turtle is still on the hard, Randy, Corey and I got to launch our kayaks out of Week’s Fish Camp again. This time, we had some very windy weather so we couldn’t cross the bay to Lover’s Key, so we decided to paddle south and stay along the mangroves for protection. I was …

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With our trawler on the hard, Randy and I are staying at his father’s house in the Estero/Bonita Springs area. This means that we are close to the Weeks Fish Camp launch near the Hyatt Coconut Point. This has always been one of our favorite spots to launch our kayaks because it takes us into …

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