Blue Turtle Cruising

While moored here in the “Ancient City” of St. Augustine, I’ve been on a sewing frenzy. After cruising much of last year, I was nice to slow down and stay put long enough to order supplies and drag out “the Beast” (a.k.a Sailrite sewing machine) to work on some sailboat sewing projects. Below are the …

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This post may contain affiliate links. Please read our Disclosure for more info. If you follow us on Instagram or Facebook, you might have noticed that we’ve been in the Smokey Mountains for the last couple of weeks. The company Randy works for is located in Knoxville, TN, and since he was needed there for a couple of …

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We’re in full-on project mode here on Blue Turtle and one of the items on my list of to-do’s was to recover our interior boat cushions. And these cushions are no ordinary, simple flat boat cushions, these are bolstered and super thick with multiple zippers AND in “L” shapes as well. Talk about a project! Did I …

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This Florida winter has been a productive one for the Blue Turtle.  Boat projects have been plentiful now that Corey is driving and Randy’s taxi services are no longer needed. Randy has realized that he now has quite a bit of extra time so now he can focus on Blue Turtle. It’s been years since …

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So long, 2020!

This past year has been a difficult one and the COVID-19 pandemic has changed the day-to-day routine for many of us. With the vaccine finally making its appearance this month, here’s to hoping 2021 will somehow eventually get back to “normal”.  This blog has gone dark since my last post in May about our 8 year …

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You might have noticed that we haven’t been off the dock in while. Typically this time of year we cruise often to take advantage of the cool winter weather. Unfortunately, we’ve had some down time due to a few issues with Blue Turtle that Randy has been troubleshooting and resolving. One was with our 185hp …

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This post contains affiliate links through Amazon. Please read our Disclosure for more info. PLEASE NOTE: This post is intended as a guide living aboard in Southwest Florida and how we bottom dive our boat. WE DO NOT OFFER DIVING SERVICES. Please contact a local diving company for rates for bottom cleaning. One thing you will hear across …

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New aft cabin flooring

Not to long ago, we finally got around to a project I’ve been looking forward to since we got Blue Turtle. When we bought Blue Turtle 6 years ago, the interior main salon and aft cabin had this commercial grade carpeting in it.  I completely understand why the previous owners would choose commercial grade if …

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The morning we left for Jewfish Basin, Randy discovered a fuel leak in our generator. He troubleshooted the issue for a couple of hours before we left and discovered it was due to an injector line that might have had a hairline crack in it. Since it wasn’t leaking too bad, we decided to head on to our …

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Last week, while I was busy provisioning for the Dry Tortugas, Randy was busy installing a new air conditioner in the forward berth. The old CruisAir AC had quit working on us and rather have someone come out and charge it and invoice us $400, we decided it was time to put that money into …

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I’ve always loved touring the insides of boats. When we were shopping for a trawler, we would try to crawl around every interior possible to get an idea of what style and layouts we liked. I also love to see how other cruisers solve space issues and decorate to make it feel like home. We’ve been …

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A few weeks ago I posted on our Facebook page that we had picked an inopportune time to pull the doors off Blue Turtle and have brand new ones made. We were in the middle of a cold front with 25-27mph winds and our replacement doors were thin pink foam insulation from Home Depot — I called …

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