Last weekend, we spent another gorgeous weekend at New Pass, our favorite close-to-home anchorage. We love it because we can get there in under 1.5 hours and it has plenty to do for Corey and his friend, Sam. We bring the kayaks and they can paddle to the beach with skim boards or fishing poles and when they get hungry, they paddle on over to the Lover’s Key snack bar where they’ve become regulars. It’s also great because we have dinghy access for dropping off Sam or when Corey’s mom comes to pick him up by car. We’re close to civilization, but still anchored out and off the dock with a view of the Gulf of Mexico.
The boys were in hog heaven. After loading up the kayaks in the morning with everything they would need for the day, including money for the snack bar (money well spent!) they would head off for the day. They wouldn’t return until dark each evening and thoroughly worn out. Throughout the day, Randy would use the binoculars to check on where they are or he would dinghy around the beaches looking for them and bearing additional sunblock.
Back on Blue Turtle, we had peace and quiet to relax, although this particular weekend I had projects (as always). Saturday was spent working on our upcoming presentation of Cruising the Dry Tortugas and on Sunday I decided to give the interior of Blue Turtle a major scrubbing. Winter is the best time to really clean the interior because we have all the doors and hatches open and it lets so much light in—to the point where you can see every spec of dust. With doors and windows open I can see the accumulation of dirt, cobwebs and mildew in all the cracks and crevices (and there are many!) that isn’t viewable in the summer with everything closed up and window covers on. Now that the interior is clean and in acceptable order, I’m working on some interior images for an upcoming post—we’ve had a few requests for a “tour” to see the interior of our trawler. Look for that upcoming post coming soon.
Sunday afternoon, Corey’s mom came and picked him and Sam up. Randy and I paddled the kayaks to Flipper’s, a restaurant not too far (by dinghy), for dinner. It was a longer paddle than we expected but it felt good to get back into the kayaks. That evening was Superbowl and we were able to pick up the game on antenna. I watched the first half and headed to our room to watch a movie. Apparently, I missed the best part after all. We’re back to the dock now and always looking forward to the next time …
Been subscribed to the newsletter for a couple of months now and wanted to make a few observations
– disappointed that the Snicker’s Marathon is the same weekend as Stuart otherwise we’d make the trip and attend your presentation.
– kudos on your parenting – exactly how boys should spend their time – outside exploring nature and becoming independent and capable. Love your supervision technique – binoculars.
– really like your graphics for Blue Turtle. Perhaps you could design something for us.
– like that you tell your stories with big, high resolution pictures – worth a thousand words
– we entertain and inspire ourselves with the YouTube sailing vlogs – Delos, Vagabond, Wynns etc but have only been able to find one trawler vlog – Tula’s Endless Summer (enter “trawler cruising” in YouTube and all you get is sales videos from yacht brokers). The vlogs are all great but they are all young carefree young people with no other responsibilities as they cruise far and wide. Your situation is much more reality for adults and we like how you figured out a solution. Although there are many trawler bloggers as you can see on the PassageMaker website, I don’t know why the trawler community hasn’t embraced video. Perhaps it’s because they don’t need the revenue stream that these kids are trying to get from YouTube and Patreon to fund their adventures or maybe they’re just not familiar with the video production tools. Whatever the reason, have you considered a vlog version of your newsletter for us trawler wannabes?
Hi Ken,
Thanks for your comments! We really appreciate it. Randy and I also follow some of the same vlogs and they are great and sometimes exciting. I guess we never embraced the vlogs because we aren’t young and cruise carefree full time. Like most other adults who aren’t retired, we both work full time and I think it would be difficult to make it interesting enough all of the time. I have put together lots of videos of our cruising to the Dry Tortugas and perhaps I could do more videos for our cruising bits when we get to get off the dock. Just seems like doing a vlog of daily life around here might be a bit boring with us both sitting here on our laptops all week 🙂
I see your point. I was just thinking that with the millions of combined vlog views although the vast majority are undoubtedly just entertained or living vicariously through those adventurers that even if just a small percentage were serious about the move aboard that would be a large number of people who have questions, questions, questions and need detailed checklists of what needs to be done, bought and brought before making the move on-board.
Searching the cruising books and google yields general guidelines but few specifics. For example, a vlog of you walking through your galley and opening cabinets with narration on what’s useful, what’s superfluous, what takes up more room than it’s worth, what is made of the wrong material, how many do you have of each, what you got rid of, what you added. I have to believe that a big issue for people coming from houses is that they pack too much not understanding how little room they will have and how little they actually need… who really needs more than a corkscrew and a cheese cutter anyway? Maybe not as entertaining as those sailing adventures but practical and useful… just like trawlers.