Mike, Ocean and I returned to Florida and our lovely Beneteau 473 “Wild Horses” on Wednesday October 23rd.

Our summer in Canada had been incredible. My brother’s house is situated just north of Belleville, Ontario and it became our base camp for our summer land-life adventures (thank you Michael, for opening your home to us and being the most fabulous brother ever!!!). We were also lucky enough to find an affordable used Nissan Rogue that could get us around town and to visit family and friends. Perfect! For four months our heads and hearts were exactly where they needed to be whether we were in Belleville or Kingston or Toronto or Ottawa or even New Hampshire. We enjoyed every hug, every bit of news, all the fabulous experiences and so many smiles that really warmed our souls. Heck, we even learned that a couple of die-hard dog owners could fall in love with an African Grey parrot (shout out to our “pretty boy” Rafiki, my brother’s awesome pet bird). 

In a nutshell, being able to reconnect with everyone this summer was inspiring. It was a heart wrenching and sad (and frosty!) day when we started our trip south to Florida.

And, we were nervous.
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We had no idea how Wild Horses had fared through the extremely hot Florida summer. Even more worrisome, three hurricanes had crossed Florida this season. It started with Debby (category 1 in early August), then Helene (category 4 in late September) and, of course, Milton, a category 3 hurricane when it hit land. This last hurricane came as close to Wild Horses as I would have ever wanted a hurricane to get. The eye of Milton crossed less than 100 miles south of our boat (by that time it had downgraded to a category 1 hurricane).

Thankfully, our first leg of our trip south was first to go east to New Hampshire to visit our friends Dave and Lisa on Indigo Lady. We had met them and their all-electric catamaran in Luperon, Dominican Republic back in March 2023 and travelled with them extensively all the way to St. Bart’s. There, we said good bye as we continued our journey south to Grenada and they went to St. Kitts. We never would have guessed that, a year and a half later, we would be visiting them on land at their home in New Hampshire. It was a wonderful visit catching up and exactly what we needed to calm our anxiousness about Wild Horses.
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After a quick but fabulous two days in New Hampshire, we continued our trip south to Green Cove Springs Marina in Florida and to our beloved Wild Horses.

And, yes, Wild Horses was fine. Actually, she was almost perfect. Truly, she was exactly as we had left her, sitting on land in the long-term storage yard, hurricane-strapped to steel bolts below ground, stripped bare of gear and sails, and with our dinghy “Ocean Transport” sitting tarped up and strapped down on her bow.

Whew.

We climbed aboard and opened the companionway door. I fully expected a waft of mold to hit my nose and to see remnants of bugs or dried condensation on the floors. But no. Her interior was wonderfully mold-free. There was no water in the bilge and no “boat” smell. Just one dead bug carcass laid alongside the bug traps I had put on the floor. Take that bug! You can’t mess with Wild horses!

Whew.

Our boat was moved to the work yard on the same day. Although we were anxious to get to our system checks, we needed to take care of priority number one which was to get some stairs so Ocean could go up and down the 9 feet to the stern of the boat. Mike was 100% ready to build the stairs, but we got lucky. One of the yard crew wasn’t using their stairs and they were the perfect solution for us. Yes!!

​Although all was going swimmingly (all system checks passed with flying colours), the boat needed a little tidying up and organizing before we could move aboard. We spent a few more days at our hotel near St. Augustine and then finally moved aboard exactly one week ago.

How long will it take to get Wild Horses ready for the water and a winter of sailing playtime in the Bahamas? Not sure. We have a list of projects and tasks but the big driver of our schedule is our engine rebuild. Last spring our mechanic had estimated that he would need 2 days to tear down our engine and another 7 days to put it back together. In between that time, our fuel injectors need to be sent out for servicing, which he guessed would take 4 weeks. Ugh, that equates to about 6 weeks in the work yard. To add to the pain, the hurricanes have played havoc with our mechanic’s schedule so he has been delayed in starting the work on our engine. He is currently set to arrive on Tuesday November 5th. So, the six-week clock starts ticking on Tuesday.

Hold on Bahamas! We will get there!!
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In the meantime, how are we managing life in a dirty, dusty and noisy work yard in hot old Florida? Check out the next post from Sailing Wild Horses to find out! 

Wild Horses is over 20 years old now and with constant moving (and bouncing through waves and swells), new problems seem to come out of the woodwork far too often.  Most times these are small issues and quicky fixed.  Other times, not so much.  In St. Thomas, USVI, we took a mental inventory of the current woes of Wild Horses. 

• A dinghy motor with start-up gremlins
• A defunct in-line engine blower (used to cool the engine room)
• Some sea water found in our engine compartment
• Our engine zinc depleting at a very advanced rate (a sign of stray electrical current somewhere in the boat)
• Rainwater coming through the overhead hatch in our v-berth cabin (where we sleep)
• An anchor light that blinks instead of being steadily bright

Yeesh. We knew some of these issues could only be fixed once we could get to a proper marine store in St. Martin.  But, for many of the problems, we still had to troubleshoot the cause.  Time to call in our boat buddies!  Dave (Indigo Lady) is a retired physics teacher and Barry (Caretta) is an electrician by trade.  Talk about a dream team!  Slowly but surely Dave, Barry and Mike worked together to resolve most of our boat issues. 
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Their successes include:

• While in St. John USVI, Dave traced our dinghy gremlins to a defunct fuel line ball.  Barry had a spare one, so Mike and Dave were able to get the dinghy back up and running in no time
• The rainwater coming through the hatch was simply a few screws that needed to be tightened.  This was an easy diagnosis and fix for Mike
• The seawater in our engine compartment was also an easy diagnosis, thanks to Dave.  He methodically worked through the variables until, a-ha!  It was a tiny crack in our engine muffler.  Barry had some top-notch heavy-duty epoxy that would most certainly do the trick of sealing the crack.  We will buy a spare muffler but, in the interim, this is a solid fix to a very salty problem!
• And, while Dave expertly epoxied our muffler, Barry went ahead and installed our brand new in-line engine blower.  Amazing!!

Even with all the boat fixes, we are still having a grand time and fitting in some pretty cool adventures.  This past week, Lisa on Indigo Lady arranged for us to go to a pirate-themed Escape Room in Sint Maarten (Dutch side of St. Martin).  Finding the activity was easy, but she also made sure that Ocean could come along.  So cool!!  This complicated things though – Lisa then also had to figure out how to get all of us plus Ocean from our anchorage in Marigot Bay to the Dutch Blonde Beach Bar (home of the Escape Room) in Philipsburg, a 20-minute drive by car, which we don’t have.  Dog-less people have lots of options, of course.  There are buses and taxis that run regularly between St. Martin and Sint Maarten.  The solution for us?  The owner of the Dutch Blond Beach Bar, Sunil Vaswani, offered his services!  For just $40, he would come and pick us up (and Ocean) at Marigot Bay and return us at the end of our day.  What???  I have to attribute this amazing opportunity to Lisa’s exceptional people skills converging with a restaurant owner who aimed to please.  Incredible!
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And the car ride to and from the Escape Room wasn’t just a car ride.  No, it was a guided tour of Sint Maarten provided by Sunil himself.  Not only did he point out various landmarks but we learned about the economy, culture, history and geography of the island.  Oh, and then there was the Escape Room.  This was a challenging puzzle for the six of us.  The concept was that we were captured by Blackbeard and had to escape the room using only the clues around us, many of which were in secured boxes that we had to figure out how to unlock.  It was a fun and exciting 60 minutes.  We failed to escape but we were super close.  Perhaps we would have been successful if Ocean had used her search and rescue talents instead of sleeping through the activity!

This week has been jam-packed and we have thoroughly enjoyed St. Martin.  Still, we have to keep moving.  A few days ago we decided to move along to the Grand Case anchorage, a little north of Marigot Bay.  And today, Friday, we arrived at St. Barts, another French island.  We are happy to be on the move!

We keep heading south.! Check out where we are today by clicking the link below.

Oh my, we are thrilled to have Wild Horses back in the water.  The work on the bow thruster tube seam was finished early last Friday morning.  Rich at Daytona Marina & Boat Works did a stellar job of repairing the seam and sealing it to prevent any more water intrusion.  We really appreciate all that Rich, David and the rest of the team in Daytona Beach did for us.  

​We were launched too late in the day on Friday to make our planned anchorage spot so we decided to spend the night at the Marina and to take off first thing on Saturday morning for Titusville.  This is an easy anchorage right off the ICW - perfect for a quick one night stop over.  Plus, it gave us a great view of the NASA rocket launch late afternoon on Saturday.  It was too cloudy to see the launch clearly but we did get to hear the loud sonic boom!  The other cool thing is that we were anchored beside a boat we knew from the Thousand Islands – “Parbleu”.  Our sailing friends from Ottawa, Nick and Lynn, were the owners of Parbleu but sold it this past August to a couple from Trois Rivieres.  It was great to chat with the new owners and to see Parbleu looking fabulous as she heads to the Bahamas.  What a treat!

​After Titusville, we continued south to Eau Gallie.  This was another anchorage right off the ICW but it had easy access to shopping so we took the opportunity to not just stock up on groceries but we also decided to purchase a Honda 2200 portable generator.  We haven’t been having power issues with the boat but we do like the idea of having a back up in case we are anchored for a long period of time with a serious string of cloudy days (where our solar can’t restore enough energy in our batteries).  We found a Lowe’s that had the generator in stock but it was a good hour walk away.  We love walking but carrying a 50 lb generator for an hour on our way back to the boat did not sound inviting.  Enter Uber Pet!  For just $14, we had an excellent drive back to our boat, with Ocean and our generator with us.  Yes!

​After Eau Gallie, we headed for Vero Beach.  Our boat buddies, Sensai and Brise, are still 2 days ahead of us in Fort Worth so our original plan was to stay just one night at the Vero Beach anchorage and then to catch up with our buddies.  But, with heavy rain in the forecast, we decided to stay an extra night.  This also gave us a chance to do some shopping.  There is an amazing Dive shop in walking distance of our anchorage and we loved the opportunity to finally pick up some wetsuits.  Deep Six Dive Shop had everything we were looking for and more.  We were able to pick up our wetsuits, a lobster snare, a fish knife and even our spear gun.  Once we are in the Bahamas, this gear (plus lots of practice) will mean lots of fish and lobster dinners.  Yum!!

​But before we can fish in the Bahamas, we must wait.  The weather doesn’t look good to cross the Gulf Stream for at least the next week so we will spend Christmas stateside, likely in Vero Beach.  Yes, Vero Beach, that anchorage we were only going to stay in for one night.  Now we are contemplating spending a week here.  I guess that is why they call it “Velcro Beach”.  That’s okay!  We are in a lovely anchorage with access to a marina that lets us use its facilities (laundry, showers, dinghy dock), close to shopping and the ocean, and with good sailing friends that we have met along our journey.  And we have lots of phone data to connect with family and friends back home 😊.  Happy Holidays!!

Huh?
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Yeah, it has been a challenging week for both boat and crew.  We arrived in Marineland early last week with our heads swimming with stuff on our “must do” list.  Miami and our crossing over to the Bahamas is imminent and our list of things to get done before we leave the affordability and accessibility of US shopping and repairs is long.  Once we are in the Bahamas, grocery stores won’t be available at every anchorage and, where they are, the prices can be fairly steep.  Repairs and getting spare parts will be even more challenging.

We need to do our Bahamas 3 month provisioning ASAP.  And, boat projects?  Certainly, we have a few small boat projects to tackle but the biggest challenge is the water intrusion issue in the bilge under our V berth.  This issue first popped up in Cape May and has plagued us ever since.  First, the bow thruster was leaking.  We shored that up and the leaking abated… for a hot minute.  Then we assessed the anchor locker and sealed several areas where water could find its way into the inner boat.  This slowed down the water but didn’t stop it.  Finally, in Marineland, we figured it out. 

Not only did we definitely confirm that the water was salty (eliminating condensation or a leaky water tank as possible sources) but we actually got down and dirty in the bilge, visually and manually checking every square inch…and we found it.  We couldn’t see the leak but we could feel it.  A small dripping bit of water in the starboard bow thruster tube near the hull of the boat.  Yay…but yikes!  This is not a situation we want to have when we cross the Gulf Stream. 

Marineland is not near anything walkable so we decided to head to our next anchorage and hope for the best.  We knew we needed the boat hauled out and to have the bow thruster tube properly assessed (it sits under the waterline).  But we knew we had our work cut out for us.  Finding an expert to work on your boat in a timely manner has been the biggest challenge of this journey.  There are a lot of them but they are all fully busy, usually booking new clients weeks or months into the future.  Sigh. 

Arriving in Daytona Beach, we were discouraged.  We decided to shake off our worries with a dog walk along Beach Street towards the touristy area of Daytona Beach.  Within minutes, we came across Daytona Marina and Boat Works.  A quick discussion with the receptionist and we had a remote “maybe” that they could help.  A phone call from the owner later that same day took it to a “sure, I think” but not until the following week.  It was the best we could ever hope for.  Long story short, we were hauled out today at 0900 hours and the bow thruster was immediately assessed.  Yes, the bow thruster tube was failing at the seam where it meets the hull.  Apparently, the seam was not correctly sealed at installation and it was just a matter of time before water found its way in.

​This is all very shocking and unexpected, of course, but the good news is that we have an amazing expert from Daytona Marina and Boat Works on the job (thank you Rich!!).  Weather permitting, we will be back in business, heading south, by early next week.  Whew.  

In the interim, the crew of Wild Horses is nestled comfortably in a hotel.  But we are not wasting our days!  We have spent the last several days provisioning for the Bahamas (we have a rental car) and we still have access to the boat during the day so we will be washing, waxing, finishing small projects and otherwise making her feel like the awesome home that she is.  It is not the adventure we were expecting but it is still part of our learning journey.  And, guess what?  If you were to run into us these days, you would still see big smiles on our faces.  We are happy that our crew is all healthy and soon our lovely boat will be too. 😊