Diving Into Our Land Based Boat Life

3/27/2025

We are back in Canada! Although we arrived in beautiful temperatures of around 17 degrees Celcius (62 degrees Fahrenheit), the weather quickly switched to being slightly below seasonal (-2 C / 28 F) and we have snow. Compared with Florida, it is cold! But we are happy and fully enjoying our time home.

Want to see what I mean? Click the buttons below!

Our First Hike Back In Canada

Ocean in the snow

Wild Horses was hauled out of the water about two weeks ago and we prepped her for a hot summer in Florida. She is now safely sitting on land at Green Cove Springs Marina in Northern Florida and, yes, she is hurricane-strapped to deal with the worst Florida wind events. Everything on the boat was removed and either put in our climate-controlled storage unit near Green Cove Springs Marina, or it was loaded into our car to be brought back to Canada. But the prep work didn’t stop there! All the walls, cabinets, floors and ceilings inside the boat were cleaned and sprayed with a mold control solution. We placed several moisture wicking containers throughout the boat to deal with condensation and lots of cockroach houses to kill any roaches that decide that Wild Horses might make a lovely place to stay for the summer. In order to further dissuade roaches and any other bugs, we closed our seacocks (water pipe outlets) and also stuffed them with steel wool. To also help with mold control, we have to make sure there is some ventilation within the boat. Since every hatch (our usual go-to for ventilation) has to be firmly closed to protect the interior from weather, we opted instead to just offset our cowl vents (also called dorades), with one facing forward and the other facing backward. Cowl vents are those odd-looking vents that sit on the boat deck. They are shaped to mitigate rain or seawater intrusion while still allowing fresh air to flow into the boat. And although they are effectively open tubes, one layer of screening at its base prevents any bugs or critters from entering the boat. These fabulous cowl vents have been our solution to allowing sufficient airflow to circulate within the boat while it is closed up tight during hot Florida summers. Awesome.

All this prep work was what we did last year for our first Florida summer on land and it worked very well. There was no mold and almost zero bugs. We did have three roaches that tried to take up residence but they were quickly evicted. Then we immediately upped our roach prevention in both the boat and in the storage locker. Staring eyeball to eyeball with a cockroach while you are lying in bed is no fun!!

Wild Horses leaving dock for the last time in winter 2025

And here she is arriving at Green Cove Springs. Ready to be hauled out!

Oh my! So much prep work inside the boat to get her ready for storage

One of our cowl vents took the spotlight in our first picture of our arrival in Grenada

The dinghy "Ocean Transport" is secured to the forward deck

Our last look at Wild Horses before leaving Florida

Back in Canada!

So, here we are, back in Canada with our boat back in Florida. Our plans are to return to the boat in October and then journey back to Grenada for the summer of 2026. But…

There are lots of ifs, ands and buts with our plan!

Unlike our first trip to Grenada, we now have a car that we have to store or sell. We will also need to figure out a good solution for health insurance. Last time, we were eligible for a two-year extension for our provincial healthcare. Coupled with travel insurance, we had low-cost health coverage for emergencies where ever we travelled, including the United States. But that option is only available every five years, leaving us ineligible for this next journey south. Likely, we will need some sort of “Expatriate health insurance” to cover us once we have exhausted our seven-month out-of-province health insurance.

And then there are new regulations, and a new political climate, around travel to the United States. We are unsure how this will play out but are watching carefully. Right now, our concern is low. Although we feel confident that we can navigate the environment today, we are working on back up plans, just in case travel to the United States becomes far less than welcoming. Still, our feeling is that all will work out just fine and we will be reunited with Wild Horses next fall.

For now, we still think of ourselves as liveaboards but with a temporary status of having land full time under our feet. It has been a fun two weeks of getting back to the conservation areas and trails we have missed, the climate-controlled living that make our days super comfy, and hugging our family and friends that we love dearly. Yay!