Enjoying Our Floating Home Once Again

Oh my gosh, another very busy month has flown by for us. We launched Wild Horses about a month ago and have spent the past four weeks tied to the dock at Reynolds Yacht Centre (just a few miles north of Green Cove Springs Marina), happily getting ready for travels further south.

In the past month we have:

• Provisioned the boat with all the food, drinks, house supplies, dog food and spare parts that we will need for the next three months. It is expensive in the Bahamas so this is a necessary step before we head there. Although not a difficult task, shopping this much is exhausting! We had many, many trips to every store imaginable and it often seemed like a never-ending exercise. As soon as we thought we were done, I would find another inch of space to fill, so off we would go to get a few more groceries, another box or two of beer or, most importantly, more treats for Ocean. But Wild Horses is now stuffed and ready to go.

Wild Horses in her slip at Reynolds

One of several very full food storage compartments on Wild Horses

Beautiful morning at Reynolds Yacht Centre

• Finished a few necessary boat projects. The two most important were the calibration of our new navigational instruments and the re-bedding of our docking cleats. This second project was time-consuming and required waiting out a few cold fronts passing through northern Florida. With temperatures dropping down to 5 degrees Celsius, the epoxy we were using as part of the cleat installation just wasn’t curing. We had to wait for warmer temps to finish the project and received them just last week. The re-bedded cleats look amazing and are a lot stronger than before. Fantastic!

Mike cleaning up the spot where our docking cleat once sat.

The damaged teak wood surrounding our cleat

The newly installed (and stronger) cleat. Five more to go!

Victoria finishing off one of our bow cleats

Making sure the detailing of the cleat looks good from all angles!

• While we waited for better weather to finish our cleat project, we decided to replace several of our halyards and other running rigging (aka ropes 😉). This was a very satisfying way to spend our time. Easy to buy and easy to do!
• Completed our normal safety checks on Wild Horses, including making sure our anchoring system, dinghy, radios and navigation lights were all in tip top shape. To our surprise, our steaming light (used when we are motoring in the dark) and our anchor light (used to light us up when we are at anchor) were both burnt out. A few trips up the mast (yikes!) and we were all set.
• Had our car shipped back to Canada and sold. Shipping the car was a great experience using Abrams Transport out of Vaughn, Ontario. They were very professional and made the process clear and easy for us.

Mike and Ocean picking out our new halyards

After installing our sails for the season, Mike checks that all is set up correctly.

Victoria up the mast (again!) to replace the burnt out bulb for our steaming light

Our car getting set to travel north to Canada

​With our major work projects behind us, and the cooler Florida mornings starting to dig in, we threw off the dock lines and began our journey south down the Atlantic IntraCoastal Waterway (ICW). Today we are waking up in St. Augustine, Florida. This is a beautiful and historic town along the ICW that boasts the most stunning Christmas celebrations. It is a busy little town, with lots of Christmas spirit and decorations, so the perfect location for us to spend the holidays. We will be here until Boxing Day and then continue our trip south along the ICW.

A cold morning playing frisbee on one of our last mornings at Reynolds

We are underway!

Approaching the Main Street bridge in Jacksonville while it lifts to let us through

Ocean very focused as we pass under the bridge

Seeing dolphins again is a delight. But they are fast and very hard to photograph!

An ICW buoy marker

Oh, and the best part of this holiday week? Doing boat projects will be on the bottom of our priority list. Our Christmas plans are to relax, connect with family far away in Canada and have some fun hanging out with our boat buddies, Jean and Dean on Tekana. Merry Christmas!!

Mike shuttles Ocean back to the boat with the beauty of St. Augustine behind him

St. Augustine is a Christmas city!

Enjoying a beer with our boat buddies!

Our first morning in St. Augustine. It feels good to watch the sun rise in such a beautiful place