Weekly
Blog Posts

This week, Sondra and I look into our magic 8-ball and try to figure out what is Utopia’s plan for our third season of cruising...

Handling some basic living chores while fulltime cruising sometimes takes a little bit more effort and planning than compared to traditional housing. This week’s post will cover things like receiving mail, grocery shopping and doctor’s appointments.  

After three years of blog posts, we realized that we have not really provided an overview of the living space onboard Utopia, so this week, we’d like to provide a virtual tour of our tiny home, complete with non-sailor translations.

Utopia will be sitting still for several weeks in Daytona Beach as we tackle various projects, both on and off the boat. This post is a view into why you have to stop your boat from time to time to take care of various items.   

During our second season of full-time cruising Utopia was re-launched in Brunswick, GA, headed down to Fort Lauderdale before crossing over to the Bahamas. After our allotted time we returned to the states and worked our way northbound up the eastern seaboard, making it as far up as Martha’s Vineyard. From here we headed back down the coast to a marina in Daytona Beach.

After being away since January, Utopia returns to her home state of Florida. She also concludes her travels for the year. 

We rapidly head south from Beaufort, NC down the ICW and then offshore for a two-day passage to Cumberland Island, GA.  We also say a sad goodbye to our buddy boat of 4 months, Quest II (Cam and Denise).   

We continued down the ICW in North Carolina starting out in Belhaven, stopping in Oriental a couple of nights before waiting out weather in Beaufort.

Beautiful sailing, crashing boats, Neptune’s blessing, and a crowded lock are some of the experiences we share in this week’s blog post.

Annapolis, Maryland to Deltaville, Virginia Thursday, October 8 – Thursday, October 15 109 nautical miles (NM) / 125 statute miles Our time in Annapolis culminated with the Annapolis Boat show and with that we have departed and are heading south. Sailboat Show Thursday, October 8 – Sunday, October 12 Welcome to the boat show! This week we attended the Annapolis Sailboat show for our third time.  The first time was in 2017 before we owned Utopia , and we flew up here and met s

The Annapolis Powerboat Show took place this week, which was followed by the autumn session of Cruisers University, both of which we got to experience.

We hit the road this week to the Maryland Yacht Club to attend a gathering of members of the Seven Seas Cruising Association (SSCA) and then back to Annapolis to watch the Boat Show Rising getting assembled.  

This week we leave St. Michaels Marina, cross to the other side of Chesapeake Bay, pass through Spa Creek Bridge, grab a mooring ball and soak in Annapolis before the boat show madness begins.

As we return to the Chesapeake Bay, we find ourselves dancing with weather and currents with mixed results.

This week featured an epic anchorage and moving south back towards Chesapeake Bay.

Utopia only moved once this past week: from Port Jefferson to Port Washington, but Jimmy and I, along with the crew of Quest II, took a couple side trips by land two very different places.

With beautiful weather following Hurricane Erin, we visited a submarine, a friend, and a quiet little island, watched sailing races, practiced docking to a moving target, and explored the Village of Port Jefferson on the big island.

We continued our westward trek leaving Block Island and moving into Long Island Sound while keeping a close eye on Hurricane Erin.  We visited funky Montauk, did some hiking, detoured to Connecticut and hunkered down for a glancing brush with Erin.   

We began our westward trek towards New York when we left Marthas Haven and headed back to Cuttyhunk where we met someone who has sailed on Utopia before we owned her. We also revisited Newport where the post office service is way better than the UPS store, and then Block Island this week where we had pizza delivered to the boat.

It is August and we are often wearing long sleeves and sometimes jackets! The north is a strange, but pretty world.