Weekly
Blog Posts

Our engine behaved enough for Utopia to make it to the Dry Tortugas where we enjoyed this remote national park. However, our engine issues ended up dominating part of our visit...

Since setting anchor in Boot Key Harbor last Thursday (Feb. 19), we have spent our time picking up the last of our packages, troubleshooting the refrigerator, visiting with other cruisers, and preparing to leave the States which included watching both the weather and the news, then making some changes.

Boat work in Exotic Places! We headed into Marathon and started tackling or at least mitigating some mechanical issues and enjoying some time in the Keys.

We are happy to announce that this post is not being made from Daytona! This week’s post includes a summary of our long stopover and highlights of our three-day passage south.

No, this post is not about a wonderful two-night passage to Key Largo, instead it is about being delayed in Daytona for another week. At least, in the middle of all this, we had a special guest onboard the night before we attended a presentation he did about his non-stop, solo sail trip around the world.

Well, we are set and ready to shove off to points south.  I imagine our next post we will be moving again so it will back to the normal traveling posts.  We truly are ready to depart Daytona so I will go over the actual work we got done during our time sitting still. 

From time to time, we enjoy visiting places away from where we are currently cruising. For me, Sondra, my ideal get-away is a backpacking trip, and this week’s blog post will cover this pastime's similarites with cruising, our current plans, and share a wishlist of backpacking trips.

This is the story of how Mr. Shell Point Beach found a new home. In December Jimmy and I accidentally picked up a new crew member...

This week we talk about what makes Utopia a blow boat and not a go boat: sails and rigging.

This week covers how we spend a typical day on the boat. How time is spent varies greatly between cruising and non-cruising days so those two scenarios are described separately from each other.

Managing household utilities on a boat is not quite the same as when living on land or even living full time at a marina. Services that are typically taken for granted become front and center while cruising.

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.