Weekly
Blog Posts

After completing a full week at a quiet anchorage with no land access, it was time to leave Belize. We chose to clear out of the country in Punta Gorda on Tuesday, checked into Guatemala in Livingston the next day and began our journey up the Rio Dulce.

We stopped at Placencia to replenish Utopia’s stores and then moved south in our final days in Belize.

While staying at a very nice free marina, we met several cruisers heading to Guatemala. From there, we headed out to some remote cays to enjoy very quiet anchorages.

During our last few days in the Placencia area we visited Monkey River and prepared for some off-the-grid cruising. After departing Placencia we visited Lagoon Cay and the Pelican Cays which is where The Hideaway is located.

We visited some amazing sites this week and share some key moments for this part of our visit to Belize, from swimming with fish, visiting UNECO sites, seeing rare birds and being terrified for our lives.

Caye Caulker was a delightful change from Belize City, and apparently it is a popular spot to spend Easter Weekend. The more time we spent here, we could understand why it attracts a lot of ex-pats, and the more we came to love this little town along the Belize Barrior Reef.

We finally made it to Belize! We spent our first week resting from our trip and getting familiar with the area and venturing out to Belize City and visited some Mayan caves.

Utopia has successfully traveled from Fort Myers Beach to Belize City. It was the longest passage that we have ever completed, and we have reached new furthest points west and south aboard Utopia (she has been further points south with her prior owners). This was the longest period we have gone without touching land. We saw our biggest waves at sea and had our first sighting of bioluminescence!

We stayed a second week in Fort Myers waiting out weather and preparing, once again, for the big jump south. Thursday, March 12 - Thursday, March 19, 2026 Matanzas Pass Mooring Balls Once the engine work was completed by Diversified Yacht Services, we had to move off of their dock Thursday morning. Although the mooring ball assigned to us is only 1000’ to the west, it is a much quieter location. Instead of being saddled between a boat yard, several restaurants and a busy br

What was supposed to be a blog about our passage and arrival to Belize ended up being a detour to Ft. Myers to hopefully address our engine issues and maybe even the fridge.

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.