I HATE SHOES

Fernandina Beach is an interesting place. It had a cute, quaint downtown area with more bars per square mile than Newport, which is definitely saying something. A few days after I got there my good sailing friend Joey joined me and we spent the next few nights reveling in the small town and waiting for the weather to change. A cold front had stalled out over the eastern Florida coast and was not making an easy decision as to when to leave. After a few days we kinda just said the hell with it and proceeded down the ICW at about 4 pm on a Thursday. I didn't think motoring down the ICW at night would be a huge deal, turns out I was wrong. Thankfully nothing dreadful happened, but when a day marker that's not on your Navionics app, nor your paper charts appears out of the pitch black darkness a mere 15 feet to starboard, its a freaky experience. I've done this in twilight before, in a much wider waterway with many well lit buoys, however the narrow, dark channel between Ferna...

I've wanted to title a post "Florida" for a long time, four years actually, and today I finally can. The reason I started this blog, nearly four years ago, was to document my travels south, specifically to Florida. I was living in Boston at the time, winter was coming on and I needed a way to get out. The desk job didn't have any transfers down there and there was just no way I was spending any more time in New England. This is how I came into purchasing Winchelsea . It was a pretty basic idea: buy a boat and sail it down to Florida. That started a four year odyssey involving three boats, two oceans, an engagement, a captains license, a galaxy of new and wonderful friends, and roughly 10,000 nautical miles under various keels. I can't emphasize the friends part enough, it is the thing that has really made this whole voyage worth while. Anyone who has met me in the past four years has known I've had this one and only goal, a one-track mind if you will, it w...

It was cold leaving Baltimore. Damn cold. Mid 40s during the day and mid 30s at night. The wind was right though and within an hour of leaving the dock the sails were up and we were going at a good clip in the northwesterly breeze. My crew consisted of Pearce, the son of a friend of mine with almost no prior sailing experience, and Zach, a fellow 12 meter sailor from Newport. The breeze really picked up during the day and lasted into the night. It felt really good to be sailing Soveraine  again, even if it was bitterly cold with the wind that night. We motored into Norfolk the next day and slid into a slip at the public, i.e. free, docks in Portsmouth. We were putting the boat away when a troop of three people about my age came down to the boat. "What kind of boat is she?" "Allied Seawind." "Oh nice! My wife and I were looking at those. We ended up buying a Hans Christian 38." I invited the three of them onboard and after a few beers we talked about ...