Category: Trip Log

The next morning, we headed north a bit and dropped anchor just south of Fort Ticonderoga and rafted up with Russ and Jax on one side and some new friends Jamie and Trish on the other side! Though we had work, Jamie mentioned that they were planning to visit a Star Trek museum the next day. I managed to free up a little space on my work calendar, so later in the afternoon we dingy’ed ashore via a jungle-like river into town.

The museum turned out to be an exact reproduction (and I mean exact!) of the original sets for The Original Series. It was very cool and we learned quite a bit about the creativity of the props and set departments and also how William Shatner enthusiastically interacts (aka breaks) everything whenever he visits the museum!

We returned to the boat and I finished out the work day, then built the pole up on the boat and tried out some new combos.

I managed to convince David to get out the drone to get some shots as well!

The next day, I had a string of back to back meetings, but David had some open time in the morning, so he and and the rest of our group went ashore one more time to visit the fort.

The next day we headed to a bay just outside the Lake Champlain Maritime Museum that is run by Basin Harbor Resort. We arrived on a work day, so for us it was picking up a mooring and then head inside for a day of working, and then went in for happy hour and dinner at the resort in the evening. This was my first time in the state of Vermont! As a happy coincidence, a former colleague of mine happened to be in the area on holiday with his family and drove out to join us for the evening!

On Saturday morning, we woke up early and went ashore to the Maritime Museum, which was very interesting and had some actual artifacts rescued from wrecks on Lake Champlain from the Revolutionary War. We then headed back to the boats and cast off towards Burlington where we had decided to spend the weekend. Once attached to a mooring we headed into town to try out some local breweries (and a distillery and a cider-maker), but unfortunately were un-wowed by all 4 places – quite surprising! We did however do an escape room, which was pretty good.

The next morning, we went back to shore and got mani pedis in a big group (only Russ was missing!) and went to a couple more breweries, which were much better! We even used the local bus system, which was completely free.

After Burlington we headed to an anchorage north of Valcour Island to find shelter from some incoming wind. Russ and Jax tied alongside and an uneventful workday passed.

Next, we headed north towards the Canadian border and tied to a mooring in Gaines Point. Our plan was to fill up with diesel at “good” US prices and we hope to avoid needing to get fuel while in Canada. I ordered an Instacart delivery and David received some packages, but there was otherwise not much else to do here, so we mostly remained on the boat.

Friday would be Canada Day, so we decided that we would head to the customs dock (a 10 min cruise north) early in the morning to be there when it opened. We are ready for our Canadian Adventure!

We had another wonderful and busy trip to Seattle, starting out with an impromptu day walking around the Ballard locks with friends – slightly ironic given what we would be spending the next week doing! As usual, every night we had plans to visit with various friends and family. I also spent a day with some work colleagues in downtown!

The week flew by and we were soon returning back to Highwind on the Hudson. After a red-eye flight, we arrived in the morning and then spent the afternoon working on a few projects, including replacing the original VHF antenna and cable.

We then left Shady Harbor and cruised north to Waterford where we tied up on the free wall for the night. This is the furthest north that we had ever been on the Hudson, as it is the point at which you take a left and enter the first lock of the Erie Canal when doing the Loop. From this point forward, everything is new! Since it was the day before Memorial Day, and late-ish on a Sunday night, pretty much everything was closed, so we had dinner together with Russ and Jax on the boat and called it a night.

The next morning, we headed north to enter the Champlain canal. This is a series of 12 locks that bring you from the Hudson to Lake Champlain. Since it was a holiday and neither David nor I had to work, we were aiming to get through as many as possible.

After the first few locks, we knew there would be a low bridge with just over 17′ clearance. We had been asked our height at the first locks and the lock masters upstream had worked to lower the water depth as much as possible. Even so, I hopped out on the balcony to eye our progress. It was going to be close with the FLIR on the front of the roof clearing with mere inches. I told David to slow down. As we kept moving forward, I kept my eye on the radar dome (on the collapsed antenna). I shouted to David – we were not going to make it! He quickly grabbed some tools and with our boat half under the bridge, detached the dome from the antenna and I held it in my arms as he returned to the wheel and moved us forward. We passed under the bridge very slowly with literally 1 inch of clearance!

For the remainder of the day, we proceeded to pass through at least 20 more of these low bridges – some with only 4 or 5 inches of clearance. At this point we had fully detached the radar dome! Russ and Jax very much appreciated that we were in the lead since they were a little shorter than us and knew that if we cleared the bridge, they could pass on by without worry!

The remainder of the day passed without incident and we made it all the way to the wall at the base of the last lock on the canal. Since it was back to work for us, the next day we did a quick lock through as soon as it opened and went only a few more miles north to tie up at the free wall at Whitehall before our day of calls started, but we had made it to Lake Champlain!

For some reason, we never feel particularly rested after a weekend of boating…

The first stretch of the Hudson is one of the more beautiful boating days on the East Coast. We had an early start since we wanted to make some good distance on the weekend day of cruising. This meant that I took the first shift driving while David napped. The Hudson Valley, blanketed in green trees rises sharply from the water and I found myself thinking that the landscape shared similarities with Pacific Northwest boating. Ironically, when I pulled up our blog post from 2 years ago for the same stretch of water, I said the same thing!

We made it all the way to Croton and rafted up with InQuest who had arrived a few minutes before us. We decided to chill on the boats for the afternoon rather than heading ashore — there’s not much close to the marina and we didn’t want to deal with dinghying with our scooters to ride out to the park and dam.

The next day, we had several ideas for our final destination, but ended up changing plans last minute as we were cruising by Poughkeepsie. We dropped anchor right on the Hudson just off the free dock at the park on the water. It was deeper than anything we’ve been anchoring in a while and we ended up letting out almost all our 300ft of chain. Russ and Jax tied up alongside us and we dropped in our dinghy for the short ride ashore. A short walk up the hill was Zeus Brewery where we had a beer and played a round of Hanabi.

Interestingly, while we had been at lunch, the tide had changed – meaning that the Hudson was flowing in the opposite direction when we returned to Highwind. Our anchor alarms were all going off since we had flipped around and dragged a little before re-catching. We knew this was going to happen and weren’t worried. David used this situation as an excuse to purchase a subscription to the Vesper service that gave him a remote anchor alarm on his phone so that we could keep an eye on the boat while we were ashore.

The wind had picked up while we were out and we decided not to remain for the rest of the day. We pulled anchor and headed a little further up the Hudson dropping anchor in Kingston. We were in a narrow river off the Hudson, so we decided to tie up bow-to-stern with Russ and Jax. This is where we both drop anchors and back into each other, tying up side-by-side and results in securing both boats such that we do not swing in a circle.

The next day was a work day and we stayed put in Kingston while Russ and Jax went to shore to explore. At the end of the day, I took advantage of the nice weather to set up my pole on the bow and had a little fun.

After that, we hopped in the dinghy and headed into town for a delicious dinner with Russ and Jax.

Next up, we did a short morning hop to Saugerties were we set up on another bow-to-stern anchor arrangement. At this point, the smoke from the Canadian fires had spread down the coast and the haze rolled in. We spent two days with our doors closed and everything smelling like smoke outside (thanks Jax for the photo!)

While everyone on the east coast has been shocked by this experience, it was really nothing new to us after spending several summers in the North West being hazed out on the boat by wildfires. Good ol’ global warming. Despite all this, we did manage to get on shore for one surprisingly FANTASTIC dinner at a restaurant that we walked by on our way to a different restaurant.

We did one more hop to an anchorage off Athens where we rafted again with Russ and Jax and they explored land while David and I stayed aboard Highwind and worked.

On Friday morning, we headed towards Shady Harbor, where we would be leaving Highwind for a week while we headed to Seattle. Our flight didn’t leave until Sunday, so on Saturday we completed several boat projects including replacing the guest toilet (a poopy job lol). While that was happening, Jax helped me take our excess wine, beer, and liquor to a local storage unit using the marina’s courtesy car. We’re doing this so that we don’t have to surrender any alcohol when we cross the Canadian border this time!

After a nice dinner at the marina restaurant, we headed to bed early, ready for a 4am taxi ride to the airport to head to Seattle!

[this post brought to you in part by me heavily referencing Ahoy! from Inquest, without which I never would have remembered the names of the places we stayed :)]

Thursday morning, we woke up early to do the 2-hour cruise from Great Kills to Brooklyn in order for me to arrive before work to head into the office for the day. While David napped, I took the helm and snapped these photos as we were approaching this recognizable skyline.

It’s so nice to be able to visit like this – and fortunately we were able to get a gathering of 6 of us for the day in our office space. It makes a lovely change seeing people in person after hours and hours of zoom/teams calls :). As a special treat, Nick was puppy-sitting this amazingly well behaved floof for the day and we had him as our office-mate!

After dinner, we had a lovely happy hour drink and then I headed back to Brooklyn to meet up with David, Russ, and Jax for a Brooklyn pizza dinner.

It happened also to be June 1, the first day of Pride month, and the NY city skyline did not disappoint!

On Friday, I worked from the boat. Meanwhile, David, who had the day off, spent a lovely day in the city – walking over the Brooklyn Bridge, visiting the Cloisters and Chelsea Market.

After work, I headed in to the city to meet up with Russ, Jax, and David for a pre-dinner escape room. We then headed to Seamore’s to meet up with Nick, whose very good friend is the manager there. We had an absolutely amazing dinner and a wonderful time hanging out! Such a wonderful time, in fact, that we forgot to take a photo :).

On Saturday morning, under cloudy skies, we headed out of the marina and started our way up the Hudson on the west side of Manhattan. This is only our second time going this direction (the first being the year we did the Loop). Last time, we did the Hudson quite quickly, but this year we intend to take our time and stop at a few more places.

Yes, you read that right! After almost 6 months, we are finally cruising again!

After watching the weather carefully, we decided to head out of Baltimore on the Saturday of Memorial Day weekend. Even though there was wind predicted, we wanted to get as far north as we can, which would give us more options for making our way to New York. We left relatively early and had a fairly easy cruise for the remainder of the Chesapeake, the C&D canal, and the first quarter of the Delaware River. However, as predicted, the wind started picking up as we approached the widening part of the bay, and so we followed our plan (bail early) rather than trying to push further down the bay into worsening conditions. We pulled in to a small river on the north side of the bay (Cohansey River) and dropped anchor, staying pinned to the west of it with 25kt winds until the sun went down. At first we were all alone in this anchorage and enjoyed a lovely sunset for our first time on the hook in so long!

Just before sunset a sail boat came down the river and anchored a few bends away from us. They captured this shot of us as they were cruising by and sent it to David!

Some wind was expected the next day, but we decided to head out because we had a few options. Though we were ideally aiming for Atlantic City – which is part ways up the New Jersey Coast, we knew that if everything was terrible, we could cut inside into Cape May at the tip of the Delaware River and hang out there in the protected bay, or try to work our way up the NJICW. Rounding Cape May and heading into open waters, the ride was uncomfortable, but not our worst open water by any means, and we arrived in Atlantic City around 2pm. We would have actually kept going — conditions were pretty decent — but we have caught up to a number of Looper boats who are making there way north as well, including a friend of ours, Steve Olsson, from MBYC who is Looping this year! He is with several other buddy boats and we made plans to meet them later for drinks.

First, we headed up to the Marina/Casino’s rooftop pool/hot tub to relax a bit, and then got fancy and went out to a nice dinner.

Looking at the forecast for the next day, David saw that it was predicted to be calm in the morning, with winds picking up in the early afternoon and then blowing for several days after that. Knowing that this would be our only chance for a bit, we decided to wake up before sunrise and head north. We would go on plane, as fast as we could, and aim to arrive at Sandy Hook before the weather turned.

The cruise turned out to be incredibly smooth with no issues, but as predicted, just as we were rounding the corner at Sandy Hook the winds went from 10 kts to 30 kts in almost an instant. What had previously been smooth water filled with white caps. Luckily we were only half an hour from our destination. We arrived at Great Kills Harbor and managed to hook a mooring, despite 25 kts of wind on the nose even in the protected bay. Steve and his companions were a few hours behind us as they cruise at slower speeds and had a rough additional 2.5 hrs cruising in those high winds, unfortunately breaking several things on their boats in the bad conditions. But we made it up to the New York Harbor!

After we returned to Baltimore from Disney, we did have a few boat projects to get wrapped up with. Primarily, re-fixing the hydraulic swim platform where our dingy sits. If you recall, when Brent and Mary visited us over the summer, we had a bit of a disaster on their last day where the hydraulic failed. We managed to get both arms to a repair shop, but after replacing the supposedly-rebuilt parts, one of the arms started making a whale-song as we were lowering the platform. It had been doing this all summer, but still seemed to work. David placed an order from the platform’s manufacturer for a new one, so that we’d have a spare, but otherwise went on our way. Over the winter in Baltimore, we noticed the platform was slowly sinking again. The job to take out the arms is quite challenging and involves getting a bit wet, so we really didn’t want to do the project in the freezing cold weather. After we returned from Florida, the weather was much nicer, and we really couldn’t avoid the fact that the arms were simply failing again. David found a local hydraulic shop that had some time on their schedule and went ahead with removing them and sending them off for another rebuild.

David also worked on a project to replace one of our toilets – the one in the master bedroom seemed to have lost its seal and we didn’t want to be dealing with a dead toilet while in more remote areas in Canada.

Meanwhile, I took the opportunity for the few extra weeks that we were there to attend a bunch more classes at the Baltimore pole studio – yay! I kept letting my new friends there know – this might be the last time that I see you…and then I’d show up again the next week :).

On one of the weekends, we hopped in the dingy and followed Russ and Jax to a fish and chip restaurant a couple of (nautical) miles from the marina. We had forgotten that it was Mother’s Day weekend, and since the weather was nice, the place was packed, but we did get a spot at the bar and had a nice lunch.

I also got to work on a project to find a way to build my pole on the front of the boat so that even when we’re on anchor this summer I will be able to train. We purchased some bed/furniture risers and I used power tools (gasp!) to make them fit around the pole legs. I’m looking forward to having the opportunity to use it soon!

We also met some of Russ and Jax’s friends who will also be cruising the Triangle Loop with us this summer and did a trivia night at the local tap house across the street from the marina.

The hydraulic arms were re-delivered to us and David was able to re-assemble everything. No whale-song!!! Now we were finally ready to get cruising, and started making plans with Russ and Jax for the next leg of the journey which involves the Delaware River and New Jersey Coast, meaning that we needed a 2-day weather window (ideally on a weekend due to our working schedules). Unfortunately, as we were finally ready to leave, a bunch of bad weather hit the forecast, which left us waiting day by day in Baltimore for our time to head out.

Ever since I had first heard about it, I was interested in doing it, but it wasn’t until I suggested that Matthew join me in visiting Disney that it became a reality. I’m talking about the Galactic Starcruiser, a Star Wars-themed hotel larp-like experience at Disney World. This is a two-day stay at a hotel that is themed like an intergalactic space cruise ship, but involves live-interactions with cast members, an unfolding plot, secret missions, an “excursion day” on the planet of Batuu (Galaxy’s Edge theme park area in Hollywood Studios) and so much more!

Matthew’s friends from California were looking into doing this experience and had extra room in the suite that they were going to book – I immediately said YES! And despite everything that had been going on for us over the past few months – from trips to Seattle, Prague, New York, buying and moving in to a Key West house etc, I was SO EXCITED for our cruise on the Chandrila Star Line!

From the moment that you emerge from the launch pod (yes, there’s an experience just to enter the hotel), you are fully immersed in this world. There are no windows in the hotel, only screens where you can see the planets outside, and in accordance with the plot, occasionally you see the starburst of lightspeed.

The official events begin at Muster, where the Captain greets us, but is interrupted during a safety briefing by the First Order who board the ship suspecting rebel activity. From then on, you are thrown into an unfolding story where based on the characters that you interact with, you receive missions to complete that either help or hinder the rebels or the First Order – or maybe you play a double agent!

The cast members were so amazing at including everyone, even large groups of people as we completed tasks in the engine room, smuggled Chewie around the ship, helped decode secret messages brought in by the Diva who would perform that evening at dinner, learned to operate the bridge, practiced with light-sabers and so much more.

It felt like being on an adrenaline high for 2 days – there was always something to do and everyone’s experience was a little different. Matthew was invited to a secret Jedi ceremony, while I was officially declared a member of the resistance (Ignite the spark!!). We all assisted the Diva in saving her home planet.

Overall it was an incredible probably-once-in-a-lifetime experience and I HIGHLY recommend it it you have any inclination.

After returning to planet Earth, I went straight to Animal Kingdom, where I met up with Russ and Jax for a day of exploring the park. They were a willing audience to hear me gushing about my Starcruiser experience as I came down from the adrenaline rush of the past two days!

On Thursday, David arrived and set up to work from Alex’s office for the rest of the week. I also had to work on Thursday as I had to attend and present at our quarterly board meeting. Thursday evening, Bethy had managed to get preview tickets to the new Guardians of the Galaxy movie, so we had a great night out. On Friday, I meet up with Russ and Jax at Magic Kingdom and we had another fantastic park day.

Saturday was the day that David would join us in the park. Bethy and I woke up early in order to secure our place in the virtual queue for the Guardians ride – which she is amazing at and got us in Group 2!

It so happened to be also right around the time that the coronation was happening in England, so amazingly I was able to watch this historic moment.

We did Epcot in the morning and then park hopped to Hollywood Studios in the afternoon so that David could see the Star Wars land, returning to Epcot for a huge pizza dinner! It was a fantastic day out with the 6 of us, we were able to ride all the rides we wanted and enjoyed good food, drink and company.

After an incredible week with friends, we flew back to Baltimore and Highwind. We’ll be wrapping up our winter projects and readying her to cruise for the summer – our first real boating after 6 months.

Though I did not mention it in our last post, there was actually one other update from the month of March. After the loooooong winter in Baltimore, it had made me realize that one of the reasons I was potentially less enthused about our future plans to return on Highwind to the west coast would be the return to another looooong winter. You see, I have become quite accustomed to following the good weather from north to south and have really enjoyed our winters in the warm weather of Florida. Apparently David had also been thinking the same when he floated the idea by me to look at buying a house in Key West that could be our winter residence.

We started looking at houses on Redfin and the more we talked about it, the more excited we got about the idea. Fast forward to the end of March, where we had an offer accepted on a house that we had only seen via remote video tour. Therefore, after we returned from Seattle, we soon found ourselves hopping on a flight down to Key West to oversee the house inspection in person! Everything went smoothly on the day, and later in the afternoon while I was working by the pool at our hotel, I was feeling very excited about our decision!

We decided to extend our trip through the weekend and enjoyed some more of the sun before we returned back to Baltimore. With nothing large discovered on the inspection, and a quick closing expected (~2 weeks), we started making plans for our move-in date, in mid-April.

We made arrangements to fly into Key West and spend 2.5 weeks getting the house set up before we would head to Orlando for a long-pre-planned Disney/Bethy and Alex visit in the first week of May.

In the time between our visit for the inspection and our move-in trip, we kept quite busy! I enjoyed a couple more classes at the pole studio here in Baltimore, before saying potentially goodbye to the new friends I had made there. Jan and Jim invited us to their house for Easter, so we arranged to rent a car for the day and drove up for a wonderful time! I also took a trip up to New York for another work planning session.

Since we had sold our condo in Seattle and cleared out our storage unit, we would be starting entirely from scratch setting up this house. We decided to fly into Miami so that we could swing by Ikea and Costco. David had been trying to find a car for us to buy, but apparently it’s a seller’s market at the moment, so we ended up putting a down payment on a car that was arriving a few days after we arrived, and we ended up with a rental mini-van in the meantime. This actually worked out well for us, since we packed it to the gills!

The next two weeks were a hectic blur of building furniture, setting up a kitchen, installing internet, getting settled, etc. One of our criteria for this house was that it needed to require essentially no renovation work – since we’d not be there full time, we needed to to be basically ready to go.

However, sprinkled between all that work, we did manage to have a little fun as well. On our first weekend, the Blue Angels were kicking off their show season at the Key West Air Show. This was my first time attending a Blue Angels show at the actual show location where someone narrates and describes all the maneuvers that they are performing. It is incredible to see what they are able to do!

That weekend, our purchased car ended up coming in early, so we drove back to Miami to return the rental car and pick up our new Kia Soul and take a second pass at Costco and Harbor Freight.

The following weekend, there was a festival in town that included a bicycle-powered kinetic-sculpture parade and a drag race through town. We loved to see this happening in spite of the recent legislature changes occurring “cracking down” on drag performances. Key West’s unique and open culture is one of the reasons we chose to move here!

In the second week, we also hosted our first guests – a couple of my team members flew in to Key West for a team planning session. We set up the outdoor table (our only furniture at the time) as a conference table and had a great working day, with dinner on Duval Street afterwards.

Finally, in the last few days, my new pole arrived from Italy and I was able to get it set up and give it a spin – literally as it’s a spin pole!!

It was an extremely busy two weeks, but by the time I was set to head to Orlando (a few days before David), we were mostly ready to shut up the house for the summer. David ended up staying around for another several days to receive/assemble the last of our ordered furniture, get the house packed away for hurricane season, and ended up finding a burgeoning termite infestation had moved in around the same time we did. The joys of home ownership!

We arrived in Prague on Saturday, got dinner and drinks, and wandered around a bit. Sunday, we had pre-planned to take a day trip outside of the city to Kutna Hora. We took the train and arrived a 2 mile walk outside of the tourist area. Not realizing that we could have hopped on a bus, we instead walked into town.

Our first stop was the Royal Mint, where we learned a lot about the development of the czech currency. Being surrounded by precious metal mines, this city was once a massive center of politics and power. Not only was currency forged here, but it was also a royal residence, so there was a lot to learn about royal history, in particular during the time of the Hussite Wars. There was also a chapel which was filled with the most amazing Art Nouveau designs.

After our tour of the mint, we visited St Barbara’s Cathedral, which had some beautiful stained glass windows.

Lastly, we visited the Sedlec Ossuary, or the Bone Church. This was created as a memorial to those who died in the Plague; were there were so many bodies that would not fit in the graveyards, so their bones were used to create sculptures to decorate the church. We were not allowed to take any photos inside, as they too many problems with tourists taking selfies that were not respectful of the site. It was certainly macabre inside.

We had a lovely day as tourists in Kutna Hora, but then the week started. David was in the office working for the week, and I work east coast hours, which ends up being 2-10pm Prague time. This gives me the mornings to do some tourism in the city. I found two new places to visit on this trip. The first was the Convent of St Agnes, which is an off-site wing of the National Gallery of Prague housing medieval, predominantly Christian, art. It was AMAZING. I actually stumbled upon it one one of my morning walks, and only had about 2 hours to wander through, so I was rushing at the end – this is somewhere I will definitely return to next time. The second place was the Vysehrad, a hilltop fortress. Here, I visited the Basillica of St Peter and Paul, which was another cathedral FILLED with Art Nouveau paintings – almost no inch was unpainted.

The graveyard surrounding the cathedral was also incredible – it was filled with some amazing mosaics.

Next, I took a guided tour through the casements and the Gorlice Hall. These were the tunnels created for moving troops around the fort (which was never completed or used). The Gorlice Hall is the largest open area within the casements and currently houses a few of the original statues from the Charles Bridge (many of the statues on the bridge currently are replicas). I learned that the Gorlice Hall was actually created due to an error made by the designer/builder of the walls where the two ends of tunnels turned out not to meet. It was at one time used to store potatoes. As you walk through the tunnels, it really feels like you are going underground, but in reality you are inside a giant wall on the top of a hill overlooking Prague!

From Prague, we flew directly to Seattle. Once again, this was primarily a work trip for David, but as usual we made plans to visit with various people throughout the week. Also as usual we failed to take many photographs, but we had a lovely week seeing friends and family which was capped off with a gathering at Mark and Robin’s to celebrate Mark’s 70th!

We returned back to the boat feeling like we’d been gone for the better part of a month (which was true after including the Big Sky trip too). In the evenings of the last week of March, David was finally able to put together the rest of the engine and on Wednesday we were able to take our first test drive out away from the dock. We reminisced that our 4 month span in Baltimore was probably the longest amount of time that we had not done any kind of boat cruise since we first bought meridian-Highwind more than 6 years ago! Luckily we remembered how to do things :). David had to fix a quick leak in the exhaust system, but other than that, the engine seems to be working. We still have the fuel consumption issue, but we are at least back to where we were before our disastrous stay in Solomons. PROGRESS? You decide!

The better part of February was spent in Baltimore with the one engine out of commission and hunkering down through the cold weather. I managed to get out to two different pole studios in the area and a couple more times to yoga. It feels so amazing to finally get back on a pole with some regularity!

As the winter was wearing on and David was doing more research about our engines, it’s starting to seem like we need to do something more drastic — a repower, a complete changeout of the engines for new ones. We can keep these engines limping along, but they’re really not made for the type of usage that we put them through — very high load, for hours on end, and 500+ hours a year. They’re not rated for it, and it shows. So we’ve been looking into what engines to replace them with, but the expense is going to be very high, so we started thinking about the idea of just trying to find a different boat. So, we decided to impromptu head to Miami for the Miami Boat Show, and bought plane and show tickets just a couple days before the show.

A large benefit of this trip was to get us back to some warm weather! Russ and Jax met us there and we had a lovely couple of days touring all the new models of power catamarans. Unfortunately we didn’t see anything that would really work for our unique situation – 2 live-aboard remote workers who are on zoom calls 8hrs a day. One of the amazing things about the layout of Highwind (which is pretty unique) is that there is enough room for us both to have full office desk setups in different rooms. On Sunday we visited with Don, our friend from Seattle and Meydenbauer Yacht Clubs who invited us to hang out at his pool for the afternoon.

In the last few days of February we finally had some great news from the machine shop – they had been able to complete the rebuilt of the head unit using most of the parts from the unit that we had shipped from England. We rented a uhaul truck and a task-rabbiter to assist with bringing it inside the boat and down onto the engine (David was still recovering from his surgery, so we wanted him to be careful with his abs). The task-rabbiter also assisted us with moving some of the heavier pieces of the engine downstairs.

Before David could actually start any of the reassembly, however, we were headed to Big Sky for another ski trip. This time it was a reunion of our friends from David’s days at Skype. We had a fantastic time, as usual, hanging out, skiing (and also working a bunch). We celebrated David’s birthday with some candles in his favourite ice-cream flavours.

We returned to Baltimore for 2 days before we were then headed out to a Prague & Seattle trip for David’s work. In those 2 days, David was able to put together a large portion of the engine, but the work was not quite done. However, we had a plane to catch, so in early March we were headed away from Baltimore once more.