Home is where we drop anchor

Jul 27
3 min read

7/2/26

This year has been incredibly busy and stressful on land and so far we’ve only managed two other short trips out on our Happy Wife.

We saw an opportunity to set sail and decided we had to take it. One thing we both don’t like is being tied to the dock for too long. Just setting out for a nearby trip is so worth it.

Of course there are the simple comforts of being in the marina…our family, friends, the gym, my running and so on, but you quickly get settled into a routine that just sucks you right in and before you know it, months have passed by.

We will be house sitting for our friends at the end of the month, so we do have a schedule of sorts but we set sail and anchored nearby at our little Fantasy Island for four nights. We enjoyed beautiful beach days with plenty of swims due to the excessive heat were experiencing in Florida at the moment. I tell you, a bikini is about all I can bear to put on when the temperatures are like this.

Today we are headed up the Bradenton River for the night, staging for an early morning getaway on the outside down to Boca Grand. I went down to the kitchen to get a snack and heard the port side motor’s pitch change. I quickly made my way up to Shaun on the helm, dishtowel in hand, and he’d heard the same thing. We shut off that motor (which is why it’s great to have two lol) as we think the impeller went on it. We have a spare and will put that in once anchored and the motor has cooled down. Shaun fixed that in a jiffy! I always say that I’d never own a boat if you don’t know how to fix things yourself. Case in point

We anchored and took Cali to the beach as well as ourselves! Early next morning we headed out to take the outside trip down to Cayo Costa at Boca Grand. What should’ve been a flat sea, most definitely was not! We got around the point of Anna Maria when I said to Shaun that we have to turnaround. The waves were tossing us around and we were worried that this would only get worse as the day wore on. We made a slow, wavy turn and headed back to go down the intercostal instead. Fortunately we only wasted about 30 min or so on the trip.

We anchored at around 3pm after an easy gentle and safe trip down.

We spent eight wonderful relaxing days at this, one of our favorite anchorages. This time, we had most of it all to ourselves! Glorious sunsets, dinners up on the helm, cocktail hour every night and Cali loving the beach walks and trying to catch her fishies. Unfortunately, while we were away, my dad fell ill and took a fall too so he ended up in the hospital. He is going to be okay but at almost 95 this of course very worrying for us all.

We had to wait out the tropical storm that was sitting out in the gulf for days and there was a lot of rain around. We made the trip back up easily but we still had very strong following winds. We knew when had to make the short piece in the open bay to go back up the Bradenton river, that it would be a bit difficult. As we were about to make our final turn in, our bimini tore with a huge gust of wind. Shaun had to hold onto it while I took Happy Wife the last part of the journey to anchor. We did so in gale force winds and tied down the bimini best we could to get us home.

We had a light dinner on the helm and went to be early on our last night out. As I’ve mentioned before, 9pm is a boaters midnight!

We set sail to make the short 3 hour trip home today and as always, we remain grateful for our ol’ girl that carries us in her belly to these places, near and far! How blessed are we to live this life without walls

xxx