Category: Phase 3

After 5 weeks and more boat jobs than I can list, we’re ready to leave Palm Beach Gardens and start the sailing part of our year off!! Mark has worked super hard to install the freezer, water tank and the water maker. The last few days have been a whirlwind of provisioning and getting last minute parts for the boat jobs that still need to be done. 

We had lots of fun shopping for 10 weeks (it’s very expensive in the Bahamas so we stocked up big time). Do you have any idea how much meat you need for 10 weeks?! Well I sure do. We had a blast at Costco, buying all kinds of crazy large packages of things. Our little freezer is full and hasn’t stopped running as it tries to freeze all the stuff in it.

So here’s the plan for the next couple of days. Monday we go out on the ocean and will stop just south of Fort Lauderdale. Tuesday we’ll probably do the Intracoastal and be in Miami for the night. Wednesday we cross over to Bimini! We’ll be staying in a marina in Alice Town on Wednesday and Thursday so we should have wifi again at that point. 

I will be sending a message via our inreach device tomorrow so if you want to contact us, just reply to that email. I have shared the link to the map where you can follow our journey and I believe it is working on. Here’s the link again:  https://share.garmin.com/MarybethPidgeon

WE HAVE ICE CUBES! It took about 3 days to install the new freezer and it’s doing a great job chilling our water – can’t have a dark and stormy without ice 😉. This job went fairly smoothly with only a few minor cuts.

Mark has now begun work on installing our new replacement water tank (a flexible drink water tank). Last summer our port water tank got contaminated from a small chemical spill in the storage space near it. The tank already had a leak and with the contamination, we had no choice but to replace the tank with a new rubber bladder style tank. Mark has been cutting, hacking, drilling etc inside the old tank to make room for the new one and to add another storage compartment (because this boat just doesn’t have enough storage space😳. Well can you ever have enough storage space!)

This job is much harder and complicated than the freezer but Mark is doing great! The tank is going in today and we should be able to connect it up tomorrow. 

The best thing about all these boat jobs – I get some of the most interesting photos!!

I thought you might like to see where we’re staying – Soverel Harbour Marina in Palm Beach Gardens.

We’re back in Palm Beach Garden after an interesting drive down. The journey was good and even with a terrible forecast, Sunday, Jan. 22 was good but the forecast was not. Tornados were touching down all over the area and we had one go through just north of us early Monday morning ( it was windy and rainy on the boat but we sure didn’t know a tornado had touched down near us).

The reno life is in full swing on Crimson Kathryn. There are tools everywhere (but organized!) and the cockpit is a disaster! Mark is working hard to install our new freezer. I have fixed the arm on the v-birth hatch and did a little repair to a minor leak in my clothes locker.

Our renos should continue for a few more weeks and then we will be looking for a good weather window to head south to Miami and then to the Bahamas.

After 4 days at the Fort Pierce City Marina, it was time to move to our new temporary home at Soverel Harbour Marina in Palm Beach Gardens (just north of West Palm Beach). The weather had turned cool and super windy on the weekend but we decided to head out onto the ocean to do the roughly 45 knots south. It was an interesting passage on the outside – lots of big waves and good wind. After we got used to the bouncing around, it was a good passage and way better than the stop and go of the  Intracoastal waterway with all it’s bridges.

So here we are in Soverel Harbour Marina. It’s an interesting place – lots of very large motorboats surrounded by low rise condos, restaurants and other businesses. The Marina is also in the final stages of renovations to the grounds so there is lots of noise from saws and trucks and the dreaded asphalt machines!

We will be here for about a month doing repairs and installations. Next week we head back to Braeside for our trial against Miller Paving but will return as soon as we can.

It sure is great to be back in the water. Our launch was a bit stressful with a few delays along the way. In order to sail to Cuba, we have to change insurance companies. To do that, you need to have a survey done on your boat (it’s basically a boat inspection) which includes the structure and performance (engine, sails, etc) of your boat. The surveyor needs to see your boat out of the water and also in the water for a sea trial. We decided to do all this in one day – in the morning Mitch (our surveyor) inspected the boat and after we launched, we did the sea trial. Here’s where all of troubles began. Our launch was delayed by several hours and our plotter wasn’t receiving a gps signal and much worse, we had no depth meter (which is linked to our plotter). Let me tell you, sailing in the Intracoastal waterway is challenging enough but when you don’t know the water depth, that’s stressful! We managed to get out of Riverside, get sails up for Mitch and get into our current home, Fort Pierce City Marina, without running aground! 

We are at the City Marina until Monday (there’s a bit of a storm moving through the area today and Sunday) and then we’re heading down the coast to West Palm Beach area to the Marina we will be in for about a month. We had a challenge finding a space in a marina for a month But Mark kept calling and eventually got us into Soveral Habor near West Palm Beach.



Happy New Year everyone! Mark and I have made our way down to Fort Pierce and it’s now time to get Crimson Kathryn back in the water. The drive down was good with only a few minor delays due to accidents and heavy fog. It took a few days of phone calling but Mark has found us a slip just north of West Palm Beach. Over the next few days we will,get the boat ship shape for launch on January 5th. We’ll move the boat down to our new one month home around Jan. 8th.