We’re leaving Billings to fly into Jacksonville, Florida, to catch a ride to Brunswick Marina, Georgia. We’re hoping and praying that the boat is in good shape. Boats don’t like to be left alone.
Arriving at the boat felt like coming home. Even Luke prefers being at the boat to being at the house. I’m not sure why since he gets seasick and doesn’t like to swim. He does like to play on the beach and in shallow water and he’s always liked being outside a lot. I think his favorite thing is having his dad 24/7. Jonathan’s a fish and loves swimming, snorkeling, paddling the dinghy or SUP and playing on the beach. He really enjoys helping his dad work on the boat, too.
And there was work to do. The batteries were not holding a charge. It’s freezing in South Georgia this January. They’re having a cold snap our boat’s heaters can’t keep up with, but we can’t head south to warmer weather without batteries to run the navigation equipment and lights.
Thankfully, we were able to get new batteries installed fairly quickly and started our trek south, anxious to stop having to wear sweats to bed and still wake up cold in the wee hours.
The plan this year is to sail the coast of Florida all the way to Key West and the Dry Tortugas. From there, a three day sail to Mexico, then Belize, and finally to Guatemala, where we’ll leave the boat for hurricane season.
It’s a little sad leaving Brunswick Landing Marina. It’s a nice place with many friendly people. It’s pretty with seagrass marshes and many seabirds.
We did an overnighter to Cape Canaveral. Bobby’s brother Donny met us at the dock and took some pictures of us coming in. We plan to stay here a couple weeks to re-provision the boat and spend time with Bobby’s family. Bobby’s third cousin, Jeff, and his family surprised us by showing up at the dock. They live in Atlanta, but decided to fly down to Florida to get out of the crazy-cold weather.
After a couple weeks, we did another overnighter to Ft. Lauderdale. We only stayed there long enough to visit Bobby’s best friend from high school and his wife, Gary and Kelly, and to pick up and install our new dive compressor so we can fill our own Scuba tanks. Gary was good enough to allow us to have the compressor delivered to his house and he drove the beast to our dock.
Then, we spent a night in Biscayne Bay and had one of those “it’s a small world” encounters that occur from time to time. Until our house burned down in 2015, we lived in a tiny town in Montana called Absarokee, home to three hundred and some people. Not too many sailors there. In 2021, we bought our boat, a Super Maramu 2000, one of 247 built. In Biscayne Bay, in the early morning, as we were getting ready to leave our anchorage, another Super Maramu 2000 went sailing by. The home port written on his transom was Absarokee, MT!
We spoke on the VHF radio and took pictures of each other 😎
We had to skip most of the Upper Keys in order to get to Marathon so Bobby could leave me and the kids at a marina there while he flew back home to work for two weeks.
We spent all of one day at a small, but very pleasant aquarium.
Bobby came home to the boat after two weeks of work, including helping Michael with a trade show. We went back to the aquarium to share it with him and then provisioned up and set off for Key West.
We were only in Key West for a couple of nights, but enjoyed eating out and window shopping.
We did make it just fine to Isla Mujeres Mexico! Isla, as it’s known for short, is an island off the coast across from Cancun. Once a sleepy fishing town, it’s grown into a tourist town although still much quieter than Cancun, which is only a 20 minute ferry ride away.
After we checked in with Customs and Immigration and rested up for a couple days, we decided to rent a golf cart to drive around the island.
I think the favorite part of the day for the boys was getting to drive the golf cart.
The next item on the agenda was definitely not a favorite. Bobby and I have a dentist in Cancun. We contacted them to see if they had a recommendation for a pediatric dentist. They sent us to Happy Smiles.
Jonathan loves swimming in a pool. Our marina is part of a resort with a lovely pool so we spent an hour or two at the pool most days.
We sailed south along the Yucatán Coast to the next tourist town, Puerto Aventuras.
The entrance to the marina is pretty scary. It’s hidden until you’re almost upon it. It’s very shallow, with a hard rock bottom, and extremely narrow. And just to add to the fun, it has a sharp right turn about halfway through.
Bobby drove while I stood on the bow to guide him. We got through and docked to a concrete dock with no trouble. We did meet a nice German couple a few weeks later in Belize. They weren’t so “lucky” and did some serious damage to their rudder when they came through here. They had to limp down to Guatemala to have their boat hauled out and a new rudder fashioned and installed.
Puerto Aventura is beautiful. The marina is set up in a giant circle. The outside edge of the circle is a concrete quai with dozens of small vessels tied lengthwise to it. There are restaurants with fairy lights and outdoor seating set amongst the greenery beyond the quai. Vacation apartments overlook the restaurants and marina. In the center of the circle are huge pens that house dolphins and manatees along with a couple sea lions. People can watch them playing in the water while they walk along the quai. The sea mammals also take turns interacting with tourist groups who sign up for the various encounters on offer.
We spent part of one day in a manatee pool petting and feeding them. After that, we got in with the dolphins and stroked them, had them pull us through the water with their pectoral fins and were pushed with their noses on our feet very fast for 30 feet or so. The animals all appeared very healthy and seemed to enjoy their jobs. There were dolphin that tried to get tourists to play with them after the day was over. They would quietly float by one of the bridges that people walked over to go to dinner and splash them as they went by. Once, there was a trio of dolphin who found a ball that they would through back and forth with the tourists. This was after the trainers went home and the dolphin encounter was closed for the day.
Another day, we had our best tourist day yet.
More to come someday…a little more Mexico, Belize, and Guatemala
Sailing Deja Vu 