We spent the majority of the 2024 storm season living on land, but somehow managed to be affected by all three storms that have made landfall in the US so far. We went looking for Beryl in Houston, Debby brought lots of rain and wind to Hilton Head, and Helene brought howling gusts to the boat here in South Carolina as well as catastrophic rain and flooding to Western North Carolina – the place we called home for the past six weeks. We feel lucky to have been spared any damage and be left with only a few frazzled nerves. (all mine by the way – the rest of the crew were cool as cucumbers!)

The Smoky Mountains.

That’s where we decided to spend the rest of our summer and man oh man did we all fall in love. We got asked lots of times how we picked a remote cabin in the woods. The answer was simple – we’d never been there before! Our list of “must-dos” seemed to grow longer the more we did (similar to our boat maintenance list actually!). Logan hiked several sections of the Appalachian Trail while I picked up like a hundred new hobbies. We were regulars at Music Bingo on Thursday nights in town. The kids played and hiked all over the mountains, ate WAY more s’mores than recommended, and became Junior Rangers in the Smoky Mountain National Park.

All of that was great fun, but the best thing we did was slooooooow down. Even though our day to day pace of life has slowed significantly since moving aboard last year, we have been in constant motion and it has been exhausting. We took some time to focus on a quieter, easier days and emerged excited and pumped up for another season of travel and cruising life. Thank you Almond, NC, thank you.

And that’s good news, because with storm season winding down, it’s time for us to start to cruise again! We had some wonderful friends (more like family) from our Stella Blue cruising days here to visit this weekend. Now it’s time to toss off the dock lines and sail up to Charleston for a few weeks to prep and provision for our upcoming adventures. Also – of all the places we visited this year, the kids have crowned Charleston, SC as their favorite. Sigh. So we’ll head north to go south. We are back aboard and ready for action!