How DO we prepare ourselves and our boat to set sail for international waters? For the next nine-ish months? When we arrived here at the dock in Charleston, the list (or really lack of a list) made my head spin. Boat projects, cleaning, provisioning…where to start?! Some things can’t be done once we leave, but most are just easier with access to Amazon and unlimited power and water. And yes…Costco.

Logan had several fun projects that he wanted to tackle before we took off this season -projects that we can’t work on in remote waters. A new camera installed on top of the mast, tweaking the location of our Starlink, plumbing water directly to our little washer in the forward “garage”, new knot meter, and finally a working anchor light! Lots of sweat, a few frustrated grunts, but mostly great outcomes for projects that will improve our daily cruising life.

While he has been writing code and scheduling boat work, I have been making my way through every storage compartment, cabinet and drawer to deep clean, purge and re-organize. If we didn’t use it last year, we don’t have space for it (spares and safety items excluded). With a year under our belts, we have learned a lot about what we use and how we use it. Sometimes the whole boat feels like one giant jigsaw puzzle – one with endless solutions.

The dumb thing is that with all that purging, we are loading up the boat faster than we can get stuff off. The holidays are big in our home – that means decorations, annual traditions and gifts don’t get missed while we are out cruising. I have done more holiday planning in October that anyone ever should – I wish everyone could have seen the look on the face of the lady at the post office when I told her I was mailing Christmas gifts last week. Anything special we want to make sure we have to celebrate has to be brought onboard before we sail off. You bet we know our way around the Amazon locker here in town. We are currently spooked out with spiders and Crispy Captains and in a few weeks we’ll pull out the good ol’ travel tree!

It definitely hasn’t been ALL work since we got here. We were welcomed into the harbor by one of the most show stopping sunsets we’ve witnessed. I don’t think anything has ever been able to distract me from docking before, but I couldn’t help but scramble down to grab my phone to try to capture this one. Our buddies on Island Time had dinner (and a puppy!) waiting for us as soon as dock lines were secured. We had family come visit and worked our way down our Charleston must-do list. We called this marina home last year for several months, so it’s not a surprise that returning feels a lot like a homecoming.

With hurricane season officially coming to an end, it’s time to wrap up the projects and set sail for warmer waters! We’ve decided to head straight to the Exumas (southern Bahamas) to start out this season. Time to put away the jeans and pull out the swimsuits!