We did it! It wasn’t comfortable (understatement!) and we are exhausted BUT. We sailed overnight out in the Atlantic with just the five of us – big milestone. Big happy milestone.

We weren’t planning to leave Charleston until later this week, but when we got a note from our weather router that it was time to go, we quickly adjusted our plans Thursday morning for a Saturday morning departure. That meant two days to wrap up all of our Charleston business with a spooky holiday to celebrate in between.

I’ve mentioned before how much I love night sailing. After this sail, I need to amend my stance to I usually love night sailing. The day started out beautiful. Sunny skies, light winds, we were motor sailing under full sail. Everything was cool until…waves. They built. And they were coming at us directly on the beam. Something about the motion did us all wrong. Very very wrong. The kids were all sick (a bucket was involved) and the wind never filled in as forecast, so we just pushed forward as the boat swayed back and forth over every rolly sloshy mess of a wave. We’ve never been so uncomfortable in such light conditions. By sunrise, we were getting lots of inquiries of when we would be arriving. Charlie was hilarious though – even though he didn’t want to eat, he was detailing his first meal on land with intense emotion. Kid loves himself some chicken nuggets.

Logan and I have made several solo overnight passages before, but none on this boat and none with the kids. Having an extra adult on board makes life easy. We take three hour shifts overnight, meaning with three adults we get six whole hours of beautiful rest overnight. With just the two of us, the three hour naps feel very short. Not to mention that when you are off “boat watch”, you are still on “kid watch”. Sea sickness aside, the passage was uneventful and we arrived in St. Augustine, FL yesterday around noon – happy to be here and very proud of our passage.

We are going to hang here for a few days, then plan to continue down to south Florida where we will stage to cross over to the Bahamas. We are cruising baby!