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Sailing Around the World

March 2022 - April 2024
Kendra & Carson's sailing adventures from Florida through the Caribbean! Read more
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  • TravelerSailing Around the World

    Preparing for the send off!

    February 9, 2022 in the United States ⋅ ☀️ 59 °F

    I thank this rainy day today for finally getting me to write my first journal entry. This has been a task I have been wanting to accomplish for the past couple months. It would have been pretty cool to look back on the journals from the past couple months but I guess the more exciting stuff is to come anyways! So cheers to the beginning of the Clam Shack journal!

    It's been since mid-November now since we bought the Clam Shack and what a day that was! Biggest check we have ever wrote in our lives. Yesterday, while we were enjoying a glass of wine we took a moment to acknowledge all that we have accomplished in just a few short months. Keeping in mind, that in just a week or two we will be sailing away from Fort Lauderdale and taking our first sail trip to the Bahamas! From learning how to become a plumber, electrician, AC/fridge repairman, water maker installer and let's not forget the most important task, learning how to SAIL, its been quite the journey already. & let me tell you, we wouldn't trade it for anything! Carson has been so incredible with his ability to learn all of these new trades. I had no doubt that he wouldn't be able to figure it all out. I mean heck, why do you think i am marrying him!? Obviously, i am kidding... but it is an awesome bonus to have a handsome man, i mean handyman ;) I don't think there has been a day that goes by that we haven't smiled from ear to ear with excitement on the life we have chosen. Even with the ups and downs of getting the boat prepped for our travels we are the happiest we have ever been. We have never been more ready to get this new life started!

    This week has been one of the best! Our solar panel arch finally went up yesterday AND as i sit here now, Carson just came storming down into the cabin to give me awesome news, our lithium installation is 95% complete which means everything may be completed in just a couple days!! We weren't expecting them to be done until late next week! Fortunately, we got our new sail up today, I completed all the provisioning on board and Carson is finishing up small misc projects but we have already prepared ourselves to be ready to roll once they are complete! SO like i said before, this has been THE BEST week! We are just days away now from sailing off!!    Read more

  • TravelerSailing Around the World

    Update from Fort Lauderdale

    February 13, 2022 in the United States ⋅ ☁️ 66 °F

    Woke up this morning to a beautiful rain shower. The skies are a firey orange/pink. Even trapped between the canals of houses and high rise condo's you can still find beauty. Although, we are SO ready to get out of this town. It was the perfect location for us to be while we prep our boat. There is every possible boat store you could ever need here! West Marine and Amazon has been our go to places every week for supplies. It's going to be weird not having that when you need it out there. Ft Lauderdale is just so busy everywhere! Honking cars, traffic everywhere, beaches and sidewalks packed so much that it reminds me of a theme park. After living here for a few months its going to be quite the culture shock. Remote islands with limited roads, cars, supplies, produce... As weird as this may sound, that is the challenge I honestly cannot wait for. I feel like it brings you back to reality. People, including myself, get so caught up in the materialistic things that you forget as Carson would say... " We are all just spinning around on a rock in the middle of a universe." It's time to break out of our comfort zones and experience real life!

    So little update on what we have been up to the past few days. There has been a lot of electricians on the boat finalizing the lithium/solar project. They ran into some complications with our AC/DC connections and we have been warned that we will be without power for a couple days next week but they are still on track to complete the project mid next week! We figured we would take the opportunity to take one last visit over to Naples to see family and maybe some friends if we have time. We are also having Roxanne, an event planner and close friend I worked for at the age of 18 until I was through college, come over to my Dad's house to walk the property because we have decided to do our wedding there next year! A couple days ago, we briefly put a wedding list together and we were already at nearly 200 people!! It's going to be a party!

    Yesterday, Carson got stuck in a project that was supposed to be fairly simple which turned into an all day project for our freshwater outdoor shower. He is such a perfectionist that if it's not perfect he has redo the entire thing. He knows that this is where most showers will be taken out there so its worth it to make the best possible design. I put away the rest of the provisions in the port fwd cabin and organized what I call "Kendra's garage" (starboard side storage compartment). Carson's "garage's" are the two front hatches so I claimed this one as mine. 😁 While I was putting away the rest of the provisions, i found a compartment that we have never gone through before. In it, was a brand new sail and lines! We think it's a spinnaker sail but Carson still has to do more research to figure out what exactly it is. That was a nice big surprise! That storage compartment it was in has now just become our wine cellar. Today we are going to go stock up on more wines to put down there. I wrapped the bottles in our ski socks to keep them from breaking. If we wanted to we could fit like 6 cases of wine in there but that may be a little excessive. My Nana and Aunt Karen may think otherwise... 😉 We have been told to always have cases of canned beer on board as it makes for good trade off's with the Bahamians. Been in the Bahama's is ridiculously expensive!    Read more

  • TravelerSailing Around the World
    111
    Day 5

    Shake Down Cruise before the Bahamas!

    March 22, 2022, North Atlantic Ocean ⋅ 🌬 77 °F

    Our first big sail from Fort Lauderdale to the Florida Keys has exceeded our expectations in every way. We knew we would love this lifestyle but didn't realize how amazing it really is until you get to experience it. We woke up at sunrise on Friday to start our sail. It was such a beautiful morning with a full moon lighting up the entire sky. The coolest thing about sailing is if the conditions are nice you can live your life normally while cruising! We made breakfast, worked on some wedding stuff, did some yoga, & more. As we entered into Key Biscayne, where we planned to anchor for the night, our trolling rods started getting hit left and right with slammer mutton snapper! This really was icing on the cake for this first big sail trip! We got 4 in total, one being 25 inches! Yesterday we took advantage of an opportunity to go spear fishings since there was no winds to continue practicing our sailing. We anchored up right outside of Alligator Reef off Islamorada at a reef Carson had marked years ago when we spent a summer in the keys. We jumped in to check the anchor was holding before going to hunt for some fish and right there in front of the boat was a lobster trap. The line was cut and there was no buoy so we loaded up on 4 lobsters for dinner that night! Talk about luck.. Those are rare finds. Carson also shot the tail of a decent black grouper. We hunted him down from hole to hole for about a 1/2 hour before deciding it was time to clean the bottom of the boat and make poke mackerel bowls for lunch then kick it until we made it our next anchorage for the night. Last night's anchorage was our first testing night. A storm blew through with gusts up to 25 MPH in minutes. Our anchor alarm went off at 3 AM alerting us that we were moving outside the perimeter that we set incase our anchor slips. Fortunately, everything was fine but Carson didn't get much sleep last night. Woke up this morning to 30 MPH gusts. Going to be a gusty, stormy day. Perfect day to settle in and work on our trading! We are looking forward to seeing how it feels to work while at an anchorage. Living the life!!Read more

  • TravelerSailing Around the World
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    11
    Day 6

    Sporty conditions & still slammin’ fish

    March 23, 2022 in the United States ⋅ 🌬 77 °F

    Waking up Monday morning and getting back into the swing with working wasn't too bad when you have 360 views of beautiful turquoise oceans. I felt like my mind was clearer than ever and that showed in my work day. I had some killer trades! Carson was pretty delirious from the night but still pushed through the day. The winds were so gusty we stayed put where we were for the day and night. The next night ended up being the best nights sleep we boat have had on the boat. All the hatches were open, winds gusting through & slight rock of the boat put us right to sleep!

    The next morning, we decided to put in some work hours before heading back up North to Key Biscayne. As we were getting ready to start our work morning the water pump decided not to work. Let's just say Carson was cussing like a sailor for about 20 mins until he figured it out which really took no time! He really doesn't give hisself enough credit on how quickly he can fix issues on this boat, it impresses me everyday. Around 11 AM, we took off in the gustiest winds we have sailed in yet clocking in 9 knots of speed at times with a 3-5 foot chop. It was sporty but so much fun! Once the waves calmed a bit off Biscayne national park we set the lines out to troll for some more fish. INSTANTLY, we were double slammed with fish! I turned off the wind while Carson worked on reeling in the first one. It was another 25 inch mutton snapper! We lost the other one because we weren't able to get it in time. We set the first line back and got underway again. Not even a minute goes by and we got hooked up again with a 17 inch mutton! We decided that we had more than enough fish to eat as we were still working on eating the fish from a couple days ago that we should let the others live.

    We anchored up outside the Key Biscayne light house last night. Something really cool about this area is the stilt houses that were built in the 1930s. They say drug dealers use to throw parties out there with lots of gambling and drugs. They soon shut them down and now they are just really cool landmarks on these flats. Tons of wind surfers were out there cruising in between them.

    ... not sure what the day will bring us today!    Read more

  • TravelerSailing Around the World
    Day 21

    Bimini here we come....so we thought

    April 7, 2022 in the United States ⋅ ⛅ 82 °F

    The best part about this lifestyle is adapting to zero expectations and changing all of your plans when the unexpected happens!

    Tuesday morning we had great winds to cross over to Bimini so we woke up early and left Fort Lauderdale. In order to get to Bimini we had to head south before crossing. It was rougher than expected but no big deal as we were excited to leave Fort Lauderdale. About 3 hours into our crossing the boat unexpectedly turned which woke Kendra up from a nap due to her little garden exploding on the floor. I ran up to the helm and started to hand steer because our autopilot stopped holding course. After about an hour of trying to diagnose the problem (still heading towards Bimini) I found all of our hydraulic fluid for the autopilot spewing into the engine compartment. At this point we decided to sail into Key Biscayne to figure out our next step. All this went down after only 4-5 hours of sleep the night before so we both crashed once we set anchor.

    Once we woke up and started to put the boat back together, I was able to get ahold of the autopilot manufacturer and luckily they knew what the problem was and are sending us the last repair kit in the United States to get us back on the water! Right now it looks like we will be getting our kit on Saturday and making the crossing on Sunday (if all goes to plan)!

    For now we are at an anchorage just outside of Dinner Key in Coconut Grove with about 500 other sailboats which is pretty cool! Of course everything happens for a reason and we were able to go into town to get Kendra a new Yoga matt that I decided to donate to the ocean. A dinghy and a few one wheels make quite the mode of transportation...cant say that we miss old Sally, our 2 door Honda Accord that was our work truck the past 5 months!

    Stay tuned for the Bimini crossing!    Read more

  • TravelerSailing Around the World
    1
    Day 23

    We made it!

    April 9, 2022 on the Bahamas ⋅ ⛅ 77 °F

    45 miles later and we are officially in the Bahamas!!!! 🇧🇸

    Started sailing around 8 am this morning. Thought the sailing conditions were going to be pretty good when we checked the night before but once we got out there the winds died down and it was a dead down wind which made it difficult to sail. We ended up having to motor the whole way which was a bummer but we weren't about to wait another day to get to the Bahamas! Plus, autopilot was working great again so we got to sit back, relax and sip on some drinks. We actually tried doing a work out at the bow of the boat but the 6 foot swells didn't line up with that idea, lol..

    As the winds picked up a bit we got to test our spinnaker sail for the first time. Truthfully, we had no idea what we were doing but with a tug and a pull on lines here and there it released this beautiful royal blue sail. We were beyond excited!

    Around 5 PM we anchored outside of immigration in Bimini and checked in. There is many reasons why we love the Bahamas but the smiling faces and welcoming Bahamian music really sets the island mood 😊 After that, we went to pick up a sim card in town at the Bahamas wifi store to get our wifi back and running on the boat. The lady at the front desk pointed us in the right direction to get some of their famous knock out rum punches and conch salad. Those knock outs go to your head quick! There were mountains of conchs stacked up on the shore line, we never seen so many in our life! It looked like they were using the conchs to build up more shoreline.

    We left the south end of Bimini and went to the North end to anchor up for the night. There wasn't one boat where we anchored and a gorgeous beach line with trees surrounding us.

    After 5 + months of moving and outfitting this boat we have finally made it to our new home 🥳 Tomorrow we will be sailing to the Berry Islands, our longest straight sail yet, 70 miles.    Read more

  • TravelerSailing Around the World
    Day 25

    80 mi sail to the Berry Islands

    April 11, 2022 on the Bahamas ⋅ ⛅ 75 °F

    Longest sail yet! Sailed 80 miles from 7 AM to 9 PM to make it to our home for the week, the Berry Islands!

    It was such a beautiful crossing, 3 ft or less waves with a nice 10-15 knots of wind. We even got to make some sourdough french toast underway, such a treat 😋 When we entered this reefy area called the Gingerbreads we decided to drop back some lines to see what kind of fish were out there. Few minutes later we were hooked up on more slammer mutton snappers. Pulled in 2 28 inchers and had to stop fishing because that is more than we will ever be able to eat in a week! Plus where we are going is suppose to have some epic diving so we are hoping to shoot some fish this weekend!

    Woke up this morning at sunrise to enjoy a nice yoga flow and started to settle into work for the week. We were lucky enough to have perfect service out here off this remote island! Makes sense though, this is where Royal Carribbean and Norwegian Cruise Lines have their own private islands, hoping to go check that out later. There is tons to explore here. We are hoping to explore the island on our one wheels, hike to a blue hole our friend Raf told us about and do some fishing/diving once the weather warms up a bit!

    Still can't believe this our new life. Not sure when we are going to stop feeling like we are dreaming. 💭    Read more

  • TravelerSailing Around the World
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    Day 34

    Island Hopping!

    April 20, 2022, North Atlantic Ocean ⋅ ⛅ 73 °F

    From the Berry Islands to Nassau to Exumas

    Berry Islands - When we had to leave the Berry's I feel like I was being ripped away from something I had just fallen so in love with. On Easter weekend, we went for a hike up a little coral mountain to Hoffman's Cay Blue Hole where we jumped 20 feet off a cliff. The blue hold was breathtaking. There were 1000s of little jelly fish everywhere that don't sting you & were the size of a piece of dirt. The waters were crystal clear & 5-10 feet below the surface the water was shockingly warm! Under the cliff we jumped off was natural caves that would blow your mind! Continuing our hike through the mountain we found this tiny abandoned house with a big chimney made out of coral rock. Surrounding the house was a fence line made out of the coral rock as well. I couldn't imagine the amount of work that went into building this. Once we got back to boat, the biggest storm we have had yet hit us. Lighting, thunder and up to 40 MPH winds gusting at us for hours. We sat back to watch the show, played some chest and drank a lot of wine 😁

    The next day, we decided to finally do some spearfishing!! We were right off the shoreline in beautiful reefs with fish everywhere to shoot. It felt like we were in an aquarium. Carson missed a shot on a black grouper and I missed one on a yellowfin grouper. We were a little rusty 🤪 Not to make excuses or anything.. but we were having some mask issues that day. We bought new masks we were testing out and at times they were completely fogged trying to shoot at fish. Soon after I blindingly took a nice shot on a hogfish and school master snapper. That is more than enough fish to eat for the next several days so we called it a day. We decided at that point it was time to go check out Flo's Conch Shack where our friend Raf told us to go get some rum punches. This place was literally a guys house! You serve yourself rum punches out of his fridge in the back and hangout on his back porch. BEST conch fritters we have ever had! We met some really cool people there that have been going to these islands for 25+ years. Some of the came over that night to give us a nice bottle of rum to wish us luck on our journeys. People out here are unbelievably genuine.

    Next morning, we set sail for Nassau to provision. Nice easy 30 mile sail. We didn't have much time here to explore because we had to take off to the Exumas a couple days later to keep working our way down South. Provisioning there was quite the adventure. We had to drive our dinghy a couple miles to one of the nicest marinas we have ever seen. We were definitely a little out of place on our little dinghy around millions of dollars boats. We then had to one wheel a mile down a bumpy two lane road to the fresh market which ended up being like a really expensive whole foods! I was shocked by how nice it was. We had to pack all of our groceries in 4 backpacks and one wheel them down the sketchy road we came from to get back on the dinghy to then dinghy ride back to the boat. Honestly, we loved every minute of it.

    Yesterday, we had one of the best sails to the Exumas. Took us 5-6 hours and we sailed 50 miles. We kept working during the sail, did some wedding planning, read a book, fished (no luck this time) and made a bomb lasagna for dinner. We will be here for a few weeks as we have several visitors flying out!!!    Read more

  • TravelerSailing Around the World
    Day 62

    Vaca Mode with our 1st visitors!

    May 18, 2022 on the Bahamas ⋅ ☀️ 81 °F

    Been awhile since I have caught up on here...

    Honestly, we have just been enjoying ourselves our so much & we have had a couple visitors come that has helped us go on full vacation mode for the first time since we have been out here. Most of our friends/fam think we don't work out here but the funny thing is we work A LOT but when fam/friends come out we take advantage.

    A few weeks ago, my Dad and Ana flew into Stainel Cay, Exumas. We did so much in 6 days with them.
    - Saw the world famous Thunderbolt Grotto from the original James Bond movie. Probably one of the coolest underwater caves we will ever see! Coolest experience of the trip I must say.
    - Rented a golf cart to explore the island and did some hiking
    - Had the best Pina Coladas any of us had at the Stainel Cay Yacht Club!
    - Went spearfishing and got some hogfish for dindin. Carson shot a massive black grouper that bend the shaft of his poles tip. It would have been the biggest black grouper he has ever shot. We saw a broom tail grouper that we tried to get out of a whole but after 30 mins we eventually had to let him go. One of the coolest looking groupers!
    - Went hiking to a cave with little pink shrimp that tickled your toes.
    - Off Little Farmer's Cay we drift dove for 7 conch's and a couple lobster. I made some amazzzzzing tropical conch salads and conch chowder under our whoel full sailing day. We had the hardest time figuring out how to open and clean a conch but now we have mastered the processed. Thanks to our friend Sascha for the conch spot :)
    - Had dinner one night at the Ocean Cabin on Farmer's Cay. Literally felt like you were in someone's home. We were one of their two customers that night and you had to call in on the radio to make reservations. Bahamaian Mac n Cheese was our favvvvv
    - Hiked up the Monument in Great Exuma Cay where you could see the whole island and all the sailboats

    We had the best time with Ana & my Dad. Missing them like crazy already! When they left we got back on our work grind for a week before our besties Jessica & Kaylor came out. During that time, I got severely ill for 5 days. No need to go into those details, I hope to wipe those memories away. Thankfully, nurse Jes and my Mom helped guide me through what to do being out here on our own but on day 5, I had to have Carson take me to the hospital to get some antibiotics in Great Exuma. There was not a soul in sight in this hospital, it felt like we were in a Zombie movie. When we went in for testing, the nurse didn't collect any ID's or insurance cards then gave me had written medications to take home and let us walk out without collecting any $ from us! Really bazar! But also a refreshing experience unlike hospitals in the US that need $ upfront and insurance before they even see you. A couple days later and I was feeling back to myself again & J&K arrived to the Bahamas!

    Another trip for the books! Recap on our trip with J&K:
    - Hungout at Chat n Chill the first night
    - Hiked all the trails around the Momument
    - Sailed over to Long Island and on our way we caught a 5 foot 53 lb WAHOO!!!! Still my fav experience of this trip
    - Spearfished the next day and got like 7 different species of fish
    - Went to came Santa Marie bar on the island for drinks and complimentary conch fritters. They were serving us free drinks and shots so you could just imagine how that night ended. Let's just say we thought we lost our bag with passports, wallets and phones in it but it ended up being on our new friends boat that we went to later that night.
    - The next day, we went spearfishing on some huge, beautiful coral heads where we speared a ton of more fish. We had more fish then we knew what to do with. We had so much Wahoo to still eat that instead of eating the fresh fish we made Wahoo sushi rolls that was the fav dinner of the trip.
    - Rented a car one rainy day to explore Long Island and go visit Dean's Blue Hole. BREATHTAKING BLUE HOLE! Another fav of this trip.
    - We had the best conch salad at Max's Conch Shack where Mad Max (Gary) the owner gave us a bag of sea salt he scooped up from the islands beaches. That night we went out for dinner at Tiny's bar where we got pizza and wine. The owner there gave us some fruits we have never tried before, Guanabana and mini sugar bananas. They were delicious!
    - We sailed back to Little Great Exuma island and had our best spearfishing day out here yet. Speared MONSTER hogfish, yellowfin grouper and nassau grouper. The boys got harrassed my sharks trying to get Kaylor's massive hogfish out of a hole. Jessica probably added 5 years onto to her life after watching that, let's jsut say she was ready for some tequila drinks when we got back to the boat lol but Kaylor & Carson loved every sec of it.
    - That night, the boys built a beautiful bonfire on the beach and grilled our fish on the fire. It was magical.
    - Next day, we had a beautiful sail back to the main Great Exuma island with epic sailing conditions. We got to sail with our spinnaker the whole time going around 5.5 knots. On the last night with J&K we toasted to a great trip with wine, lobster chowder and homemade french bread.

    TRIPS OF A LIFETIME!    Read more

  • TravelerSailing Around the World
    Day 64

    Made some new friends :)

    May 20, 2022 on the Bahamas ⋅ ☁️ 79 °F

    The past couple days we have been anchored up off Man O War Cay. We have a lot of favorite anchorages already but this being one of the best. We are surrounded my crystal clear water, sandy bottom, a sandbar that looks like it goes on for a mile full of starfish and sand dollars, old wooden house on the hill that looks like its been through some crazy weather and coral reef in our backyard we can take midday breaks to snorkel around. Oh and the wifi here is great so its made working nice!

    ON our second day here we had another sailboat join us and they stopped by on their dinghy to say hi. They were such a nice couple, Oily & Will, that did films and photography for North Face, Red Bull, Airbnb and many other big brand names. They has traveled to 50 countries in their careers and decided they wanted something more stable so they started sailing to their destinations where they would pick up work from their clients along the way. They are making their way down to Guatemala for hurricane season and have kind of convinced that that may be the best place to go for the season! We have to seriously start thinking about where we are going to start sailing to in June for the start Hurricane season in July.

    Yesterday during our lunch break, we had another new friend arrive but this time it wasn't a human it was a dolphin! We jumped in right away and got to swim around with this beautiful animal for as long as we wanted. She loved the company. When we swam away from her she would follow us to the boat for more attn. We fed her some bait fish we had in the freezer which kept her around for another couple hours. The sweetest animal. Another dream come true out here!    Read more

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