Current Life Blog

USA!

Since the border was still closed to non-essential travel, we found yet another Canadian captain to sail Current Life from Victoria Harbour to the US. Captain Duncan had originally agreed to deliver the boat to Blaine, WA but ended up diverting to Point Roberts because he was unable to arrange customs clearance in Blaine. Point Roberts is unique in that it’s part of the US, but you can’t drive there without going through Canada.

Posted by svcurrentlife on Monday, July 6, 2020

Canada!

The BBC Rainbow arrived Victoria on June 29, a few days earlier than scheduled. We found a Canadian captain that was willing to receive the boat and he parked her in a slip at the Wharf Street Marina in Victoria Harbour. Now we just have to find a way to get her to the US.

Posted by svcurrentlife on Monday, June 29, 2020

Loading onto the cargo ship

The BBC Rainbow arrived on Wednesday and anchored off of Fort Lauderdale waiting its turn to for a berth in Port Everglades. Our first sighting of the BBC Rainbow off Fort Lauderdale On Thursday, June 4 we were instructed to be in the staging area at Port Everglades at 8:00 am on Friday morning for an 8:30 am loading schedule. We would be the first boat loaded onto the BBC Rainbow.

Posted by svcurrentlife on Friday, June 5, 2020

Back to Florida

We needed to be in Fort Lauderdale by June 5 to load Current Life onto the cargo ship so gave ourselves two weeks to get there from Charleston. Tropical Storm Berth formed off the coast of South Carolina a few days after we left, bringing 50 mph winds to the Charleston area, so we felt lucky that we left when we did. We departed Charleston mid-morning on Sunday, May 24 with a bit of a headwind that was supposed to only last five hours or so.

Posted by svcurrentlife on Tuesday, June 2, 2020

What's next?

Our plan was to sail from Charleston to Nova Scotia and explore that area for the summer. Because of the pandemic, the US/Canadian border is closed and it doesn’t look like it will open up any time soon. Since we needed a new plan, we narrowed down our choices to two: 1) Sail out of the hurricane zone to Virginia or Maryland and pull the boat out of the water for the summer.

Posted by svcurrentlife on Friday, May 22, 2020

Miami to Charleston

We left Miami a little earlier than we should have, but we thought leaving during winter would give us better wind than if we would have waited until Spring. The first day out of Miami we got a little bit too much wind. Our normal cruising speed is 6 knots, but most of this trip we did 11 knots, and that was with one reef in the main. Our destination was going to be St Augustine, but the wind and waves were pretty rough, so we pulled into Lake Worth and anchored for the night.

Posted by svcurrentlife on Sunday, March 1, 2020

Beaufort to Miami

From Beaufort to Fort Lauderdale was familiar territory for us. The only new section was Fort Lauderdale to Miami. The first segment was from Beaufort to Hilton Head. The wind was really strong while we were in Beaufort. We were worried that the inlet would be rough since it was rough on our way in six months earlier. Jennifer asked the best looking fisherman she could find about the conditions. He told her that he’d just come through the inlet and everything was fine so we left Beaufort and just made it out before it got dark.

Posted by svcurrentlife on Tuesday, November 26, 2019

The Outer Banks

From Sandy Hook, we sailed directly to Norfolk, bypassing the Chesapeake, and stayed at the Tidewater Yacht Marina (Portsmouth). While there, we finally were able to get our new sails installed – although we wouldn’t use them for a few more weeks since we planned to go the ICW to Beaufort. We had read that there was an alternate ICW route that would take us to the Outer Banks instead of going through the Alligator-Pungo canal so we decided to give it a try.

Posted by svcurrentlife on Saturday, November 2, 2019

Sandy Hook

Our next stop after Port Washington was Sandy Hook, New Jersey. The mooring balls are usually full, but we got there at the end of the season so they had one for us. The ferry to Manhattan was just a few blocks away from the dinghy dock so we took a few day trips into the city. View from the mooring

Posted by svcurrentlife on Saturday, October 5, 2019

New Sails

The sails we ordered from Mack sails arrived while we were moored in Port Washington, NY. Taking the battens back to the mother ship.

Posted by svcurrentlife on Friday, September 27, 2019