Sophia Bramhall

Stopped a few nights along the way and spent two nights at a dock in West Palm to provision and do some final maintenance on Willow before crossing to West End.

We finally left the dock in Port Canaveral after getting our inverter fixed. It was a big project and took two electricians 10 hours to complete everything. We upgraded to a 3000w victron inverter which has more power than our old one and has much better monitoring as well. It felt really good to anchor again and we had a beautiful sunset after walking to a nearby grocery store to pick up more fruit and food for duggie which we forgot during our last shop. Today we did about 33 miles down the intra coastal and had 10-15kts on the beam so we put the Jib up for most of the day. We had to find an anchorage with North/North East protection because it is going to blow 25kts all night. Sebastian Inlet is a perfect spot 💪. Good protection and we were able to take lil Willy to the beach and get Duggie a nice walk. Duggie dug up his first crab of the year and is very proud of himself.

We finally left the dock! We arrived on Willow and needed to replace our inverter, which took 4 days/nights. We took off today quickly reminding ourselves how to run this big boat 😅 We immediately went under a draw bridge then through a bridge lock where we had to tie up to a wall on the starboard side and toss lines and slide fenders and ask the boat in front of us to move up haha but we did it. Then under another draw bridge and finally onto the ICW. Went under a fixed bridge then anchored near the next bridge. We were happy to remember how to anchor and use the snubber with muscle memory. Walked Duggie to publix where we got dog food and fruit since we forgot those the market run the night before. Then we had our first willow on the bow of the season, toasting to Natty 💙🤍🫶

We finally left Great Bridge after staying there for 5 nights. We spent one night at AYB then four nights at the town free dock. Now we are on our way to Jeff (our broker for Willow) at Severn Yacht Center to get a haul out and our port engine transmission fixed. We are hoping he gives us a good deal since he was our broker! Abdu - our proshot employee of 6 years joined us on Sunday and he will be traveling all the way to New York with us. He has a flight back to Egypt in about a week and is flying out of New York. Our plans have changed quite a bit over the past few days. We have now decided to rent a car on Wednesday afternoon and drive to Bedford NY on Thursday to make it to Lizzie’s wedding. We are very excited for our two upcoming weddings and then will hopefully be able to pick up Willow in early July to continue our travels to MV. We went through the great bridge lock yesterday which went okay. It was very challenging without reverse on the port engine and we ended up doing a 180 (similar to the fuel dock in FL) before getting tied off. There was a current coming from behind us which we did not expect and we tied up the bow line first. I could not engage the port engine in forward idle once the bow was tied off so tried reversing with starboard but the current was too strong and the stern swung out and we did a 180. In hindsight we should have tied off the stern line first and this would not have been a problem…anyways the lock operator was very helpful and said this happens at least once a day 🤪. We then had to twist another 180 degrees before we exited since we could not reverse out of it. Very exciting stuff! Anyways we will be very happy to have our Port engine working again and are going to get a few other smaller projects done while hauled at Severn.

It was a windy day! We had 17-22 knots of wind most of the day. We spent the morning on calls then started sailing around 12:30. Sophie had a few more calls underway 🤪 After dodging an absurd amount of crab buoys we made it to the Albemarie Sound which was enormous! It was about a 15 mile crossing with 20knots of wind at our back. There was a decent swell coming from both the south and west so it was a little bumpy but not too bad. It was a cloudy weathery day but the rain held off. We found a spot to get Duggie to shore but we got attacked by flies so we ran for about a mile then came back to Willow. Making a Mexican bowl tonight with pork, rice, beans, lots of veggies and guacamole 🥑 Planning on getting to Norfolk VA tomorrow which is a 45 mile trip and we have a Marina lined up so we can provision, get fuel and water and rest before our overnight to NJ. Abdu is hopefully going to meet us Thursday evening so we can leave early Friday. GETTING CLOSER!!!

We made a lot of progress today even though we didn’t start moving until 12. We spent the morning doing some maintenance and working. Completed an oil change and transmission fluid change. The port engine has been acting up and sometimes takes some time to get into gear so we are hoping changing the fluid will help. It was a long hot day on the intracoastal and we got a few work calls completed underway and also got to put our jib up for the last few hours! We were sailing downwind in 20knots and hit speeds over 7.5knots which was fun. We had to open a swing bridge and they opened on command. We didn’t even have to slow down to go through which was impressive! Very good bridge operator. Then as we approached our anchorage around 7:30 the sun was low and there were some waves from the strong wind and we went through a field of crab pot buoys. It was like dodging land mines! It took a lot of focus but we made it safely to our anchorage which has great protection from the 20-30 knots we are expecting tonight and tomorrow. We also deployed a trip line on our anchor tonight for the first time. I tied one of my crocs to a 15 ft line that is attached to the top/back side of the anchor. We read some reviews that said this area is know for getting anchors snagged on logs so we decided to try the trip line. It is actually really nice to have since we can see exactly where the anchor is at any time. Hopefully we won’t need to use it tomorrow!