We were back in CO for about 6 weeks to catch up with work, family, friends and more. Living on the boat is great, but it’s also nice to come back home to beautiful Colorado for awhile. However, even when back in CO, the boat is never far from Anthony’s thoughts. On this trip home, we created (mostly Anthony) winch covers and a wheel cover to help protect these things from the sun.
We’ve been gone for about 5 weeks and the boat was filthy when we got back. Since Moxie is our “home” a cleaning was in order.
Once the boat was clean (or cleaner) and we’d loaded up with food and fuel, it was time to head north to the US – Ft Pierce, FL – almost 600 NMs away!
Three and 1/2 days later we came into Ft. Pierce, FL and “dropped the hook”.
Coming back into the US was a breeze. The formalities were done completely online, with a FaceTime call to answer a few questions and verify who we were. In less than 15 minutes, without ever leaving our boat – we were clear to go ashore! GOD BLESS the USA!!
We planned this stop in Ft. Pearce to haul out the boat and repaint the bottom with better “anti-fouling” paint. Typically a bottom paint should last ~ 2 years, but whatever they use in Europe isn’t very effective and we had lots of growth on the bottom. And since that slows us down, we needed to repaint for better sailing.
So on April 16th, we moved over to Harbortown Marina to be hauled out and get a new coat of bottom paint. A week later and we were going back in. This video shows the whole process.
After a last minute grocery store run, we head out of the channel for an overnight sail to St. Augustine, FL (~200 NM).
