On Our Way to the Keys

(Note: You’ll read a lot about food in these posts. Yes, we love to eat! But I can’t always remember what we love to eat. So, I’m also using this blog as a food journal for provisioning. Pretty ingenious, right?!) 11/14 Saturday – We left DeSoto Pointe and had a nice day motor-sailing for about five hours, making good time to the Crow’s Nest Marina in Venice. Admiral Tanya did an...

Riding Out the Storm

(This post was written on Wednesday evening, November 11 and updated today. For some strange reason, video was loading really slowly last night...) Rain, wind, rain, wind, more rain, higher winds, shall we count the numbers 20, 30, 40 mph… Yesterday morning, in the calm before the storm, we moved Casstaway from our anchorage at Emerson Pointe across the Manatee River to DeSoto Pointe. We did...

Long and Winding Road to Water

Long ago and far away, we planned to depart Regatta Pointe Marina for the last time and set out for sea-faring adventures yet unknown – a life “on the hook” cruising Casstaway full time and journeying wherever the winds might take us (meaning a return to the Bahamas and then on through the Caribbean). But once again life got in the way, beginning with a nasty pandemic, and sprinkled with...

Casstaway Cruising Chronicles – Part Two: When Pigs Swim

From Emerald Bay we began to make our way back north on Sunday, March 31, planning to eventually stage our return crossing to Florida from Riding Rocks, a point at the far south of Bimini. Looking at weather windows we hope to cross around April 11-14, but said weather plays havoc with even the best laid plans and Todd spends a significant amount of time each day reviewing and analyzing weather,...

Casstaway Cruising Chronicles – Part One: Bimini or Bust

Casstaway and crew, along with our buddy boat Lily Belle, arrived at South Bimini, Bahamas on a beautiful sunny afternoon, Friday, March 1st after an uneventful (thankfully) journey from Rodriquez Key, near Key Largo, Florida. Even though wind direction wasn’t conducive to raising sails, we still had a lovely day making our very first blue water ocean crossing.  Bimini Big Game Club...