mullerb's musings

After 2 seasons of cruising the Intercoastal Waterway and the Bahamas, we decided to sell Carina. She's a fine boat and could take us pretty much anywhere in the world. But she's too nice a boat to let sit for a year while we pursue land-based adventures this upcoming winter. While this chapter of our cruising log comes to an end, it won't be the last. We'll no doubt live on a boat again in the near future. The next one will either be bigger, so we can comfortably have crew on board for long passages. Or maybe a catamaran for super comfy live aboarding. Or maybe something a bit smaller and less expensive that we would be more comfortable storing for a year or two without worrying about it losing value.  For lots of pics and posts, check out #sailingsvcarina . Our journeys: November 2021 - May 2022 (We didn't log out first 2 weeks from Annapolis to Beaufort SC) October 2022 - May 2023

With covid putting a crimp on international travel for late 2021, we opted for Plan B: spend the winter living on a boat. So we squeezed a year’s worth of boat buying into a couple of months and sailed off from Annapolis, Maryland on November 29 on SV Carina, a 2005 Island Packet 370. ( #sailingsvcarina ) She’s a beast for 37’ with a cutter rig and and a full keel. The motion of the ocean is where she’s happy and safe. We spent December and January heading south on the Intercoastal Waterway with a few coastal passages, getting aligned with Carina and getting her into cruising mode. By mid-February we replaced most of the aging equipment in need, added some solar and got our new foresails. A hop across the Gulf Stream brought us to Bimini and the Bahamas. We’ll keep working at refining this cruising lifestyle while exploring these islands this spring. Then back to Florida to put her on the hard for the summer and hurricane season while we go back to the mountains for some solid earth ad...

Here's a 7-day gravel ride we rode in early August, 2021. Yet another fine escape from the crowds! Stout climbs, smooth gravel, diverse ecosystems, undeveloped camping for all but one night.  We started and ended in Shell, Wyoming, parking on a side street after getting the OK by the cook at the Trapper Creek Lodge to leave our van there. The route took us all the way around the Cloud Peak Wilderness in the Big Horn Mountains. This mountain range is surrounded by fairly dry, high desert sage country. We yo-yoed up and down, into and out of the dry sage to the piney alpine three times over the 250 odd miles. Big, stout climbs and long, steep descents!  75+% of the route is on hard-pack dirt and gravel. There's a short 6 miles or so of more rugged riding past Medicine Lodge Lake on Forest Service Road 344, which is more of a motorcycle/ATV trail. And a mile or so of sandy single track just before dropping into Medicine Lodge Archaeological State Park. Both of these stretches wer...