I think I have PTSD. Boat PTSD. Kim and I spent so much time, so much effort, and so much money fixing all the things broken on Meraviglia, that now, it’s hard for me to enjoy myself, even though we are actually out here cruising and adventuring. I have this feeling of impending doom, like something bad is going to happen at any moment. I’m just waiting for it. And that’s despite the fact that we have actually had some successes. First and foremost, we haven’t a) died, b) sunk, or c) been swallowed by a whale. I mean, that right there…

Currently, we are at anchor in the Exuma Land and Sea Park in The Bahamas. It’s the country’s first national park. We just got here today, so we haven’t explored yet, but the anchorage is gorgeous and the water is crystal clear. Seen a swimming pool? Yeah, like that. And, we actually SAILED here. No engine! It was a beautiful day. We came from Eleuthera Island, where we stopped at Spanish Wells, Governor’s Harbor, and Rock Sound. Governor’s Harbor was the best, we think. We walked across the island to the Atlantic Ocean side and spent the morning at a gorgeous beach. It had pink sand-yep, pink! We also toured the Club Med Eleuthera-pretty swanky, huh? Not really. It was destroyed in a hurricane years ago, but I like ruins, so…

We’ve been pretty much on the go since leaving West Palm Beach. That’s for a couple of reasons. First, we need to make pretty good time south if we want to clear the Caribbean before hurricane season. Second, we’ve needed to run the engine anyway to keep the batteries charged. Heard of range anxiety with EVs? We have that. We haven’t had batteries at more than 60% since leaving West Palm. But, GOOD NEWS! Yesterday, we solved it. Turned out that the regulator that controls the alternators had reset to factory settings. I reprogrammed it and, voila, we are at 99% BABY!!!!! That’s a big win. There is a slowly expanding list of other boat maintenance tasks to perform, so we need to set aside a work day soon, but for now, it can wait.

Another reason we have been moving a lot is that we need practice. Practice anchoring, practice raising anchor, practice navigating, practice sailing. Lots of practice. And we seem to be actually improving! Especially with anchoring. We can get our anchor set in less than 10 minutes now, which is awesome. And we can usually weigh it in the same time. And it hasn’t even broken. And the windlass works! And, and, and… I’m sure something with fail soon. But at least we feel good about our anchoring. Because, when a good night’s sleep depends on the anchor keeping the boat in one place, the anchor thing is sort of important. We’ve got a great anchor, a great chain, and great shackles connecting them. As an old salt told me once, “Sonny, you wanna get yourself some Crosby shackles for your anchor! They’ll never let you down!” So far, so good. Love those Crosbys.