Disclaimer: This blog is quite different that the last one I posted. No beautiful beaches in this one – more like lots of hot, sweaty, dirty work with a bit of fun sprinkled in. You will read about yet another crew change development and at the very end, a bit about a secret plan I am working on! 🤭

Our time in the Pearl Islands was coming to an end so we prepared for our sail to Vista Mar Marina. We needed to haul Morning Stars out for repairs to the drive shaft, Alex needed to get to the airport in a few days and we were excited to connect with Blandine (Blan)! If you recall from a previous blog, Blan is the woman from France who we wanted to join us on our passage to French Polynesia. She is a dive master and is a skilled free diver. As crew she would help with watches and share with us her experience in her multiple trans-Atlantic passages.

We wanted to make sure we arrived at the marina in daylight so we pulled anchor before the sun rose above the horizon. The plan was for Alex and Jason to get us underway around 3 AM and then I would come up at 6 AM to go on watch. I remember waking up as they pulled anchor and thinking ‘Am I really going to lay here and miss the chance to sail under the stars with them?’ Nope! I got up and joined them in the cockpit while Dylan continued to sleep. After sunrise, Jas went to rest and it was just Alex and I. We were entertained by a pod of dolphins and enjoyed the beautiful sailing conditions.

The day continued with great sailing, more fishing success and before we knew it we saw the marina come into view. Of course that is when the wind cranked up – right when we needed to start taking the mainsail down. The mainsail on Morning Stars is quite different from Starship. It is much bigger and it furls into the boom. The mainsail on Starship just folded on top of the boom when it came down. The biggest advantage I see for having the boom furled main is that we can reef it at any point in the sail. We are not limited to the location of sail reef points. The process for lowering it is a bit trickier though. In order for it to roll properly as it comes down, the boom needs to be a the perfect angle. Jas has now put a mark at the mast for us to use as a guide but that day we were still figuring that out. Eventually the main sail behaved and did its roll allowing us to head into the marina.

The following day, an excited Blan came running towards me! We all welcomed her with open arms. Blan is a bundle of energy, full of passion, hard working and makes us laugh!

Here is Blan, in her happy place, beautifully doing a free diving dance!

The weeks that followed were not always easy. There was a lot of boat work to do and we felt like we were hemorrhaging money. At Vista Mar Marina, you are not allow to sleep on your boat when it’s out of the water. This meant staying at an Airbnb for the time we needed to complete all our list:

• replace the midshaft support bushing on the driveshaft
• investigate and remedy a crack in the keel (the crack was a delightful new discovery!)
• sand down and paint the bottom
• paint length markings on the anchor chain
• replace the cutlass bearing

We were all so happy when the day came that Morning Stars was going back in the water. Timing had to be strategic though as we needed to go in a high tide. They started a bit late and unfortunately missed the peak of high tide. This meant we got a bit stuck but on the third try, Jas was able to power us off the seabed and into deeper waters.

I wish I could’ve said that once back in the water, all we had to do was provision and then start our passage, but, not quite. There was still so much more to do. We had told Blan that we would be ready to go at the end of March and it was quite obvious to us that we were going to miss that goal by ALOT!

The list was still very long but we had a special birthday to celebrate!🎂 Jason turned 53 on April 5th and he had one birthday wish…to go sailing for the afternoon! All the boat work was so wearing on our spirits and he wanted to remind himself of why we put ourselves through all that crap! It was time to toss the lines and get those sails up! Turns out his birthday gift to himself was a gift to us all that day.

That evening we treated ourselves to dinner at the Boga Bar Restaurant at the marina! After dancing our feet off and some karaoke singing, we headed back to the boat for cake and a few presents.

Shortly after that, Blan decided to spend some time off the boat. She headed into the jungle and had a wonderful time immersing herself into the gorgeous wildlife. She got these amazing pictures on a night hike looking for frogs!

While she was chasing frogs and hanging with the sloths, the three of us rented a car as we needed to go to Colon and Panama City. Can you guess why we had to go to Panama City? Our long stay French Polynesian visas were finally approved! 🎉 We needed to drop off our passports for two days so that they could add the visas into each of them. Once that was done, we drove to Colon to pick up deliveries that arrived at Shelter Bay Marina after we went through the canal. This also gave us an excellent excuse to hang out with our friends Medea and her son Johnny on S/V Katemba! John was still away at work so it was too bad we could not hang out with him too. I miss Medea so much. She’s an incredible person to share the highs of this life with and we are great support to each other when things get tough. It was so nice too to see Dylan finally have a chance to hang out with kids for a bit!

After spending two days in Colon, it was time to head back to Panama City to pick up our passports and do our first provisioning run.

We really loved our time in Panama City and even happened to catch the the ceremony marking the beginning of Holy Week! We are so glad we were there for that.

The next day we headed back to the boat to unload. 🥵

Blan returned to Morning Stars just in time for Easter! Dylan was thrilled that the Easter bunny found us this year as last year we totally missed it. We were in a remote area of the Bahamas at the time and did not prepare in advance for Easter. We had no chocolate onboard and there were no stores around. Fortunately we were about to set sail to Georgetown so the Easter bunny got him a big ice cream as soon as we got there!🍦

A few days later, Blan left Morning Stars again. This time to join another boat to crew on to cross to French Polynesia. We still were not ready to set sail on the passage and the other boat was leaving right away. She was anxious to go and we fully understand that. Our original intensions were to have her crew with us for the passage but, here’s the thing about this life, things are constantly changing. We were so far behind schedule for our departure. She saw too that we should be doing the crossing as a family – just Dylan, Jason and I. Over the past several weeks, Dylan and I have felt a change when it comes to our feelings about the passage. Our confidence in ourselves and Morning Stars has grown. I know we will be able to face all the challenges that await us out there. The night before she left we celebrated our time together! I made chicken parmesan for dinner and then we played Mexican Train and other card games. The next morning we shared lots of hugs and promised each other that we’d have a drink together with our toes in the sand in French Polynesia soon.

Speaking of change, check out Dylan’s new haircut – he says it is so much cooler now and we all love the look!

I have officially met my goal of catching up with my blogs! I am writing this in REAL TIME everyone! We are now only several days away from setting sail (weather depending). We are renting a van to head into Panama City one more time to do the rest of our provisioning. We wanted to do it all in one day but we have several stops to make and can’t leave the boat that day until I have finished working. That night we will stay in Panama City and while I work the next morning, Jas will go clear us out with customs. After that we will head back to the boat and we expect it will take us a day and a half to put all our provisions away. Tasks remaining after that include clearing out with immigrations, a bit more mast work and fueling up. Most importantly we are building in time to rest about 24 hours before we go. It’s too easy to just push ourselves and work right up until departure but that would not be smart. We will take time to rest, eat lots and fully hydrate. We need our bodies and minds to be as ready as possible for the passage. Right now our planned departure date is Tuesday, April 29th! 🎉

Before I end here, I have a question for you. Do you want to come with us? Do you want to see first hand what it’s like to be at sea for five weeks? What will it feel like to sail 4,000 nautical miles non-stop? Keep your eye on my website, share the link with others and in the coming days I will fill you all in on what I am talking about.

Until then….

The blog below talks about why we have decided to add the above Ko-fi button. 😊

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