Earlier this month, myself and several other HYC members attended the Park Service's public meeting regarding their Mooring Buoy and Marker Plan for Biscayne National Park. This plan is supposedly being developed to protect and preserve Park resources (reef, ship wrecks, grass beds, etc) for future generations. It calls for additional mooring buoys (anchor balls) on the ... More »

More than a year after buying Annabel Lee, our lives are still in a constant state of change. We're moving forward with buying a house in St. Augustine, which is huge for me – I only started living on land a few years ago, and wasn't sure how long I'd last; now I'm going to own a piece of it. The biggest change of all came a month ago when I found out that I'm ... More »

With a few weekends of work and several hundred dollars invested in Annabel Lee’s rigging, it was time to put the mast back up. But with our trailer still busted, we couldn’t pull her out of the water and do things the normal way. We’d have to try something we’d never tried before – raising the mast with the boat in the water. We’d talked about trying it, ... More »

The house we’re renting in St. Augustine is kind of creepy – creepy in the way that you can imagine all kinds of strange things having gone on there in the past. Since we’ve been there, we’ve had several odd occurrences happen (blank pieces of paper taped to the back door, upside – down pies on our front steps…we haven’t done anything to upset the neighbors, ... More »

As we limped back to the marina, our mast perched across the deck and sails crumpled around it, the whole thing lashed to the boat with various bungee cords, I felt my heart sinking into my belly. All the work that we’d put into Annabel Lee, all the hours we’d spent sanding and painting, and the money we’d spent on various repairs, and this was how she rewarded ... More »

For a few minutes, there was nothing I could do but crouch on the bow of the boat, and stare with utter shock at the scene before me. The mast was lying at an odd angle on top of the cabin. The sails were all crumpled on the deck and hanging into the water. The standing and running rigging, tangled all over the deck like a broken spider web. And Will, standing in the ... More »