Well…our planned ‘one night in Ft. Pierce’ turned into several days in Ft. Pierce, including Christmas Day.
Our buddy boat and their friends really saved us – from navigating our boat to taking Josh all the way to Ft. Lauderdale so he could pick up the prop parts, a new watermaker and a new generator.
The kiddos had a blast learning how to fish and actually catching some!
We are so proud of our kiddos through all of this. No complaining and all pure joy in everything new.
Excerpt from our letter home…
Ahoy Nobad Fam!
To say we’ve lived 10 lives in the last week would be an understatement.
Thank you, thank you for all the love, calls, emails, texts, prayers we’ve received the last week. We’ve truly felt your love and support and our Heavenly Father’s love and protection over us.
We left off last week with two missing props and our boat tied up with our Buddy Boat, SV Makani Moku at anchor. We did not have the fairy tale ending of finding the one prop we lost when we anchored. So Ft. Pierce inlet will forever have our two brand new props that we miss very much.
Through some stressful research and desperate calls all over Florida, Josh was able to find ONE store that had all the parts we needed to install our two old props, including a custom made part. But….it was in Ft. Lauderdale, which was a 2 hour drive away. By the grace of God, our buddy boat’s friends (who were local and visiting them for a couple days) offered to drive Josh down to Ft. Lauderdale and back. We cannot explain how deep our humility and gratitude from their generosity was. So Josh, Jeremy (buddy boat captain), and Christian (friend) all headed down to Ft. Lauderdale Tuesday morning. The kiddos, myself, Amber (buddy boat) and Kramer hopped in the dinghy and went into town to explore Ft. Pierce and eat lunch. Everyone felt revived after getting off the boat for a good part of the day. When the guys returned, they tried to get the props on that night but it got too dark and the water was too cold.
Wednesday morning (Christmas eve!) Josh and Jeremy dove back in the water and I was a hot, stressed mess all morning with a constant stream of prayers running. They were methodical, extremely careful (tying tools and props and parts to themselves and using a large fishing net to catch anything that may fall). Heaven forbid we lose a part, it would be game over. And they did it! Both props went on and after the first one was locked on I became very emotional. We weren’t stuck anymore.
Amber, the kiddos, dog and I spent Christmas eve afternoon at a couple different beaches, letting the kids and dogs stretch their legs and get wiggles out in anticipation for our upcoming 1st big passage. The guys took our boat to the fuel dock to load up and give her a good test run to make sure these props would stay on. All went well. We had our buddy boat over for Christmas eve dinner and we had a wonderful Christmas eve evening together.
And yes, Santa made it to our boat! We used pillowcases for stockings but we had milk, cookies and carrots for Santa and his reindeer. We challenged the kids to make gifts for each other this year and this was probably the most special part of Christmas. The kids spent all Christmas eve making their gifts for each other. Watching them proudly give their gifts and their graciousness in receiving them was more than I could have anticipated. We freaking love these kids.
At around 1pm on Christmas Day – WE SET SAIL to Key West.
to be continued…
Nobad Weather Fam 
Leave a comment