Letter to home version v. 02.08.2026

Hello hello Nobad Fam, 

It took a couple days for my nerves to completely chill out after the gale-force winds last Saturday. The storm brought very cold weather, and the winds continued (although not nearly as strong) through the week. 

On Monday I went into town with another couple to grocery shop. We are the only boats with kids aboard so we were shopping for full families. Our shopping carts were so full – we looked ridiculous. Between the amount of groceries we had and the fact that we were 3 grown adults, it was nothing short of a miracle that we fit all of it in the dinghy. We took it slow back to the boats, but with the wind and chop, we all got soaking wet. We laughed the whole time. They are on boat SV Free Soul and are awesome people. Super fun and down to earth. We will miss having them around but just another motivational push to get over to the Bahamas. We loosely planned to travel the East Coast with them this summer. Josh anticipated correctly that I would return cold and wet and already had the water heater going so I could take a hot shower. Something we don’t take for granted here. 

We also we got off the boat as a family and went to Sombrero beach again, all bundled up, so the kiddos could play at the park and stretch our legs. If there’s one thing we have learned – when there’s a chance to get off the boat…get off the boat. An iguana warning accompanied the storm warnings, noting that temperatures were dropping low enough to essentially paralyze iguanas until they warm back up. Falling iguanas were a risk to watch out for (and know that they are probably not dead). We definitely saw a couple at the park. Pretty wild. 

It’s pretty wild how hyper aware you become of your usage of normal utilities. When you have to make your own water, heat your own water, and generate your own power, everything takes time and consideration. It will be nice once we have all our solar panels up so we can cut back on how much we have to run the generator. Having the new water maker installed has been amazing. 

Most of our buddy boat gang decided to head to the Bahamas on Wednesday. We knew we wanted to head north towards Miami and luckily a couple of the kid boats we had met while anchoring in Marathon were also headed that direction. So we had a buddy boat for our trek to Key Largo, which was cool. We left Tuesday morning as the sail to Key Largo was about 7 hours. The weather was nice although the sea state was a bit rough in the morning. By lunchtime, it had calmed significantly and we crossed over insanely blue and turquoise waters. It was beautiful. We were bummed to spend only one night in Key Largo (it was beautiful and calm), but we had to leave the next morning to reach Biscayne Bay before the next winter storm/blow arrived. Unfortunately, our new buddy boat opted to stay in Key Largo (they decided to provision there and jump to the Bahamas…can’t blame them). On Wednesday, we motored all the way up to Biscayne Bay and anchored in Coconut Grove, where we currently are. The weather was great but the sea state was uncomfortable for the entire 8 hours. Luckily, we went further into the ocean to catch the Gulf Stream current, which helped our time and shaved off about an hour. 

On our sail down to the Keys from Fort Pierce back in December, we made a two-day straight passage, so we completely missed this part of Florida. We were intrigued to see what the bay looked like. It’s a hot spot for cruisers. And to our great delight, another buddy boat from our bluewater cruising community was already here and we anchored right next to them! Entering Biscayne Bay late Wednesday afternoon was pretty surreal. The water was SO CALM and not a lot of boat traffic. We passed by Stiltlsville going through the channel (read about it here) – I had never heard of these before. So it was a fun piece of history to learn about! 

The water is brilliantly clear here – so clear it was playing tricks on us making us think it was too shallow for our boat. It’s a beautiful place and Coconut Grove is very cruiser friendly, with a free dinghy dock right into town. We’ve explored a bit since arriving and rode out that 30 knot blow all day Thursday. Not as nerve-wracking as last week’s blow in Marathon, but still not fun. 

The coolest thing about being here is that we have the Miami city scape as our view. At night, it’s so pretty. Kinda cool to be living on our sailboat and Miami is just there. I’ve been able to catch up on cleaning the boat and laundy, which has been super nice. We’ve gotten the kids and pup off the boat a lot. We will probably be here for at least a week. Josh is working to get the materials we need to build our solar arch and we will most likely stay until the arch is done. The Miami boat show starts this week, so we will see how crazy the bay gets. There’s another very popular anchorage across to the other side called No Name Harbor. We may move over there and anchor for a day or two to explore, but we shall see. 

We are working hard to finalize a couple of things so we can cross to the Bahamas and meet up with our buddy boat gang. They made it safely to the Bahamas Thursday morning, but had a pretty rough crossing. They all arrived and were safe through the blow mentioned above. To those wondering, this weather is rather unprecedented. 

We did boat church again today. With the boat show and a festival going on, Uber is very pricey and lots of parts of downtown are sectioned off or closed. Hopefully next week we will get to join a ward here in Miami, that would be cool. Last night there was a firework show that lasted at least 2 hours straight. Josh and I couldn’t fathom how they could just keep going. It was insane. After boat church we all went to shore and walked along the pier and to a park Finn and Raegan had found with Dad the other day. We met up with the buddy boat we are currently anchored by there (they were out riding bikes) and it was fun to talk to them and get to know them better. They are an older couple from Northern California who both work full-time remotely on their boat. We’ve learned a lot from them. We hope to have dinner with them sometime this week before they cross over to the Bahamas on Thursday. They are on SV Ancora. 

I had a thought a couple days ago that I also wanted to record. The blow in Marathon really messed with me mentally, even though we were safe and fine. So maybe it was the blow before that one where our anchor drug and we had an awful night. Anyways, I had a hard time with the storm that came through here in Coconut Grove even though it wasn’t nearly as strong as the previous ones. On top of that, getting used to how your boat acts while at anchor has been a huge adjustment for me. As the winds and currents change, your boat changes position on the anchor constantly. The boat is moving on a curve (in a circle), not a straight line, around the anchor. Same with all the other boats around you. So sometimes you’re behind a boat, and sometimes you’re in front. Sometimes you’re close and other times you’re farther away. Somtimes Miami is in front of us, sometimes it’s behind us. For some reason, it’s just been hard for me to adjust to this and I am constantly on alert, checking the anchor alarm making sure we aren’t dragging. Well on Friday afternoon I was really frustrated with myself about this. I needed to get over it or else my time living on the boat would be short lived. I was saying a little prayer while washing dishes when I came to this realization that if I can’t trust our phyiscal anchor, then I can’t fully trust in God (my spiritual anchor) to provide and protect us either. And for some reason, that flipped a switch and I was able to release the fear I was holding on to so tightly. For the last two days, I have been at peace. It’s been very healing. Josh was texting a friend of ours the other day, and he said if you want to grow your testimony exponentially, buy a boat and live on it. This has been so unexpectedly true for us. Lots of paradigm shifts happening here on SV Nobad Weather. Our buddy boat SV Ancora also helped me reframe this – the husband essentially said to us the other night, you have to trust your anchor if you’re going to cruise because you live at anchor most of the time. You have to be able to leave your boat. And he’s right. We know Heavenly Father and some special guardian angels are watching out for us and I’m doing so much better just letting go and trusting the anchor. Most people name their anchors, we haven’t yet. Gotta work on that… 

We love you all and are so grateful for the prayers and support. Truly. We miss you so much and love when we get the chance to talk on the phone with you! Don’t hestitate to call and chat, we love it! We are keeping our chins up and thoughts positive that we can get the solar arch done before the end of Bahama cruising season. But if we don’t, we will hit the Bahamas hard next season and have a blast exploring the East Coast. 

Ride the t, 

Capt. Josh, 1st mate Sam, and our salty crew

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