February 8 – 15, 2026

Our first week in Coconut Grove, Miami, FL. We thought we would be here for 2-3 weeks. Well, we were wrong and would end up making this a home for the next 2 months as we worked to figure out how to build and assemble our solar arch and navigate more of boat life and learning to live on boat.

The highlight was seeing family. We haven’t seen family in months and to hug and spend time with some family was good for our souls.

Stay tuned as we explore this area – through good and bad weather. Meeting new friends along the way.

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Email home v. 02.15.2026

Hola Nobad Familia, 

This week was pretty “normal” – if we dare say it. We said goodbye to our two buddy boats that were anchored here in Coconut Grove with us (SV Subdivisions and SV Anchora). They both jumped earlier this week and are meeting up with the rest of our buddy boat gang over in the Bahamas. 

Another friend boat who anchored by us (SV Yesterday’s Dream) also left a couple days ago. They’re the family with kids we met in Marathon and went to Sombrero beach with. But before they left, the husband had rented a car and needed to run errands in Ft. Lauderdale and invited Josh. Which was so kind of him. So Josh went and got some things we needed for our boat and did some grocery shopping. Holy cow, groceries are normal prices here! It’s so amazing. Chicken for less than $6/lb was a glorious sight. During a conversation, first aid kits came up and they apparently had a couple extra epi pens. Learning we didn’t have one yet, they gave us one of theirs. Again, very generous of them. The night before they left, they messaged us saying their US Flag hadn’t come in the mail and were wondering if we had an extra. We did, so we gave them one of our flags. Not exactly a fair trade but we were glad to help them out too! They let us know they made it safely to the Bahamas yesterday. 

Side note: Country flags are used in the sailing community regularly. When you’re visiting a new country, you replace your country flag with the new country’s flag (or fly it in addition) as a courtesy (which is why it’s called a courtesy flag). You also need a yellow quarantine flag to indicate to that country’s naval authority that you have just entered and need to check in. Sometimes they come out to your boat to process immigration stuff, etc. And sometimes you dock and go to an official building. 

Funny story: when Josh returned from dropping off the flag at their boat it was dark outside and Kramer didn’t know it was Josh who was coming to our boat. So he started barking and freaking out the closer Josh got. We were both trying to tell him it was Josh, Josh was yelling from the dinghy that it was fine. But Kramer decided to learn about physics and momentum. As he jumped from the cockpit onto one of our sugar scoops to get closer to the approaching ‘bad guy,’ he tried to stop himself from sliding and slid right off the boat. So we also learned that Kramer could indeed swim. We weren’t concerned, I was right there to pull him back onboard. He was a grumpy puppy the rest of the night. 

We’ve been to the park a lot this week! The weather has been good and the park has sand volleyball pits. So we’ve been working on our volleyball skills. In addition, it has a community exercise section with body weight machines, bars, etc. The kids love getting in a “good workout” too. 

The highlight of the week was getting to see family! Sam’s aunt and uncle from Idaho were in town and we met up with them on Friday and spent most of the day with them. They spoiled us and our kiddos. We ate pizza in the park, but more importantly, they were the first family we’ve physically seen and hugged since we left Idaho in November. Homesickness is something we didn’t anticipate would be this strong – we are so grateful for phones, facetime, email, texts, to stay in touch daily. We are so grateful they made the time for us! Love them so much. 

We also got a sweet treat from grandparents! They sent us Crumbl cookies for Valentines Day. It was a bit of struggle to coordinate getting them to the boat, but we got it! The kiddos were so excited! 

Yesterday was Valentine’s Day and the kiddos surprised us (mom and dad) with treats they bought with Sam’s Uncle! They were so excited to give them to us. We ate sweets all day. The water was pretty choppy so we didn’t get off the boat. 

I also reached out to another catamaran anchored near us on the NoForeignLand app to ask the solo sailor fella a couple questions. He responded quick and then shortly after, dinghy’d over to our boat to meet us. Pretty soon he was sitting in our cockpit with us chatting away. He’s on SV MokaKat with his pup Josie. Super nice guy. We exchanged phone numbers and tentatively made lunch plans for sometime this coming week. 

Another interesting sailboat moment from yesterday…While washing dishes I heard noises that didn’t sound normal, and our boat seemed to be behaving oddly at anchor. I finally told Josh and we went to the bow to investigate. He started pulling up our bridle as a quick check for issues and we quickly realized our bridle and part of our chain were tangled in a huge abandoned anchor on the ocean floor. So that’s cool. Josh (with a tiny bit of help from me) untangled the bridle from the anchor, but not the chain. We decided to turn on the engines to warm up just in case we needed to reset our entire anchor set up. Then, we slowly started to pull in our anchor chain. Luckily, just by doing that, it untangled itself from the anchor and we were free! Our boat and bridle realigned correctly, so we didn’t have to move the boat. Josh and I then went to the back of the boat to look at where the arch install would happen…the engines are still on. Kramer decided to jump from the upper deck down into the cockpit to be near us, and in doing so he accidentally hit both our throttles, throwing the boat into reverse. It took us half a second to realize what happened and I jumped up to the helm to put them back in neutral and shut off the engines. Never a boring day here on SV Nobad! 

Today we did boat church again and had a good discussion with the kiddos about how Satan tries to make us miserable and what we can do about it. There was supposed to be a blow coming through today through tomorrow with rainstorms, which is why we didn’t go to the ward near us, but so far it hasn’t been too bad. We are seasoned sailors now ;) Just kidding, we had some strong gusts rolling through earlier today and we will probably get some tomorrow. Praying the predicted thunderstorms stay north of us and keep moving east out to sea. 

Josh worked more on our battery bank install, as always, gotta wait for more resin to set. But progress is progress. 

The Miami boat show ends today, which we are really happy about. It should make the bay a lot more calm in the evenings. Not to say we haven’t enjoyed watching the cigarette boats rip out of the channels and across the bay during the day. They are so fast and loud! It’s pretty cool to watch. 

 We made plans for Presidents Day! Tomorrow we are going to meet up with a buddy boat who is currently hauled out in Ft. Lauderdale for boat repairs. They have two girls and a rental car and are ready for a change of scenery. If they finish their boat repairs around the same time we are ready to cross, we will buddy boat with them to the Bahamas. 

Josh also picks up all the fittings for the solar arch tomorrow and maybe even the pipe! So making progress one step at a time. 

We feel a lot more settled in a lot of things. We are sad to be ‘alone’ here in the anchorage, although we do have our new friend SV MokaKat. We are praying for minimal interference while setting up the solar arch so we can continue our journey. We are so grateful for all the phone calls this week! Love you all and we feel your prayers and support! And again, so grateful for our Aunt and Uncle, and their encouraging words. 

To end, I know you are all wondering what we named our anchor after the last email. Thanks to some inspiration from Great Grandma A….we think it should be named…The Great Potato. 

Ride the t, 

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