I have often said that change by evolution is safer than change by revolution and changes that happen logically, building incrementally on what has come before are more manageable and generally less likely to lead to unintended consequences.
And, now that 2025 has come and gone, I realize that last year was indeed a pivotal one.
After nearly a decade of cruising the eastern Caribbean, to do a trans-Atlantic crossing and commit to a number of seasons of cruising the Mediterranean was in itself a big change. As jarring as it has been to give up winters afloat and summers at our “land home” in CT this “next chapter” as been a fairly logical progression of our cruising life together in a way that I might even label as “sustainable”.
This most recent chapter has taken me and Pandora “across the pond” and a logical, if big, next step in Brenda’s and my time together afloat. When we were in our 20s, back in the early 1980s, we purchased our first sailboat, a 20′ Cape Cod Sailboat, Tao. This photo was taken when we brought her down to Black Rock from her previous home on Mystic with our friends Chris and Pat. Brenda got terribly seasick on this two day run and made it clear to all that this was not a great start to a life of cruising together.
Chris and Pat, still close friends decades later, were our constant companions in those early years on weekend “cruises” around Long Island Sound.
Then everything changed with the arrival of our first son Rob. Notice that Brenda is wearing a hand woven shawl and hand knitted sweater. Nothing has changed in the fiber department after all these years. As I write this she is down in the studio warping up the loom for yet another project. And ditto for knitting. Always knitting.
She still loves scarves and has dozens, no hundreds. She can only wear one at a time and most days she is cycling through her stash as she did as we celebrated the 53rd anniversary of our first date recently. I don’t remember if she wore something knitted on that first date though.
Brenda’s “fiber” repertoire has grown substantially to include a lot more than just weaving and knitting. One thing that has not stood the test of time is fishing or even catching anything herself that might become dinner, for that matter. I expect that she knitted that sweater as well.
After those carefree years of no kids, everything changed but in some ways didn’t as we continued to spend many summer weekends afloat and our boys Rob and Chris grew up aboard a progression of bigger and much more complex, boats. That was a much simpler time for sure.
When I retired in 2012, with both boys grown and on their own by then, we were still in good health and not too old to “cast off the dock lines”, we headed south aboard our previous Pandora, our SAGA 43′, via the ICW, bound for the Bahamas. This was a huge adjustment for us as that trip took the better part of 8+ months, marking our transition from weekend to seasonal liveaboard cruising.
Our son Christopher , a grad student at Columbia at the time, rode his bike and greeted us as we exited Hell’s Gate and headed down the East River in Manhattan for points south.
He took what became, for us, an iconic shot of the evolution of our cruising life.
We raced, Chris on his bike, and us with the outgoing tide on our way to the Battery.
We barely outran (out floated?) him. He climbed over the fence at The Battery, to cries of “don’t jump, from bystanders. He didn’t..
We circled Pandora near the Battery, waved good by, and turned toward the lower bay. This shot of Brenda smiling followed a few tears as Chris faded into the distance.
We had a wonderful trip including a stop in Annapolis for the sailboat show and then on to Hampton VA where we began our run down the ICW, all the way to Ft Lauderdale and across to the Bahamas.
It was a big adjustment for Brenda, being away for so long and leaving all of her “people” behind. We worked hard to make Pandora, then a SAGA 43, feel like home. Flowers did a lot to make things seem right. The G&Ts and fresh oysters helped…
With regards to things staying the same, after all these years we still try to have flowers aboard Pandora and always at home. With Brenda’s birthday “celebration” mid January, and it’s a big one, celebrations began right after New Years with even more flowers than usual.
As we made our way south were able to anchor in some beautiful spots along the way like this creek between some abandoned rice fields in South Carolina.
With many stops along the way, some for a week or more, the trip from Long Island Sound to Florida took us 2.5 months. We were particularly fond of St Augustine where we had lunch at a café. Both then and now, waterside cafes remain a regular part of our routine. I expect that cafes will be an even bigger part of our time in the Med.
The knitting continued all the way south…
We spent much of the winter in The Bahamas that year and several more after that.
We weren’t ready for the impossibly clear water. We have been told that the clarity of the water in the Bahamas is unequaled. For sure, it’s clearer than in most of the Caribbean. It as easy to slip off the back of the boat and be able to see the anchor in front of the boat, sometimes upwards of 150 away.
And a LOT of sharks. Most of the sharks are harmless nurse sharks but I have never recovered from seeing “Jaws” and being in the water with something that big still isn’t my first choice.
Our boys visited us that winter. It’s hard to believe that they are both 40 now. And, Rob (on the right) has since married Kandice and we now have three grandchildren. With busy lives and a trio of children, joining us aboard is no longer on the agenda.
Chris has joined us a few times but he too is so busy that even getting time off isn’t easy.
Cuba beckoned during that very brief time in 2016 when things opened up. Sadly, conditions since then have been so much worse and now, with Cuba in the news, and leadership change all the rage in Washington, perhaps things will change there as well. Speaking of “evolution vs revolution” who knows how it will go for the Cuban people.
Never the less, being there was an amazing experience capped off by a live concert, one of the largest in history with 500,000 people, by the Rolling Stones.
All and all, an unequaled two months cruising the coast of Cuba. If you are curious, check out the many posts at these links, March and April 2016.
After that season we followed friends to the Caribbean and I became active as a board member of the Salty Dawg Sailing Association. The group has been running a rally from VA to the BVI for a few years and I successfully moved the destination to Antigua where it has been for 8 years and going strong.
We enjoyed cruising the islands south of Antigua for quite a few years but eventually Brenda decided that going to the same places year after year was getting old and wanted something new.
Her initial suggestion, somewhat serious, was to perhaps sell Pandora and stay close to home. She put it this way “let’s buy a little Beetle Catboat and you can sail it back and forth in front of the Essex Yacht Club and I will sit on the deck with a glass of wine and wave…”
Oh boy! I had to do something, anything, to avoid that.
Here’s an idea Brenda… How about the Med? Brenda had studied classics, Latin and Greek and had spent two semesters, one in Rome and the other in Greece. And so began a “slightly” desperate look for information that would appeal to her as the next option.
After a series of conversations with “those who have gone before…”, she agreed so off to the Med.
“Good save Bob!”
Ok, with that plan in place, I proposed to the Salty Dawg Board that we add a rally to the Azores and they agreed.
When I arrived in Horta, Azores, Brenda joined me and we explored the islands for a month before she headed to Scotland with a friend and I headed to spain. Along the way I “donated” part of my rudder to a pack of Orcas but given how much “mileage” I have gotten with the telling of that story, I guess it was worth it. If you somehow missed the orcas thing, follow this link. It was an experience…
I love giving presentations about all the great places that we have visited and it’s pretty clear to me that adding “orcas attack” to the description makes for a much more enthusiastic audience. Damage, sinking’s, death and orca attacks make for a compelling story and I will take orcas attacks over other “exciting” options any time.
All and all, lots has happened since 2012 when we first pointed our bow south toward The Bahamas but if someone had told me that we would eventually add Cuba, the Caribbean, a transatlantic and now the Mediterranean, I would have said “unlikely”.
And for much of that time, our boys saying “that’s just dad trying to make Mom like sailing.”
Likely or not, I like to think that all of this has been a logical progression involving lots of discussion, compromising and plenty pivots, but if anyone had told me way back when we were aboard our 20′ Tao, that I would be writing about sailing in the Med now, I would not have believed it.
And with a “near miss” of me on the river and Brenda on the clubhouse deck, I consider myself particularly lucky.
2025 has certainly proven to be a year of transition, well into our second decade of cruising together. Well, actually a lot longer than that given the fact that we began sailing together way back in Highschool.
With all of the cruising we have done together, crossing the Atlantic to begin our next big adventure, makes me appreciate, even more, that 2025 was indeed a year of transition.
Stay tuned and wish us luck…
Details to come.