Happy Boataversary, Lailia – part 1, 2019 through 2021)

Ft. Pierce, FL to St. John’s Yacht Harbor, SC

When your husband has a dream of living the boat life, eventually you move aboard.

We’ve lived on Lailia since November 1, 2019; folks say that time flies and it really has.

The day we closed on her (September 6, 2019)

John single-handedly brought her north, just after Hurricane Dorian moved north from Charleston. We didn’t want to close on Lailia until we knew she’d weathered the storm – luckily, Dorian missed her in Fort Pierce and she was good to go.

John sending video updates

Another update

Lailia and John spent a good deal of quality time together, including a few days in Port Royal (at the marina in which we are currently docked) due to some bad fuel.

In a moment of serendipity, I actually filmed John and Lailia as they approached home – I was near enough to the Limehouse Bridge to catch him motoring under it. Lailia was so new, I didn’t even know how to say her name!

There they are!

Once we got her to Charleston, John got her hauled and he painted her (this was the first, but not last, paint job while she’s been ours).

By October 31, 2019, we had donated, sold, discarded, or stored almost everything we owned. We moved aboard on November 1.

It was (and continues to be) an adjustment – there’s movement, noises, little storage. It can be absolutely gorgeous, too

Our elderly puppy learned new tricks and became a boat pup.

That ear!

That first year helped me learn to use a propane stove and how to live with a minimal wardrobe.

…and when Covid seemed to close down everything around us, we had our own little pod in the marina.

Pandemic Cruising

Although we thought about taking off on an adventure in 2020, we learned many marinas were quarantining new boats and the. Bahamas wouldn’t let sailors come ashore so we stayed in place through 2020 and 2021.