WE WOULD LOVE TO HEAR FROM YOU
I know this is against the norm in the blogging world but, I try to keep the site clean and easy to read for our reader’s enjoyment. For this reason, I opted to keep comments to one page. We would love to hear from you. Do not let my wacky thought process deter you from expressing your feelings regarding our postings or another items of interest you want to share.
- Thoughts on the cruising lifestyle?
- Do you have an favorite sailing destination or a place you think we should avoid?
- Send us your favorite recipe.
- Have you read any good books lately?
- What would you like to know about us?
Please include your e-mail so we can write back to you (email addresses are kept private)
Thanks for connecting to us!
Mark and Cindy
Goodbyes are NEVER easy. Worse so when you know you may not cross paths again. Fair seas and smooth sailing on the next step in your adventure!
Hi Marie,
It is great to hear from you. Thank you for the kind comment. We are looking forward to our next adventure. The blog will heat up again soon. 🙂
Take care and thanks for following us.
Hello Mark and Cindy! I just ran across your blog and am enjoying every story! We are planning to purchase a sailboat in the Windward Islands this year and have just begun our search! We lived aboard a cat for a couple of years, move ashore to Michigan 11 years ago, close to our daughter, and now are looking at spending our winters in the Windwards. We are not Florida condo people but love the adventure sailing offers! We spent a week in Grenada this January and got the bug again! Your posts from that area will be very helpful to us. Thank you and I would love to see some of your favorite recipes if you could share a couple! Dixie
So glad you are back on the blog! I’ve been missing it. I just thought you were out at some atoll with no internet this whole time!
Sorry, we’ll try to do better next year as we’ll be on the move more since the world is just about opened again.
Hey there Mark and Cindy,
How are you doing? No word from you guys in a while. Hope all’s well.
Charlie and Karen
svTracenJ
Sorry, we have been lax with blog posts. Also, it looks like feedburner no longer works for subscribers.We will be on the move again in 2023 and have a lot more to write about 🙂
I’ve just been reading your Fakarava pieces, and loving the memories they bring back – as well as the realisation that life isn’t really so very different out of lockdown! Looking forward to hearing about your next adventures.
Hi Kate,
We are glad you are enjoying the blog.
The only difference between now and when you visited during lockdown is that there are many times more boats and what was closed is now open again. 🙂 When we were in Rotoava, Fakarava I counted over sixty boats in the anchorage. Boats were on top of each other trying to find space in most parts of the atoll. Due to the overwhelming number of boats visiting French Polynesia this year, Fakarava and many other atolls and islands will be putting in moorings bouys to limit the number of boats. There is a huge concern about boaters tearing up the seabed and coral. Many cruisers were not floating their chains. We watched as most of those who did not float their chain got caught on coral.
There were a lot of boaters stuck in other countries during COVID who wanted to come to French Polynesia. Two years of backlog of cruisers plus rallies who were double in size this year equals many more boats than a normal season. It put a strain on many of the resource throughout all of French Polynesia and caused quite a bit of tension. I think it will take another year of crowds before things calm down. But, with the amount of people taking up the cruiser lifestyle, I don’t think anyone will have the idyllic, uncrowded conditions you guys had during COVID lockdowns. 🙂 I think those times might hve past. 🙂
Great to hear from you. We hope you are both doing well. Keep in touch.
Hi Mark & Cindy: LOVED reading your 7 year post, and I gotta say, the photo of the seal looking through your hatch was my favorite! Take care my friends. Sending hugs from Belgrade! Pam
Hi Pam,
Great to hear from you guys! Thanks for the comment on our post. It was one of those posts that took days to do because we were having so much fun looking back over pictures and places. Good times then and more to come.
We hope you guys are having fun and enjoying your adventures too. Have a great time in Belgrade!
Keep in touch. Take care. Hugs back to you both.
Hello Becky,
Thank you for you for following our blog. Thank you for your kind words pointing out our error. Since we wanted to be sure we corrected the mistake properly, we went to the internet for confirmation of the proper pronunciation. We found the following link. The grievous error has been corrected.
https://www.beauforthotelnc.com/beaufort/
I have been following your blog for a couple years now (and went back and read everything from the beginning). I appreciate your approach to sailing and life in general and it has been great following along with you folks. In your early posts you referenced BeBe’s financial estimates and, if it’s not too much to ask, did you find their actual numbers reasonably close to your reality? Still a couple years out from starting our own similar adventure and wanting to know if the baseline numbers we are using are crazy or not. Of course it can be done for $15k a year or 1.5M but your general lifestyle seems a reasonable middle ground.
Thanks for keeping doing this blog and know the enjoyment that it brings many of us.
We sent you a private email 🙂
Do you have any sailing plans, moving west this year? Would love to hear about that.
Hi Charles, So far we don’t have plans to go west, yet. Too many countries are still closed to private boats due to Covid (although at this point the closures seem futile – especially if they allow air travel). When we entered FP our boat was granted a 3-year cruising permit (now limited to 2 years for arrivals). And, with a CDS we can stay as residents for as long as we wish (renewable each year). If you ask the same question this time next year, I think then we’ll be looking to move one since we’ll be nearing the end of our permit. In the meantime, we plan to hit the atolls and enjoy FP.
i always enjoy a good update from you guys and am glad you got that bottom repainted for nothing (and also the paint for nothing) even though that took a lot of dedication on your part. I think another skill Mark has is knowing how to locate a CEO email address. Unless that’s on LinkedIn I’m not sure I would have found that, but smooth move! We are all boostered here but, of course, large swathes of our population honestly believes that Bill Gates is microchipping people with the vaccine (or…chose your conspiracy theory and insert here) so we will probably never reach full vaccine status.
Congrats on being fully vaxxed. Even in French Poly, we’ve had people tell us they do not want a chip put into them with the vaccination serum. I laugh hard and point at their smartphones.
I am really not as smart as you give me credit for – LOL. For the CEO’s email, most can be found here: https://www.ceoemail.com/ If not, I usually start with the first.lastname@company.com – this works most of the time. LinkedIn is a good source to get a higher-up executive.