We left the Bahamas knowing we’d be back eventually. That’s the thing about a first season offshore: you don’t really leave it behind, you just put it on pause while the summer builds toward hurricane season and you point the bow somewhere a little more protected.
For us, that meant north: Florida, then Georgia, then more Georgia than we expected. What followed was five months of docks and detours and one island that made us feel like we could stay forever if we didn’t have an itch for blue water.
Port Canaveral: Limping Back to Land
We arrived at Port Canaveral Yacht Club a little worse for the wear and needed some TLC.
That wasn’t the plan. The plan was a quick pit stop: clear in from the Bahamas, grab groceries, point north. But the generator had other ideas, and two weeks at the dock became our unexpected reintroduction to land life.
It turned out to be a gift. We walked to the port to watch cruise ships come and go. They’re a weird kind of enormous, and they appear out of nowhere. We discovered our love of mini golf. We found a grassy patch with basketball hoops and a kiddie pool. We watched rocket launches, caught preseason football games, and found a tiki bar with fellow liveaboards who became fast friends. Generous people in a surreal, wonderful place. It was our first real exhale after five weeks dipping our toes into the Bahamas.
St. Augustine: The Stop That Surprised Us
From Port Canaveral we made an overnight run north, arriving to find the Castillo de San Marcos appearing along with the sunrise.
We spent a work week there: fishing from the dinghy every day (exciting fishing, too! the kind where you have a fish on the line, watching it splash in the distance, right up until the line snapped from its weight, taking the bait and the lure and the catch with it), exploring the fort, easy enough provisioning, and sunset dinghy runs. We left four days later feeling like we hadn’t stayed nearly long enough.
Brunswick: A Town We Didn’t Expect to Love
The overnight from St. Augustine to Brunswick was one of our harder ones. We slowed our approach to avoid arriving in the dead of night, which meant getting caught in a stalled storm system instead. Foul weather gear, a rain-soaked morning, bone-tired parents and bleary-eyed kids. But pulling into Brunswick Landing Marina after holding that reservation for months, delayed by generator repairs and delayed again by weather, felt genuinely amazing.
(Small note: the attitude from the dock crew on arrival should have been a red flag for things to come. We didn’t know that yet.)
What we found in Brunswick over four weeks wasn’t what we expected. We found a community.
Taco Tuesdays and sunset dinghy runs with our new buddies Jamie and Lindsay on Paloma. Crabbing and Vampire Penguin frozen ice. Monday and Wednesday community gatherings at the marina, the annual Cruisers Challenge games, Monopoly in the common spaces where the boys also did their schoolwork. Free laundry and free happy hours are HARD. TO. BEAT.
We loved Makers Brunswick for crafts and compassion and community. We loved Bubba Garcia’s for the TexMex flavors that reminded us of home. We loved Silver Bluff Brewing because weekday hangouts there reminded us just enough of a local brewery back in Houston.
Leaving felt icky – partly because our slip became unavailable, partly because comfort is hard to leave when you’ve found it. We’d been there four weeks, and it had started to feel like a nice little neighborhood. Full of neighbors we’re still connected with and constantly think of fondly.
Houston Interlude
While Agora stayed hurricane-ready at the Brunswick dock, we flew home to Houston for a few weeks.
The timing turned out to be perfect. A high school homecoming weekend meant the kids’ first Friday night lights experience, and we weren’t even living on land anymore. Birthday celebrations, long dinners with old friends and neighbors, and a trip to Santa Fe for a family wedding. It was a trip that filled our tanks.
We flew back, spent one more night on the dock, then untied, and motored all the way around nearby Jekyll Island. Agora’s too tall for the ICW bridge closest to the harbor, so it was as full day trip, and then we found our spot at the T-head of Jekyll Harbor Marina.
Jekyll Island: Oh, Jekyll.
And then we met Jekyll Island, and I think Jekyll Island changed us all.
Gorgeous and comfortable and unpretentious, natural beauty in every direction. Open fields for soccer and baseball. A resort-level croquet pitch. Sunset s’mores setups that materialized out of nowhere. Christmas light displays worth writing home about. Eerie, beautiful scenery that made you nostalgic for something you couldn’t quite name.
It was quiet family time and constant new friendships with boaters and locals alike. It was having grandparents join our little world for the holidays, which felt so cozy. It was a riverside location that meant watching dolphin behavior patterns from the dock, observing the resident bald eagle pair on the powerlines, and peering at fishermen cleaning their daily haul.
In three months at Jekyll, we deep-cleaned the bilge, hoisted Barrett up the mast, and installed a watermaker and upgraded to lithium batteries (shoutout Jamie & Bow to Stern Marine Services!). We also met fellow cruisers and boaters we’ll love for a long time. We’ll never forget the bonfires and sundowners with Michelle and Bash on Avalon. We can’t wait to reconnect with Nancy and Chriss on Serenity.
Spoiler: we would probably go back to JHM over Brunswick Landing any day of the week.
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