Week #91 - "Full - Circle"

Arriving back at St Marys, GA

06/05/2026

This Salty crew is my favorite.

Chris – “What we’ve learned from our first 1000”

First thing is first; today is Jasper’s birthday! Happy birthday Jasper! Thirteen… our fourth teenage boy! Jasper is a force of nature; full of joy, always ready to play, kind, and intelligent. We are blessed to know him, and we hope he has an amazing birthday. We are giving the kids a break from writing this week, but please join us in wishing Jasper a huge “Happy Birthday!”

Last Saturday, we completed our 200+ nautical mile passage from Fort Pierce, to Jacksonville. We planned to spend only 1 day there, and then push on to Saint Marys, Georgia on Monday, but due to a careless mistake on my part, we completely destroyed our starter, and spent the day, on Monday diagnosing the problem, and swapping out the starter with the spare that we had on board… So thankful to God that we had a spare on board. Back when we were troubleshooting a previous engine issue, I had bought a new starter, because I thought that might be the issue we were having… it wasn’t, but because of that purchase, we had a functional spare starter on board, so we were only down for 1 day, instead of having to wait for a new one to ship to us. Due to this delay, we left on Tuesday morning instead, and arrived in St Marys on Tuesday evening. This is a full-circle moment for our crew, since we initially launched our boat in St Marys, and began our journey, on the water, from this location. It is noteworthy that, on our passage between Jacksonville and St Marys, we logged our 1000^th nautical mile, aboard the good ship Agnes. So, this feels like a fitting time to reflect back on what we have learned over those miles, and months, aboard our floating home.

I remember taking off from the boatyard, and setting our first anchor. We were terrified. Moving the boat made me nervous, anchoring made me nervous, every noise made me nervous… just constant, excited/ scared nerves. Now, we have made our way into dozens of different anchorages, some of them multiple times, and we have hit a bit of a rhythm. That is not to say that I don’t get nervous when we are coming into a new area, and I have to pick the spot to drop the anchor, hoping that it holds, and that we have enough room around us to swing. But, I trust the “process,” and I trust my crew, more than I did at the beginning. My wife and my children have become an amazing team. When we come in to set an anchor these days, I know that they will do their part, and I know that, worst-case, I will pick a bad spot, and we will have to pull the anchor back up, and do it again. I have a better feel for how the boat maneuvers, and I have a better feel for what a strong anchor holding feels like when I back down on it to drive it into the seabed. Trust makes it easier to anchor, and we are gaining trust in each other.

People that hear that I rebuilt our engine often say things like, “that’s awesome, now you KNOW that you have a good, strong engine.” I did not feel like that. To this day, I thank God every time it fires up. I KNOW that I didn’t know the first thing about rebuilding an engine, and I have trust issues with my own abilities. Probably incorrectly, I would assume that an engine that ANYONE else had worked on would be more trust-worthy, because they probably knew what they were doing, but MY work… who knows if it is good. But I am learning to trust it more, and learning to trust my ability to fix problems that do arrive. On one of our offshore passages, there was little-to-no wind, and we ran our engine for 46 hours straight! No complaints, just millions of revolutions, pushing our 30-ton home through the Atlantic Ocean. Trust in our boat’s propulsion makes it easier to leave land, and to believe that we will have the means to get back to land when we need to.

I have learned that sailing across miles of empty ocean, so far from the cares of land life, polluted cities, and crazy people is not as peaceful as I once thought it would be. Being swept away with the beauty of the water’s movement, and taking joy in watching the open sky shift and change its colors and textures, takes intentional effort on my part. The ocean is scary! The idea that this vessel holds all the people that I love most, on this planet, and we are just cruising on the surface of something as powerful and unpredictable as the sea, makes me feel a little bit queasy when I think about it. Being out on the water CAN be peaceful. There are moments where I am struck by the insane beauty of the ocean and the sky doing their endless dance together. But I have to trust (there’s that word again) that this chunk of corrosive metal, with a rebuilt engine and hand-me-down sails, will keep on floating as we make our way slowly on the surface. I am learning to trust more. I thought I would love being out in the middle of the ocean right away… I didn’t, but I am slowly learning how to. We are also learning to pick our weather better. The big, open ocean, is a lot easier to enjoy when the waves are small, and the wind is manageable. We have learned that we are fair-weather sailors, and we try to avoid going out into the ocean, if it looks like it will be terrible out there. Weather is hard though, and I do NOT trust my ability to read the weather accurately… at least, not yet. We are learning.

Above all, holding all the broken pieces that I mentioned above together, I am learning to trust God to bring us through. So many times, I have reached a point where I felt like I couldn’t possibly keep doing this. I would reach the bottom of some issue that felt like life-or-death, and I would say to myself, “this is where the dream dies,” but then God shows up, and brings us through it. He gives us a heart, and a desire to keep going, and we keep going. I am learning that it WILL happen, if He is there with us.

We are still aiming at Annapolis, for summer-time… we will likely double our nautical mile count, getting that far North. But, if God is in it with us, I trust that we can do it. It feels huge, but it’s just another 1000. God brought us through it once. He can do it again. Thank you to everyone that cheered us on through our first 1000. Thank you for still being here.

~Chris

We delivered this custom art piece to a friend in Jacksonville, this last week. The entire family contributed to this one.

Dolphins, sea turtles, and tiny frog. So many dolphins on this last passage!

We went on a "land-walk" for Jasper's birthday, today... I think we are out of practice.

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HAPPY BIRTHDAY JASPER!!