Sailing Soulianis Archive – Page 2

Sailmaking isn’t exactly voodoo magic, but because it’s pretty tough to find much information on sailmaking & sail cloth, we wanted to share everything we’ve learned in our quest to make the right decisions about our new headsail. This is a very...

Our boat wasn’t ready for full-time cruising when we bought her. This was perfectly fine; we’d rather add necessary items ourselves and learn them inside and out through the process, than pay for systems already in place that may not be exactly what we...

We planned to complete TWO big projects while in Mobile, AL: 1) upgrading our battery bank & 2) fabricating a solar arch with dinghy davits. After much deliberation, we decided to DIY the batteries and hire out the arch fabrication. The battery bank a...

This one is bittersweet. On one hand, the battery upgrade is a smashing success. Kirk completes the installation of our new battery bank, and we now we have all the juice we need. On the other, our arch project is a complete and utter disaster. We can’t ...

RAISE THE SAILS!! Woot woot, we’re going SAILING!! After installing two of our six solar panels, we fire up the engine to make sure Mr. Beke still runs, and we’re off the dock. We cross Mobile Bay chauffeured by a pod of dolphins, and enter the GICW (G...

We set off on our first sail in the Gulf of Mexico! After a day trip to Pensacola through the GICW (Gulf Intracoastal Waterway) with Kirk’s pops, we visit Destin via car to inquire about Destin pass. We were keen on stopping with the boat because it seem...

It’s finally starting to feel like we’re cruising! In this episode, we prep for our longest sail yet: 190 miles from St. Joseph Point to Clearwater. We give you a peak inside our ditch kit, install a MOB (man overboard) device in each of our lifejacket...

After months spent mostly at docks, we venture out to live on the hook (which happens to be less than a block away from a grocery store, but hey, baby steps). This one has a little bit of everything. We pick up where we left off in the previous episode, ...

Imagine what one week of cruising looks like, and you’ll never get two identical weeks. BUT— if we had to pick one, these 7 days are pretty typical of our cruising life. We spent some time at anchor, and one day at the dock. We enjoy some gorgeous suns...

We will be donating all proceeds from this video to PERC to support the Abaco islands. * If you’d like to donate to the Bahamas rescue & disaster recovery efforts, we recommend the organizations below. We’re not affiliated with either group, but h...

-- Get the Energy Audit & Battery Bank Sizing Tool https://sailingsoulianis.com/shop/energy-audit-battery-bank-sizing-tool/ -- In this episode we continue south on a beautiful downwind daysail from Venice Beach to Boca Grande Pass, then spend a few da...

How do you afford to travel on a sailboat? What do you do for work? What is your budget? Did you have debt? How did you untether yourself from an office? In this episode, we share how we built 3 separate remote income streams which allowed us us to jump on...

Storms are scary on a boat. Your entire home rocks around like a whirly-gig, and you’re never quite sure if it’s going to stay put, or go careening off and crash into rocks, land, or another boat! Up until now, we’ve been securely tied to a dock when...

The Miserable Mile is a stretch of super busy waterway near Ft Myers with an incredibly narrow channel. Powerboats fly this way and that, wakes churn the water, and straying from the channel even a few feet means running hard aground. In short, it’s quit...

What makes your palms go clammy? Gives you a cold sweat? For both of us, swimming in murky water under a boat is one of our worst nightmares. Time to face our fears! We dive in to clean the hull, in preparation for our sail to Key West. Hope you enjoy! La...

The seemingly smallest thing can drastically change the experience of a journey on the sea. Like forgetting to take seasickness meds. Then what a difference a few hours makes — from night to day, from dark ominous waves to calm electric blue sea. Sail wi...

Buy a sailboat, then sail over the horizon, right? Oh if it was that simple! Often you zigzag, and sometimes you backtrack. In our last episode, we made it to the Florida Keys. But before pressing on any further, we had some big projects to take care of �...

With just a few days left before we haul the boat out for hurricane season, we sail as much as we can — even when the wind is so light we’re hardly moving at all — to savor our last moments on the water. Join us for our last sail of the season, and ...

It’s goodbye, but only for a while. We’re leaving Soulianis on the hard in Florida during hurricane season to return to the Midwest to visit our families. We’ve never left our boat for this long before, and do everything we can think of to prepare he...

With Soulianis tucked away in the boatyard, we try out #vanlife and go tearing across the country in our new transit van, Chip! (Does driving from south to north count as across? Well, either way…) We leave Florida for Wisconsin, then hop over to Michiga...

With Soulianis on the hard in Florida, we take our van up to The North Channel of Lake Huron and hop back on a sailboat! We meet up with two couples who are seasoned sailors (our “boat parents” from Episode 13) who take us on a tour of their favorite s...

We’re slowly making our way in our van, Chip, around Lake Huron. In this episode we leave Manitoulin Island, hopping a ferry to Tobermory. The Bruce Peninsula is stunning — high cliffs topped with colorful plants and Bahamian-like blue water. We park t...

Our sailing off-season — driving around in Chip, hanging out in the Great Lakes, sailing, surfing & swimming — has been a fun diversion from the boat. Now it’s time to get back to Florida. We finish our last big van project (building a bed), and ...

After 5 months away from the boat, we return to the boatyard in Florida to find out how Soulianis survived over hurricane season. We’ve never left her alone for this long before, and really hope the preparation we did before we left protected her from al...

Believe it or not, this ONE TINY little hose clamp is all that’s keeping our boat from potentially sinking to the bottom. It’s part of our centerboard operation, and unfortunately there’s not much we can do to improve it, except to ensure the clamps ...

Of all the boat projects we’ve done so far, this is probably our biggest: a brand spankin’ new bottom job. New… literally allll the way down to the bottom—to gelcoat—that is. After getting rid of close to a dozen layers of antifouling and barrier...

Horror stories abound across the interwebs about Coppercoat. We've read and watched just about all of them! If you look, there are a ton of rave reviews out there, too. Sometimes, you just need to go with your gut. Our instincts told us that if we followe...

This is Part 1/2. Part 2 is now live here: https://youtu.be/T4IfnhP0kvQ --- Glad to be (nearly) done with our bottom job, we move on to our diesel engine, which needs maintenance and upgrades. ‘Course, no boat project is without hurdles. We get a serpen...

If you haven’t seen Part 1 yet, go watch it here! https://youtu.be/1TYFzuiCfW8 Our diesel engine, Mr. Beke, is getting some serious upgrades. In Part 1, we installed a new heat exchanger, water pump and crank shaft pulley. Now, with some DIY hardware fa...

When we smelled diesel in our cabin, we knew we had a problem. We just hoped it would turn out to be an easy fix… but how often does THAT happen? Finding the source our fuel leak leads us into another big boat project, forcing us to postpone our launch...

Does the boat project list ever end...? It must. It has to. Or else our boat may as well have a mailbox next to its jack stands. We’re down to the last few items on our project list — and that’s because we threw a bunch off, citing them as non-essen...

Remember the horrible arch saga? Well, we’re officially putting an end to that chapter… and nope, we didn’t hire another contractor — instead we decided to build a bimini ourselves. The reason we hired out the job in the first place was because w...

The water is so close now we can smell it. After trailering Soulianis out of our landlocked boatyard, she’s now poised and ready for launch — right after we finish painting the centerboard with bottom paint. The launch goes well at first. No leaks, a...

We broke out of boat jail (aka the boatyard) and are sailing south! On a frisky upwind sail across Charlotte Harbor, we break in our new headsail from Precision Sails; then our way to Fort Myers, we get a chance to fire up our Spirit 1.0 electric outboard ...

After spending as much time in boatyards as we have, it might make you wonder: Is it all worth it? In this episode, we set off on our first overnighter of the season, with a destination of Marathon in the Florida Keys. We’ll finish our bimini here, whic...

If you think we have this whole life thing figured out, don’t let us fool you! We constantly feel like we’re never getting enough done, that we’re falling behind, and that life is moving too quickly. Anyone else feel like it’s a struggle to find ba...