Where’s Red Rover? What are Alison and Kevin up to?

Well, hello everyone!

I haven’t updated the blog in a bit. And I’ve been hearing from people about it. Which is actually pretty motivating to write something. I’ve met people at the Seattle Boat Show, at Nordhavn events, and randomly walking around in marinas who come over and say hello and tell me how much they enjoy our blog. That makes me blush. And feel all warm inside. So thank you! It’s always nice to know that someone is reading what you write!

Lately, we’ve had a lot of questions from people. Where are we? Where’s Red Rover? Why haven’t we updated the blog? And this past weekend we even had a boat broker ask us if we’d like to sell the boat because as he said, “you aren’t using it.” Hmm. Well, Red Rover is our home. And our great-big-giant-humungous-love. And she’s not for sale.

It’s true, we aren’t on Red Rover right now. We’re in Seattle. She was in Thunderbolt, Georgia (cover photo, by Savannah). Now she’s in Beaufort, South Carolina soaking up the sunshine and being cared for by the absolutely awesome Aaron and team at Lady’s Island Marina. We feel so good knowing that they’re watching out for her. And we’re missing her terribly. We’ll be hopping on a plane on Saturday to go see her, and to move her to less storm-prone waters for hurricane season. Baltimore!

We’ve been in Seattle since early January. And Kevin made a few longer trips back home to our beautiful Emerald City this past fall. You see, what the broker didn’t know (and didn’t ask about) is that we’re home in Seattle because we own a company here. And our amazing friend Darren runs that company for us. He is our friend, our business director and truly, he is a part of our family. If you’re a longtime reader of our blog, you’ve met Darren on our trip to Alaska, on our passage through the Panama Canal and in an upcoming story that is almost all done about the San Blas Islands. Darren has cancer. And we’re here to support him and our company. Darren has an amazing attitude and a very good prognosis. He’s the nicest guy you’ve ever met. And we love him. He’s working hard to beat this cancer and he absolutely will. In the meantime, we’re here. It can’t hurt to send a shout out to the universe for him though. So, if you feel so inclined, give a nod to Darren wherever you are! He’ll know.

In the meantime, we’ve become reacquainted with our city. We sold our house here 7 years ago and moved onto Red, and when we left to cruise full-time 4 years ago, we sold our cars. Arriving in Seattle in rainy, dark, January, we proceeded to put our life back together a bit. We live in a tiny apartment on Capitol Hill and we bought a car. But not any car. Avocado Toast, as we’ve named her, is a green Honda Element. She’s given Kevin something to do as he has turned her into an adventure mobile! AT is now an overlanding Element, with a sleeping platform, a pull-out fridge, and something that Red Rover must be jealous about – lithium battery power. I figure he might start building solar panels any day now, but thankfully he’ll have boat projects to keep him busy next week.

We’ve been roaming Washington State, “toastering” in AT, doing what is technically called “dispersed camping.” Basically we’re boondocking in the National Forest, which to us feels a lot like anchoring in a secluded cove. We just have to be outside. And we were missing that, all closed up in our little apartment. Toastering is a great solution for weekend adventure fun!

We’ll be back to Seattle after we move Red up to Baltimore and we hope to be back on the boat full-time again this fall. In the meantime, we’ll be toastering all around the PNW on weekends, trying to see how much fun we can possibly have. Oh! And we’ll be waiting for the arrival of our new dinghy, which will ship from New Zealand in July and arrive in Baltimore sometime in August (maybe?). The new dinghy, named Zoe Girl, is a full carbon fiber OC Tender. We’re super excited about that! It’s the first time we’ve ever gone through a boat build (ha! 3.5 meters!).

I’ll be updating the blog with our travels from last year, with the San Blas Islands, a 5 night passage from Panama to Isla Mujeres, Mexico, and another passage to Florida. I’ll also post some shorter stories about adventuring up the east coast of the US to Maine, and anchoring by the Statue of Liberty in New York Harbor. But I might also post a few overlanding stories about our little green adventure machine, Avocado Toast. I hope you’ll all find it interesting.

In the meantime, if you’re interested in our wanderings, you can follow me on Instagram @nordhavngirl. It’s a private account because I can’t stand crazy spammers. But send me a note so I know who you are. 🙂

Thanks to everyone for reading. And thanks so much for your patience. I’ll be back with more content soon. Cheers from Red Rover’s crew! A few photos for fun!