Crashin’ – Isle of Hope, Georgia, USA, July 6, 2026

So, apologies for not updating in a while.  After making our crossing and landing to recover in St. Augustine for a few days, we did another offshore passage up to Jekyll Island, Georgia and spent another month there visiting my parents.  We stayed at the marina which was lovely.  They have loaner bikes we used, could walk to the beach, walk to breakfast, and they even have a loaner car so we could go off the island to grocery shop!  We had a great few weeks spending time with my parents but unfortunately the storms had started and forced us to move north.  Brunswick Landing is a bit more protected, however, they are about double the cost of Jekyll, so we only stayed for a couple of days before making the two day trek up to Isle of Hope Marina, which is our hurricane station till mid-October.  We did the intercoastal from Brunswick to Isle of Hope (~80 miles) which was a two-day trip since we anchored at Newport River.  

The marina here is lovely as well with a loaner car to grocery shop, a nice walkable neighborhood, and a community pool we can take advantage of anytime we want!  Isle of hope is interesting though.  You can tell it is old money here since the houses are huge $2M each and many of them are multigenerational.  The houses have been passed down through the family, and many have private docks as well.  The staff here is top notch, and I would definitely stay here again. I have never seen a team of guys work so hard in my life.   We even got a fabulous fireworks display on 4^th of July with a front row seat on the back of our boat! 

The only downside of our position is we are on the outside dock exposed to every yahoo who drives their sport fishing boat through the intercoastal.  They have a fuel dock here which is convenient, but that’s when it happened.  One of the sport fishing boats has already run into us and damaged the bow port side of the boat.  At this point we get to start the insurance game again.  You know how much Ron loves doing that after losing boat #1 to hurricane Beryl, but at least they had insurance.  The adjuster has been down to take a look and was working on an estimate.  One of the local contractors “Gaitor” (fitting for Georgia) was recommended to us and he can work out of Thunderbolt Marina.  He is coming to take a look, but it will most likely need to be hauled out.  We will need to take the boat back to Thunderbolt Marina, about 3 miles away, since they are the closest one to Isle of Hope.  They will need to grind down the gel coat, fix a couple of nice new cracks, then try and match the gel coat.  We had planned to get the boat hauled out in the Bahamas next year in Spanish Wells for a new bottom job, however since we are doing this before our cruising season starts, we will likely do a bottom job at Thunderbolt since it will already be hauled there.  Isle of Hope had security cameras at the fuel dock, so we got a video of the guy hitting us in addition to the photos of the damage to share with insurance.  We were both on the boat at the time but neither of us was hurt.  Ron was, however, cleaning out the port bow side when he hit and it was a bit of a shock!  Check out our damaged haul.

Other than our insurance excitement, the only other exciting thing was daughter #1 graduated with her master’s degree in Spain in AI Marketing!  We are so proud of her and hope it helps her find the job she wants that could allow her to stay in Spain.  This next we rented a car and are driving up to Columbus to see our other three daughters.  That will be fun too since I am going wedding dress shopping with daughter #4 to help her pick out her dress for the October Wedding.  Yeah!  Some fun things planned visiting family, and we plan to be up there for about a week.   Ron is excited for the pepperoni rolls in West Virginia on the way!