Our Grand Adventure

28th May 2026 | Odometer: 2405nm | USA

We were completely exhausted after arriving into Florida at West Palm Beach, so we spent a week just doing absolutely nothing and vegging out on the boat. We went for walks to the beach, and the grocery store; and avoided getting caught in the evening thunderstorm each day. Ryan also got to do the wonderful job of fixing our toilet pump as the flush was starting to get pretty dodgy.

We met up with our friends on Peanut Island for a celebration that we had all made it to the USA! There was hugs and a few teary minutes as we farewelled each other once more – they were off to Fort Lauderdale. Once there, their boat would be loaded up onto a barge and shipped back to Europe; whilst they visited friends and family in the USA before heading home. What an epic adventure!

The nearby power station is also a manatee centre as the warm water outlet attracts the manatees in the colder months. Although we didn’t see any manatees here we did see quite a few around the area and in the waterways.

Heading North

Once we were recovered, we started heading north up the intracoastal waterway. These calm, protected waters are delightful to travel up, with docks and houses and golf courses lining both sides. As we went further north the hustle and bustle slowly calmed; and we were happy to find ourselves in more serene, nature surrounds more frequently.

Although the engine seemed to be fine, we were both feeling pretty intense anxiety about moving. Just as we had arrived into West Palm Beach; Ryan had noticed that the gear box oil pressure was dropping to zero every time we switched from forward to reverse or vice-versa… ohhhh man. We realllllllllllllllllllyyyyyyyyy didn’t want to do any more engine work we just wanted to finish up our trip! These waterways are super busy too and the marinas are extremely expensive and hard to get into… so the last thing we wanted was another tow. Without really having much other option; we decided to just continue up to Stuart and hope everything just kept banging away for a little longer!

We spent a very comfortable night in the Indiantown Anchorage next to a lifting bridge. These bridges are scattered everywhere on the waterways; each with their own opening schedule; or procedure to coordinate traffic through. They are really cool and the bridge operators are super friendly on the radio.

Luckily we have a very low height, even with our antenna up so we don’t have to stop at many… although this one may have been cutting it a bit fine!

Hobe Sound

We had planned a couple of nights in the Hobe Sound before we would make our way up to Sunset Bay Marina in Stuart. This sound was such a lovely spot to spend a final few nights surrounded by water and nature. We really relaxed, went for walks on the beach and SUP’d around the extremely shallow waters. There were a lot of day boaters pulling in to check out the area and jump off the small platform in the center, but overall it was beautiful and quiet.

The only downside of this spot was that some of the huge sports fisher boats would ignore the 6knot speed limit and come blasting through. These boats throw an enormous wake so that kept us on our toes.

Ryan also took the opportunity to do some wing foiling – much to the delight of some of our neighbours. They were having a fantastic party with lots of drinks and were enthusiastically cheering him on every time he came by haha. I think he loved it.

Sunset Bay Marina

Finally, it was time to make our way to Sunset Bay Marina in Stuart. We had booked a berth here for two months so we could really get stuck in to trying to sell the boat and make our way home.

Pulling into the marina was easy on a beautiful calm day and I think this was one of the nicest marinas we stayed in. We had such mixed emotions on arriving. We were so incredibly relieved the engine had held up. We were really sad this was probably the end of our journey. We were happy to have cafes and groceries and restaurants close by. We were bummed there probably wouldn’t be anymore wing foiling. We were ultra anxious about selling before our visas ran out (we were on ESTA visas for 90 days at this point) annnnd we were both incredibly homesick.

So obviously, we cracked a bottle of bubbles on the roof and watched the sunset :).

Stuart is a cute little town with some delightful shops and lovely waterfront restaurants. The area has boardwalks all along the waterfronts, live music and is just generally really cool. We didn’t escape the daily torrential rain though!

Speed Sale

If I am being really honest now, I had been really struggling with the anxiety of the engine and the sale for quite some time and I was at the end of my tether. I just wanted to go home so badly. Unbeknownst to Ryan, I had started contacting a few wrecking yards where we could just drop the boat off and be free. I had even done a cost-benefit analysis of getting home and getting a job again versus waiting and trying to sell the boat for a price.

Ryan talked me down off my ledge – but he also agreed we should try and sell quickly. We had already had the boat up for sale for a few weeks and I had been getting a crazy volume of contacts from scammers. We had had one potential buyer through to see it already, and had another lined up for a few days time. On the day, this person just didn’t show and completely ghosted us (after confirming the night before)… no idea what happened there but we were both pretty bummed.

We decided to take some drastic action … so we massively dropped the price and updated our advert to say we had to leave and the first cash offer buyer would get it. Not long after, we received the world’s dodgiest looking email, offering to pay cash the next day. After a short call, we accepted his offer – he would be there at 8am the next day. We waited, cautiously optimistic that he would actually show up.
He drove for fourteen hours and showed up the next morning at 8am on the dot. After a short look-over, we went to the bank and he deposited the cash in our account! Perspective was SOLD!

Wowsa! He then took us out for an early lunch (I think he realised he had gotten a pretty good boat for an absolute steal), then headed off for another fourteen hour drive to get home again! He was super nice about letting us stay on the boat as long as we needed; and he was intending to come back in about two weeks to pick her up. We assured him we would be out of there the next day!

Commence Operation Whirlwind

The new owner of Perspective left, and we looked at each other and then laughed and panicked and went into overdrive! We were scrambling around packing all our gear into three suitcases (and a wing foil bag). We quickly realised we were going to run out of room and packed a box of memoirs to be shipped home.

We booked flights to Austin, then onwards to Australia and then cottoned on we needed a car to get to the airport in time the next morning! Ten minutes later we had booked a rental and we were in an Uber heading to pick it up. We zoomed around to try and ship the box which turned into a mini-mission – after trying FedEx and UPS we were finally successful with USPS. Don’t ask – it was stupid and painful haha.
We threw out all the perishable food and anything personal we couldn’t take with us, cheers-ed a final sunset on the roof and collapsed into bed.

We woke early the next day around 5am, had our final breakfast on the boat. Threw out our sheets and towels and loaded up the car. We gave each other a hug as we had our final farewells to Perspective – and said good bye to our year of adventure.