Blue Turtle is a 1974 40' DeFever Trawler and our permanent home in southwest Florida. This blog is about our journey of living aboard & working full time—while still finding time to cruise. Get to know us—Kim, Randy and Sophie—and follow our adventure!
Blue Turtle crew wrapped up another TrawlerFest Stuart the first week of March. This year, we were slated to give our Dry Tortugas presentation on Saturday instead of mid-week like years past. Since it was the weekend, I wasn’t able to attend the Admiral’s Roundtable discussion for ladies to field questions from the group. Still, Randy and I had a great time visiting Stuart for the weekend and attending the show. We were wondering how […]
Read More
I’m a little late in posting this but we’ve been invited back to give our Cruising to the Dry Tortugas presentation for our fourth year in a row at TrawlerFest in Stuart, Florida. TrawlerFest Stuart is going on now at the Hutchinson Island Marriott Beach Resort & Marina with the educational seminars running Tuesday, March 3 through Saturday, March 7th and the in-water boat show beginning Thursday, March 5th. Randy and I will be there […]
Read More
Every year, right after Christmas we always take some time to get in some cruising. With both of us working full-time and having a teenager with his own busy schedule, we haven’t really had the time to get off the dock as much as we would like. Post holidays is always a great time for us to get off the dock with the extra time off and things winding down some with my business. This […]
Read More
One of the great things about living aboard at Salty Sam’s Marina is that we get a front row seat to the staging of the annual Fort Myers Beach Christmas Boat Parade. Every year the parade starts at Salty Sam’s with boaters adding their last minute decorations or checking the lights before heading out on the water to follow the parade route. The parade returns to Salty Sam’s where we get to view all the […]
Read More
As I mentioned in my previous post, the day after Thanksgiving we finally got off the dock for the first time in 6 months. That was quite a long spell for us to be docked since we typically cruise a lot more often even if only getting out for the weekend. We’ve been so busy with work and traveling that cruising took a back seat for a while. With red tide still being in the […]
Read More
Hi there. Remember me? I used to post quite regularly here about cruising and living aboard. I have to say that you really haven’t miss much since my last post back in May. Where has the time gone? It seems like life sometimes just gets in the way of our cruising and posting regularly. With a teenage boy, we’ve come to realize now that sometimes his schedule doesn’t always coincide with our cruising plans. That, […]
Read More
Seven years ago on Mother’s Day weekend, Randy, his father (John), my father (Steve), and I brought Blue Turtle home from Long Boat Key, FL. It was a whirlwind weekend trip filled with excitement and maybe a few thoughts of, “oh dear, what have we gotten ourselves into?” At the time, we really had no idea how it would change our life and our perspective of it. All we knew is that we loved being […]
Read More
This May marks our 7th year living aboard Blue Turtle. During this time, Randy and I have both worked full time. While Randy works for a company as a regional sales rep, I have been running my business, Blue Turtle Graphics, from the boat. Last year, my company celebrated its 10 year anniversary and it’s hard to believe that 7 of those years were while living aboard. It’s not always easy I know, I know… […]
Read More
As you might have heard from our last post about our recent repairs on Blue Turtle, we are finally cruising again! And what better way to test the steering and engine repairs made by Randy than cruising to Keewadin Island? Keewaydin Island is typically on our cruise-to list whenever we have more than a weekend to get off the dock. Since it typically takes 5-6 hours to get there, we usually reserve trips there to […]
Read More
You might have noticed that we haven’t been off the dock in while. Typically this time of year we cruise often to take advantage of the cool winter weather. Unfortunately, we’ve had some down time due to a few issues with Blue Turtle that Randy has been troubleshooting and resolving. One was with our 185hp Perkins engine and the other was with our steering. During a previous trip, Randy noticed the oil pressure on the […]
Read More
