homeschool Archives | Jennifer Donogh

Reality Check: Fall Edition

It's officially fall here in the Pacific Northwest. True, autumn may have begun a month ago, but we've been in the 70's here since the end of August. Just this past Friday the crew onboard Coco Mar experienced our first real rain since the beginning of July. Summer is over and dampness has returned. Our first, "off season," full-time liveaboards experience is here. Turning heads once again in my bright neon Grundens. Our fall and winter plans changed quite a few times this summer. In fact, we didn't know for sure what we would be doing in October until the[...]

Travel Log

I’m Jonesing for another sunny day!

We started off the day at Jones Island where we anchored and stern tied the day before. Shane had islands north of where we were at he wanted to paddle, so his day started at 5am. I waited in bed when he left as rain started to fall. It was a light rain and was over before the day began. He paddled Flat Top Island, Gull Rock, White Rocks, and Danger Rock circling around each of them on his SUP. We’ve had a mix bag of weather this week. It’s been filled with sweatshirts and pants, with the odd warm air and sunshine moments here and there. At times ra[...]

Travel Log

Sucia Island Day II

Shane circumnavigated his remaining islands around Sucia Island on the paddleboard. He has a goal of paddling all named rocks and Islands of the Puget Sound. There are over 300. He’s put a pretty good dent on that over the past couple of years. It definitely helps to be a swim platform away from the area you’d like to paddle! He was back before 9am. During that time I was able to get a barre workout in. Without the inverter on, my connection to the outside world is not great out here (until later when we hiked). Thankfully, the barre service I subscribe to[...]

Travel Log

Happy Father’s Day from Sucia Island

Shane woke up early to go around a few islands before we pulled anchor for Sucia Island. Our coffee guest! A beautiful eagle encounter before breakfast. While he was paddling the boys and I had the most amazing eagle encounter! Out of the corner of my eye it looked like something big had fallen from the sky. When I darted my eyes over I saw it was an eagle, sitting ready for takeoff after noticing our excitement in seeing it. I yelled for the boys to come see and we had fun watching it for the twenty or so seconds it was with us. Monkeybread breakfast![...]

Travel Log

Spendy Provisioning at Friday Harbor

Prior to lockdowns I brought my own jars and bags to shop as low waste as I could. We ate a small amount of processed foods and I focused on fruits and vegetables. Once COVID hit I tried to make shopping as effective as possible. First thing to go was bringing my bags and jars. For the first few weeks I admit I was even wiping down my groceries. Once we got a better idea of what we were dealing with I stopped wiping down the groceries and started bringing in some fun foods to keep our spirits up. When we were preparing to list our house I started to use pre-ma[...]

Travel Log

Anchoring in Griffin Bay off of San Juan Island

As I’m writing this it’s 7am and we’re headed off to our next anchorage. Griffin Bay brought us scenery filled with different shades of green to the south and a variety of purple shady mountains in the background to the north. The water was smooth as glass, with wind picking up over the plain only once.

Travel Log

Crossing the Strait of Juan de Fuca

We made it! It’s a weird one out there, guys! We had a 6 knot current flowing into the Sound from the Strait, but Shane had our Cattle Pass entrance timed to shoot us into our anchorage, so away we went. Yondu vibes with Baby Yoda bobble head at the helm. Apart from the currents, Shane was also monitoring tides. We wanted to top off on diesel and pump-out before we left Port Townsend. To be safe we needed to avoid the historic, low tides happening today. I’ll share the diesel and gas prices from Boat Haven at the end of the log entry. First, let me[...]

Travel Log

Summer Boating Has Begun!

Cruise Director Dispatch coming to you from our first few days of our San Juan Islands summer adventure! First stop, Port Townsend.