You've Got Mail!

Rodney Bay, St Lucia

One of the things about being 'homeless' is the lack of a mailbox.  (Well, that and the paperboy can't find us anymore.)  We get asked all the time about how we get our mail.  I thought I'd 'splain. Before we left Florida we set up an account with a company called St Brendan's Isle.  They're a mail forwarding service, which means that after we signed a bunch of paperwork, their address became our legal residence and all our mail goes there.  We don't have a physical residence anywhere, so it solves the problem of where we vote and pay taxes, or don't pay, as is the case in Florida.  They scan the front of every piece of mail and we have an account we can log into and see what's there.  Once we see it, we can have them hold it, shred it, forward it to us unopened or open it and scan the contents.  We have the held mail sent to us every couple of months when we plan to be somewhere long enough for it to catch up. So, to all those who sent us Christmas cards, I can't wait to see them next month! Anything that looks important we have scanned and then we can store it on our harddrive and have SBI shred the original.  We also gave SBI a limited power of attorney to open the mail from the US Coast Guard.  Our boat is documented with them and the documentation has to be renewed yearly.  The documentation is free if we do it on time but fairly pricy to renew if it lapses.  There must have been enough cruisers not getting their documentation in on time that it's profitable for SBI to do it for us, as they do charge an extra fee. FYI, the documentation is like a car title or proof of ownership and we must have it to check into Customs and Immigration in every country.

Since SBI handles mail for hundreds of cruisers, we run into our 'neighbors' from Green Cove Springs all the time.