The boat needs to be out of the slip by the 15th, we still don’t have a weather window for delivery, and the list of available captains is dwindling. We’re running out of time to get this settled – we keep running into issues that can be solved by either time or money, and since we’re both working full time our only option is money. Finally we opted to pay for an extra week of dockage, since it looks like we’re not going to be able to leave by the 15th.

We’ve started selling off all our stuff in preparation for the move aboard, but we took last weekend off because Kyle’s family had planned to meet us in Savannah on their motorcycles. We had a great time, but it’s hard to sit and relax when life is this crazy.

We camped at a KOA north of Savannah, nothing like a pool to relax in after a hot day of wandering around. Kyle’s mom and uncle rode motorcycles and pulled a pop-up camper, while we were in our bus. Needless to say, we got a lot of attention from the other campers.

It felt like a long weekend since we packed in so many activities, but we left our house on Saturday morning and got back Sunday around noon so it was a quick trip. Once we got home, back to work: cleaning and downsizing.

We’re still waiting to see if a weather window will show up so we can schedule delivery of Hobbes from Ft. Lauderdale to Charleston. Since I can’t have Friday off, delivery will likely be about a week from now, based on weather and captain availability.

Then Kyle called up one of the captains and we got thrown for a loop.

“Let’s leave early Saturday morning.” A day and a half from now.

I’ve been frantically packing (what do you even pack for a 3 day offshore trip? What will the weather be like? Will it be warm from the sun or cool from the wind?). We’ll have to leave as soon as I get out of work tomorrow, which means the burden is on Kyle to take the afternoon off, get all of our stuff together, pick up a rental car and load it up. Ouch. We are not prepared for this!

Now that we know when we’re leaving, we can look at the weather and see what it would be like. My goal for the first boat trip is to be nice and easy, even if that means motoring for a while. I don’t want a rough trip, I haven’t sailed in years and I want to really enjoy it. Saturday looks the roughest, with the strongest winds and biggest waves, then Sunday will flatten out a bit, and Monday the seas will be completely flat and nearly no wind, so we’ll definitely be motoring by then.

Oh wow! This is happening! Let’s get ready for a boat ride!