Where did the summer go? As you should know by now, cruiser’s plans are ever changing. We knew when we left Orange Beach back in May that our hope was to get to the Keys and possibly Bahamas, before working our way up the East Coast in time to dock the boat August-October.

The reasons for pausing our trip from August-October are two-fold. One, it’s the heart of hurricane season. How’s the saying go…’you can’t reason with hurricane season’?

Two, it’s the time of the year when I generally work non-stop so I can afford this whole situation. In year’s past, it hasn’t been unusual for me to be home fewer than 10 days in three months. (FYI, if you comment on this post, Allison may take that to mean she can stay at your house refugee-style while I’m off working.)

Back to our “plans”. For one brief period, we’d almost coordinated a grand adventure that included several friends and family members all converging in the Bahamas along with us for the 4th of July. That plan got scrapped, however, as I got called in to work for a couple of weeks and Allison signed up for baby-sitting-aunt duty.

So we shouldn’t be surprised that our boat got stuck in Marathon as so many boats are wont to do. Allison and I both arrived back in the Keys from our various airports on Thursday, pleasantly surprised that Selah was still in the same shape we left her…mildew and mold free. The solar panels also managed to keep up with the fans & freezer, which was great news.

Once we got back and started looking at the calendar I began to feel the pressure to figure out where we’d park the boat for the next few months. I think we’ve chosen a great spot in Jacksonville, Florida, but now we just have to get there.

We’re still on island-time, mind you, so even though we’re now in a bit of a hurry to get up the coast (which is a lot longer than I thought it was in my head…it’s probably going to take us 10+ days!), we naturally took the 4th of July off and caught a bus (barely) to Key West for the afternoon.

The Bahamas are going to have to wait until November, as my work schedule looks like it will begin around July 20th instead of August 1st this year. Probably a good thing.

All that to say, we’re on the move again!

This morning after a few missteps–‘I can’t find that really important piece of the coffee maker!’, then a ‘did our ignition switch go bad?’ false alarm–we dropped the lines from our mooring ball at 11:10am and made our way into Hawk’s Channel.

Hawk’s Channel is basically this quasi-channel line that lies between the islands of the Keys and the deep water of the Atlantic Ocean. We’re technically still inside the reef, so it’s pretty shallow (15-30′ deep) and you have to dodge occasional coral heads, but the waves aren’t crazy.

I had two different stops in mind, one at the 4 hour mark, then another at the 8 hour mark. We were making good time, so we passed up the first option and made it all the way to Rodriguez Key for the night. It took us two tries to get our Rocna anchor to set, but we had just enough daylight left to jump in for a swim once we were settled.

I think we’ll probably be in travel-mode for the next few days until we get up to West Palm Beach, where we’ll hopefully catch up with some friends and be able to enjoy the sights for a day or two.

Next up, a 10 hour run to No-Name Harbor tomorrow that’ll begin as soon as I can put some coffee in a cup.