Note: While Allison and I are both currently traveling for work, we’re going to wrap up the posts of our travels this summer. We ended up in Stuart, Florida a few weeks ago, as you’re about to read…

After sleeping off Saturday’s festivities, we peeled ourselves out of the glorious king bed at Katie’s house and made moves back to the boat. We scurried down the rocks beside the bridge, glad to see that the dinghy was still where we’d left it.

I spent the next 20 minutes trying to get the dinghy unlocked from the fence we’d locked it to. When the tides came up and down, the lock had somehow gotten buried in the sand. Now, filled with sand, no amount of jiggling would unlock the dern thing.

After solving the brain teaser to figure a way out of the situation, we were able to unscrew the bow eye and leave the lock & cable tied up while the dinghy floated free. I ferried Allison back to the boat to start getting her ready to weigh anchor & take my bolt cutters back to retrieve the lock & cable.

It’s always something.

All that done, we followed the ICW up past Jupiter Inlet to St. Lucie and hung a left into the Okechobee Waterway. It was a bit hairy there for a minute as we were riding the current 8-9 knots through an area known for frequent shoaling (according to Active Captain, again).

I briefly saw as shallow as 6’1″ next to the Red “2” marker, but it quickly went back to 11′. We passed a large sportfishing boat sitting high and dry in about 1.5′ of water just outside the channel. No bueno.

We finally made it to the marina around 7:30–after a close encounter with a railroad bridge–and tied up, happy to be done battling the currents for awhile.

Remember how we'd originally planned to get as far north as Virginia this summer? Then how we bumped it down to South Carolina to be more realistic? Then Jacksonville? Well, we've found Selah's home for the next couple of months while I travel for work. It's in Stuart, Florida, at one of the nicest marinas I've ever seen. And no longer is Selah one of the bigger boats at the marina, as was the case in Alabama. She's dwarfed by the yachts around her. #SailingBA

A video posted by @sailingbo on Jul 13, 2015 at 5:11am PDT

Within 20 minutes of fixing a sunset bev, we’d met several other cruisers and liveaboards.

I think we’re going to like it here in Stuart just fine.