The trip has begun! The newly christened S/V Selah left Bear Point Marina in Orange Beach, Alabama at 1200 hours Saturday, May 30th, 2015 under sunny skies with a refreshing southerly breeze.

Capt. Randy and a crew of well wishers, my parents among them, sailed alongside us as we left the marina for photos and goodbyes.

This trip has been a long time coming–my family has been listening to me talk about it for 10 years–so it was fun to have such a great send-off celebration.

It barely feels real, but that may be partly because we’re not checking out completely. Yes, this is the official beginning of our trip around the world. But for the forseeable future, both Allison and I still have work obligations–her’s via internet, mine via seasonal travel.

We both enjoy our jobs, so we’re going to try to find a good mix of sailing and working for as long as we can. Shouldn’t be too difficult since the current plan has us stateside until at least November, save a few weeks in the Bahamas.

But it’s here. The ball is rolling, and I couldn’t be more excited. A lot of years of preparation have gone into this adventure, and we’re glad to have you following along!

This page, Sailing B+A (SailingBA.com) will be our home base. As we’re traveling, you’ll also be able to track us via satellites at share.delorme.com/sailingba. Additionally, if you have kids, be sure to sign them up for the Junior Captains program that we’ll soon be relaunching.

After leaving at noon today, we dropped the anchor in Pensacola to make some lunch and tie everything down on the boat.  We’ll raise the anchor later this afternoon and head out Pensacola Pass towards Clearwater, Florida.  It should be about a 50 hour run, so we’re aiming to be there Monday evening.  If it looks like we won’t get to Clearwater in daylight, we may keep on going south to Tampa Bay.

We’ll just see where the wind blows us.  Or doesn’t…the forecast is for 2-3′ seas and 5-15 kts of wind from the east/southeast.  In other words, the winds probably won’t help us at all & we’re likely in for a motorboat ride.  We’ll just have to wait and see!