Well, after planning for just a little over five years to try the full-time live-aboard boating lifestyle, we’ve gone ahead and pulled the trigger on this adventure. Over the past year, we’ve sold one of our businesses, re-homed two cats, I’ve switched to a part-time on-call status with my company and our daughter and her family have moved into our house to watch over it while we’re gone. Yesterday, Cindy and I finished packing up the van, loaded up Missy the Boat Dog and drove the 500 miles from Huntsville to Jekyll Island one last time to move full-time onto our boat.

Unfortunately, we were greeted upon our arrival on the coast with a winter blast that has dropped the temperature in southern Georgia to close to the freezing mark. The HVAC system on our boat is working fine though and the eisenglass enclosure that we installed this fall turns the boat’s cockpit into a veritable solarium during the daytime. We’ll spend the next two weeks doing our final outfitting of the boat and then drive back up to Huntsville for Christmas. The day after Christmas, we’ll fly back down to Georgia for New Years and then cast off from the dock and head down the coast of Florida to warmer latitudes.

During our first sailing season we’ll stay on the US coast, working our way down to the Keys while getting to know the marinas and seaside communities that lay in between. We’ll return to Jekyll by the end of June and then decide if we want to continue the live-aboard lifestyle. If we want to go on, we plan to sail to the Bahamas next year and then work our way down the Caribbean chain the following year. I’ll try to post weekly updates of our preparations and sailing experiences from here on out so if you’re interested in keeping up with our adventures, stay tuned and check back often.