The Plan

We've been getting asked a lot lately how we have come to this juncture. For those new to our story, here is a general timeline of how all this came to be:

2009-2010: Jacksonville Beach, FL - I was working mostly day time, he was bartending nights. We were hardly seeing each other and basically living week to week. Though we loved Jax Beach, our family, and friends, we were getting tired, burned out, ready for a change. We started daydreaming of a new life and over time, we came to this: buy boat, travel the Great Loop.

• Step 1: move into my family's condo to save money (Thanks Aunt Laney!)
• Step 2: move to Key West (be around people who are doing/living the life we want)
• Step 3: get jobs, have fun, and save save save!

2011: Key West, FL - Thanks to our friend Jill, I got a job pretty much right away at Fury Water Adventures and boy did that turn out to be a great opportunity! Jon followed me to Fury very soon after and we will be forever grateful to our Fury family. We were making great money, enjoying our jobs, meeting great friends and working in, on and around the water just soaking it all in and learning. We sold most of our stuff when we moved to KW, and within a year sold both our cars. (This helped the boat fund and who needs a car on a 2 x 4 mile island?) We also got married and Jon got his 100-ton captain's licence.

Late 2013 -2014: Over the years, we were constantly looking at boats on craigslist, yachttrader, newspaper, basically anywhere. We started to figure out what we wanted and keep an eye on a general price range. We saw many boats that we fell in love with, but usually we didn't have quite enough money or something in general was not quite right. Then we found her, but still a TAD out of budget. We needed to keep saving just a little bit more so we could make a serious offer. After about 2 months, the ad was gone. She had sold and we were let down once again. Just one step behind. Then one day out of the blue, she was back on the market AND price reduced!!! The original sale must have fallen through. We JUMPED on it. We spoke to the seller many times and basically it came down us traveling to Georgia to see it. If the boat turned out to be everything he said it was and there were no surprises, we were going to buy her.

2014: She's ours! Jon, my cousin Marcus and myself went to GA and we bought that sucker. I had to drive straight back the next day to KW to go back to work and left the boys to get her ready and bring her down. There were some humps to get over at first (the boat is 43 and had been sitting for over a year),but they got her on the road and were home without too much alarm within 10 days. Also, this boat wasn't named. Which was awesome, because let me tell you, people name their boats some weird shit (Moon Cheese??) Anyway, I have always felt that a boat name is kinda personal and it is said to be bad luck to change the name of a boat so this was perfect. The previous owner had gone through the steps to remove the name off the boat, but never got around to renaming her so any bad juju would be his, not ours right? We didn't think too much about what the new name would be. I figured she would name herself (much like a pet, you have to meet it first) So we let her do the talking and we ended up with Rising Sun. Here she is getting splashed after being in the boatyard.

2015: Our general plan from here:

• Take our time through the Keys. We will have Marcus with us again for the first leg as an extra hand should we encounter any problems.
• Stop in Jax to see family and friends. My brother is getting married 3/14 so we have to stay in FL until then.
• Cruise to Charleston, SC and stop to work for the summer. We have some savings of course but we will have to work along the way to make this happen. Unless we win the lottery or someone wants to gift me a large sum of money :)
• Beyond: who knows? We don't really want to be any further north in the winter so maybe we stay in Charleston until spring? Maybe we haul the boat out and go somewhere to work for the winter (ski resort? back to jax/st augustine? key west?) and go back to the boat in the spring to keep going. That's the beauty I suppose. We will decide when the time comes!

So here we are. St Simon's Island, Georgia. March 8th, 2014. Approximately 1 hour after buying this boat. Just typing this brings back the butterflies in my stomach. So excited because we had worked so hard for that moment. So nervous because we had put all our eggs in one basket...650 miles away from home. Three years in the making and it was finally real.

Fast forward to February 2015, and the butterflies have multiplied exponentially. We are days away from dropping lines in our safe harbor in Key West, FL to set out on The Great Loop. What have we gotten ourselves into? Stay tuned to follow our journey on Rising Sun, not just a trip, but a new way of life...