Daytona Beach to Sheepshead Cut, FL

11.6 nm
Wind: E 5-10 knots
Seas: light chop
Maximum speed: 5.8 knots
Average speed: 3.6 knots

Our first day back in motion. Words cannot describe how amazing it feels. I’m overwhelmed by happiness. I’m journalling on paper right now, and I don’t know when I’ll be able to get anything online, but I’ve decided to log what’s going on anyway, in hope and faith, that someday soon I’ll have the internet again. We have a computer waiting for us about 160 miles down the coast, that allegedly works, and we just have to get there and decide what to do next.

We got back to the boat on Monday, two weeks to the day from when we left. I’m in awe that we left the boat for that long, anchored with the barbecue and the solar panel outside, without any problem. We anchored there, off Daytona, for the first time on February 1. That’s almost two months! I don’t know how that much time got away from us.

This last week, after we ordered our second replacement computer, we tried to help out our friend Dan as he recovered from hernia surgery. He and his girlfriend Sam had done so much for us--letting us stay in their house for almost two months, off and on--that the least we could do was watch their kids a couple of times and help him move around his DJ equipment.

That, and we became addicted to his Tivo. I’m a television addict in the best of cases, and if you throw in unlimited recordings and commercial fast-forwarding, it’s a lost cause. If I had control of one of those things, I’d never leave the house. One of the reasons I have to keep adventuring is that I have to escape the irresistable attraction of television rays.

Being in Daytona really made both of us doubt our purpose. Karl became obsessed with his abandoned dream of motorcycle racing. As much as I was willing to encourage him, I’m not ready to give up the boat yet. We haven’t even got our feet wet yet. Well, literally, we have, but I still feel like we’ve barely started.