Day 1: A very auspicious start to the journey! I had been planning to do this initial leg solo, ~110nm from our home base in St. Augustine, to Cape Canaveral. However, my trusty delivery crew member, and go-to construction project partner, Justin Ackley, decided to join me at the last minute. We got underway a bit late at 0830 in heavy fog. Visibility was only 20 feet or so. We put on the radar and fog horn and slowly got underway. I know these waters well, and wanted to ease out of the gate anyways. Just a few hundred yards off the dock, we encountered a degrading floating mylar balloon, with the words "Let's Party" on it. Hope you guys had a nice party. I know the turtles would love to eat your stupid balloon. We recovered the balloon before it was ingested, and through the fog a dolphin jumped right in front of us. We passed many local fishing boats and were grateful to see them on the radar as we crept along at 6kts. The fog lifted at 10:30 and as I advanced the throttle to cruising speed the boat just felt smooth as...! The fresh oil, gas, and gear lube, combined with glassy water and the lifting fog were magical, with several dolphins playing gracefully on all sides.

We ran the ditch south, cruising at 25 kts, seeing a few manatee, and slowing for various no wake/ manatee zones. The beautiful houses and pristine marsh rolled by. Pelicans were dive bombing and killing it. As we entered Mosquito and Indian Rivers, there was a decent nasty little short chop kicked up by the 15-20 knots of wind over the shallow shoals outside the cut, but the catamaran design and vectro flow hull made short work of it, and the boat just rolled right over it like it wasn't there. Didn't even spill my coffee. We watched the mono hulls slamming and sloshing about, struggling, while our Sirius Jam On station and Ari Fink played familiar music and set a nice vibe.

I had done this route once before with Maritime Historian Brendan Burke, when we returned our research vessel Empire Defender home after my first season working with LAMP in 2016, so it all seemed familiar. Going forward, we will be putting unfamiliar water through the sponsons.

We arrived at Harbortown Marina to find my friend Sam Patel, the Launch Engineer for Space X, waiting for us at the fuel dock. We filled her up, rinsed her down, cracked some beers, and went to the lovely waterfront bar and had a nice meal. Sam gave us the inside scoop on the launch of the Falcon Heavy rocket, which happened a few days ago. It was just mind blowing to nerd out with him on all the details of the mission, testing, and successful launch of this rocket into the history books. It was great to celebrate the hard earned victory that him and his team achieved. All of humanity should be proud of this accomplishment. I know I am, because I like using my GPS over a sextant and Loran C. This opens a whole new world of bigger, better, cheaper satellites into space.

After Justin's wife Dallas came and picked him up, Sam and I went back to his house and had the kind of conversation that I live for. Intelligent, thoughtful, educational, insightful, meaningful kind of stuff. He has been a gracious host, and gave me a Space X T-shirt and some other super cool gifts as well as a place to lay my head for the night. He also invited me for a private tour of the Space X facilities, which will require some paperwork that I'm more than happy to fill out! I can't wait! Thanks so much to Sam and Justin for the love, help and support. I truly couldn't imagine a more wonderful way to start the trip.

Tomorrow, I'll be getting underway early, solo, for the 89nm trip down to Stuart, FL. A private house, dock and a dear old friend and co-worker await! This goes back to the contract I did workling on a nuclear, chemical, biological, EMP protected underground apocalypse bunker for a billionaire in Montana, but that's a different story and I'm pretty sure the NDA is still in effect.

My jungle buddy, the Master of Pirates himself, Señor Ben Fagan, will be flying in from Charleston to jump on as crew for the next 8 days, as soon as he finishes spreading the love playing a gig tonight! Who needs a radio when you have a badass mariachi as crew? We might, but I hope he isn't off duty the whole time.