It’s 2:30am and the alarm goes off.

Craig is out of bed immediately. Casey and I are slow to follow.

Within the hour, Small World is out of the slip and into the ocean, escorted by dolphins.

By the end of the day, she is in foreign territory.

Days like today are surreal to the point that I remain unconvinced of their legitimacy.

Listen, I made a lot of promises before leaving Newport Beach that I would be posting on a regular basis once we were in Cruising Mode again and I’m quite certain that I have fallen short so far. I totally blame Casey. She’s fun and entertaining and likes to play games. That’s where all my writing time has gone. Chess and Hanabi.

So much has happened in the last week and a half that every time I try to sit down and write something it’s just a little overwhelming. It’s all happening so fast and I just can’t keep up. And now, we’re suddenly in Mexico. How did that happen?? The project list got some check marks, the provisions were stocked, and one thing just led to another:

-We tracked down the cove and setting of Small World’s maiden voyage and photoshoot for Sail Magazine in 1974 and had an updated photo sesh
-Upon arrival in Avalon, we met William the harbor master, and got invited to his birthday party that evening. It was wonderful to meet some island locals and Casey ate approximately $100 worth of fresh lobster.
-Craig’s former coworker is a sometime resident of the island and happened to be there at the same time. We met up with her and she force fed us tequila so that we ended up drunk and back on the boat by 9:30pm. Don’t worry, we still did our abs workout.
-We hiked up Hermit Gulch and met Bob and Bobby at the top. By now, they’ve got plenty more miles under their belts since they were training for another marathon.
-Got to San Diego, checked out a couple anchorages, got drunk on Mai Tai’s, spent some quality time in the hot tub, met some new friends, did a lot of laundry, and hunted down free Wi-Fi.

…and we were underway before I knew it. Now we’re at a marina in Ensenada, beer in our bellies, looking forward to countless tacos.