YOLO hits the saltwater accompanied by dolphins!

Demopolis, Alabama was a welcome sight after several days at anchor in the middle of "deliverance" country.  It had been days since we had seen any civilization and kept thinking we were hearing banjoes playing in the woods.  Since it is the only marina for miles Demopolis yacht basin was full, there were no docks for us to tie to, but a nice young couple invited us to raft-off of their trawler and tie up alongside them in the marina.  Their names are John and Erin and after moving out of their house the beautiful trawler Luna-Sea is now their home.    

Erin the first mate on Luna-Sea

Pretty sweet home with an awesome name that describes their new lifestyle perfectly!

John invited us aboard and offered us some delicious Busch lights in camo cans, these were soon gone so we made beer run in John's rockin VW bus.  It's the perfect rock climber vehicle and we found out he has climbed all over the country and is also a pilot that has restored his own airplane!

They weren't the only interesting couple at this port and soon we had some other visitors on Luna-Sea.  A funny southern fella named Jimmy and his "friend" Kim.  They were on "Aqua-Holic" the obnoxiously huge nearly new yacht of every boaters envy.  Jimmy gave us a tour and the men were most impressed by the stand-up soundproof engine room that housed enormous diesels, while the ladies were most impressed by the fancy bathrooms.  He told us that he's semi retired and plans on spending the winter at Jimmy Buffett's sisters marina in Gulf Shores, AL. (we promised we would visit him there on our way through which will be tomorrow)

Back on John and Erin's boat they ordered a pizza for all of us, they are a really fun couple and we had a blast.  Eventually the party moved over to quaint little YOLO where many beers were drank, funny snowsuits were worn, journal entries were written, and other weird things happened.  A great time was had by all. (hence all the funny journal entries in our ships log)  The next morning a very funny thing occurred that I will write about later after we hear the rest of the story tomorrow from our friends on Aqua-Holic!

Here we were relaxing on YOLO instead of the 60 foot yachts surrounding us.
From left to right Erin, Jimmy, Kim, me, and John

Our new friends took us on a Wal-mart run in their VW hippie van!

We made good time the next few days after Demopolis trying to keep up with Luna-Sea.  Every night we enjoyed the company of our new friends and have been eating dinner together.  Bobby's fish camp on Halloween turned out to be a very desolate place far from any civilization but of course it turned out to be tons of fun.  

  

Today we finally made it to Mobile, AL and the rivers are behind us.  What a phenomenal feeling it was to finally be sailing in the ocean and we are ecstatic that we are here and made it so quickly.  Both Lance's dad and my dad told us the same thing "you guys are going to fast, you should stop and smell the roses along the way."  Now that we are in the ocean and will be surrounded by white sandy beaches and palm trees I think we are ready to do just that.  Today we already saw dolphins swimming near our boat and we are just so happy to be in a place where that is possible!  We are tied to a dock at Dog River Marina right next to Luna-Sea and planning to visit our friends on Aqua-Holic tomorrow in Gulf-Shores.  The best part of this trip so far has been meeting all the interesting people along the way, it started in Bayfield and has continued all the way to the Gulf, boating people are just F*&% awesome!

Mobile Bay!  It felt good to finally hit the salt water and raise the sails! Mobile, AL in the background.  We saw dolphins right after this but didn't get a picture.