Plank Runner

AAAhoy everyone and welcome to Plank Runner: Kyle and Halley Update. A few weeks ago, I started a blog again to document my travels, yachting as well as educate and encourage others to take the plunge, walk the plank and explore their dreams. 

The majority of my audience is my friends and family so to keep everyone in the know, Kyle and I will be posting updates of our journey every few weeks. I’ll post links on my Facebook to new articles and updates when they become released. Also, because I’m so good at using my own, I may make an instagram for Plank Runner/ Kyle & Halley too. 

Anyways, back to us. 

Road Trip

Kyle quit his job a few weeks ago and moved out of his house to come yacht with Halley (Her evil plan all along). After an amazing going away party bus, an alright comedy show and some heartfelt goodbyes, we left Colorado and headed towards Illinois for a few day. 

We spent the weekend at the Havlicek’s. We saw family, friends, walked Dakota and geared back up for our mini east coast road trip!!

Over the next 7 days we drove through the Indiana Dunes, Pittsburgh, Washington D.C., Norfolk, Wilmington, Myrtle Beach, Charleston, Savannah, West Palm and finally to the wonderful town of Fort Lauderdale, Florida. In Pittsburgh, Mia Huber & roommates were so kind to host us and take us out for the best margaritas & grilled cheese from The Yard. Next stop, D.C. believe it or not, we finally got to reconnect with Sully and go out to the bars to celebrate his 2nd day at his new engineering job! Also while in D.C., we were able to bike around (until Kyle’s pedal fell off lol) and see most of the National Mall as well as the air and space museum.  

In the morning we visited Arlington National Cemetery, drove past the pentagon and headed towards our next stops. Norfolk, Wilmington and Myrtle Beach were quick-just-a-few-hour stops. We walked the beaches, checked out town, some museums and headed back on the road. 

Night 4 we settled in at a place right on the beach in Charleston. Kyle admired all the beautiful, multi-story beach front houses mansions and grew to love being behind the camera. The next morning we drove to Hilton Head, which would have been a lot better in the summer. Turned out just to be rainy and pricey for our short visit. 

Thus, onto our favorite place of the trip…Savannah!! We both had never seen anything quite like the plant riverside district. Imagine an outdoor food court/bar scene with near by hotels with million dollar price tag gems and historic squares, churches and cemeteries. We both highly recommend the free walking tours around the city, great tour guides, super interesting history and free-obviously! Though, those guys will earn your tips for sure. 

Following Savannah, we were able to stay a night with the one and only Thany! We went to this sweet arcade bar, got pizza and accidentally walked upon India Fest! Namaste. After visiting some marinas, we headed to our final destination: the wonderful, Fort Lauderdale, FL. 

Overall, this was an awesome road trip, jam packed with lots of sights, people and things to do. Over the course of my road trips I’ve learned a lot of valuable lessons I wish I knew sooner. Check out my Lessons Learned On The Road article to make sure you don’t make the same mistakes I did.

Yachting

Finally, day 7 we finished our drive and checked into our place. Since we’re hoping to get jobs sooner rather than later, we are staying at a crew house. A crew house is basically a hostel but for people in the yachting industry. It’s typically a pretty crappy house filled with lots of people that you pay for by the week. Thankfully we were able to get a decent house with just us and one other flat mate this time around. Not the closet for me again. Thank goodness.

The next day, Kyle went back to school for his STCW at BlueWater Yachting. An STCW is your basic first aid, safeties, responsibilities and fire prevention certifications. To learn more you can check out my how to get started article. Kyle learned a lot, made some friends and passed all of his classes, including fully gearing up and fighting controlled fires! He is currently working on getting some daywork to build up his resume for a full time position as a deckhand on board a yacht! 

While Kyle was at school, I started applying to jobs. Fortunately, I was able to find daywork for the whole week on a 40 meter Westport yacht. Unfortunately, it’s only being sold so no promising perspective jobs there but good money, connections and work. 

As for now, we are doing a lot of applying to jobs. However, we are still trying to get some exploring in while we can. This weekend we visited the Miami Boat Show and in the future we hope to visit the Everglades and The Florida Keys. We also have thought about taking a cheap cruise for a week because with the food included can be cheaper than living in a crew house BUT ONLY if we don’t have daywork. 

That’s all for now! Thanks for following along on the crazy journey of ours and we will keep you guys updated!!