Riding the ICW

It was an all around good day. We started out having breakfast at Blackstone's with Bob's parents. That was a pleasant benefit of going to Beaufort instead of Savanah. I had not seen them for a good long while.,so it was nice to catch up with them. And Blackstone's is a long time Waffler favorite breakfast spot.

We pulled out of the marina at about 10:30 this morning, in time for the 11:00 opening of the Lady's Island Bridge. And Tom's Point Creek. We had the anchor down by 5:30 (motoring the whole way). We are just over halfway back to Charleston. Leaving here tomorrow by eight gets us back to Charleston with plenty of time to spare.

One notable item for the day, for the first time Bob did no time at the helm. A milestone for us!

Another Late Start (I am seeing a trend here)

I think we were more tired that we thought yesterday. We are slept in, but it felt great. And after a breakfast of French toast prepared by Bill, we felt like new men.

We raised anchor at 10:40, and headed back out to sea, for our new destination...Beaufort.

An interesting note is that we saw a sunken sailboat on they way out. All that was visible was the master, and a tiny corner of the jib peaking up of of the water. The operating theory is the their captain ran out of gin, and then mutinied. We encouraged Bob to take this as a cautionary tale, but he insisted that we will now and always be well stocked in that regard.

Once out on the ocean, the sailing was perfect, and everyone got in time on the helm. The autohelm seemed to be off kilter today, so we will have to solve that one. But we all did need the practice.

Once in St Helena Sound, the good sailing did not stop. We had a couple hours of perfect wind to move us along, and even put the spinnaker to good use when the wind died down.

Eventually, we did have to lower the sails, and go under power. The sun set while we were still in the ICW. Navigating at night in those channels is tricky, but we all know what needs to be done and we work together to do it.

We are tied up at the town dock a little before 8,and Beaufort brought hot showers and a good meal at Q on the Bay. I hadn't had BBQ in a while, and it was awesome.

Tomorrow is breakfast with Bob's parents, and then we start back for Charleston. Hopefully the trip back will be as good as the trip down.

A Late Start

We got a late start today for a couple of reasons, the most compelling reason being that we had to visit two separate West Marine stores to replace a defective man overboard beacon.

However, one forty in the afternoon saw us heading out. Bob let me get some practice by taking the Black Dog out from the marina. It wasn't perfect, but there was no major incident.

Once we cleared Fort Sumter, rhe wind at the waves picked up. While this was expected, how cold it was came as bit of a surprise. I should mention here that there was a theft on the boat a couple of months back. We initially thought that only some canned goods were purloined, but we discovered today that Bill and I lost some foul weather gear as part of that deal. Not what you want to find out on a cold, windy sea.

Our original plan was to do an overnight to Savanah, however we opted to change our plans and had a very pleasant sail to an achorage off of Seabrook Island. As that afternoon wore on the wind settled down, and the seas were less choppy off shore.

Bill fixed us a good hot meal, and tomorrow we'll set out for Beaufort. The predictions for the sea looks very pleasant, and we should have a great sail.