A Moving Boat Gathers No Barnacles

We are nearing the 2 month mark for travel now and I fear I'm becoming weary and inpatient. Both of which is not usually in my nature. It only reinforces our decision to Summer in the Chesapeake for 2008. We will still be fresh from sitting still at this point in time. Something to look forward to.

Since I was able to last post a journal, many miles have past under our keel. Our signal for the Internet in the Carolinas and Virgina is generally weak and breaks up on us but today we are in Charleston, SC and have a fairly strong signal. We are waiting for a bridge opening as I write this. We miss read the times for the opening and have to wait for one half hour to get it to open. I can't stress enough how this life presses upon one's nature the art of patience.

I'm very excited in that we have a plan to go back North for the Christmas Holiday in December. My Aunt Dot lives near Daytona in the Winter and we are going to drive with her to New York. I don't get to spend as much time with her as I would like and this will be a great opportunity for us to catch up. Of course I'll have to get Larry a pair of ear plugs. Larry just poked his head down below and announced Dolphins by the boat. It's going to be a great day!

The weather prediction for here today is 40% chance of rain and we are getting some sprinkles right now. The last few days and nights have been very cold but prior to that it was warm. I think it is more difficult to handle the cold when the temperatures fluctuate. If it would just stay warm I'd be happy.

After our anchorage on the Alligator River we had some bad weather and decided to go into River Forest Marina in Belhaven, NC. We stayed put for two days after which we took a white knuckle ride to Oriental, SC. We attempted to anchor but with not much space left due to the addition of a marina a few years ago and the town dock being full we took a slip at Oriental Marina. We spent one night and left for Beaufort, NC in the morning. We anchored out on the outside of town and dinghyed to shore. It was a short, calm ride, which I appreciated. The next day our buddy boat met up with us. Rich and Linda had decided to go off shore down to Georgetown, SC. The weather window was a good one so we decided to go with them. I will say it was one of the best overnights we have ever experienced. It was calm and relatively warm. The sky was clear and well lit by the Moon and Stars. We had to go quite far out into the Ocean and go around Cape Fear. I will say I was somewhat anxious about Cape fear, many books and stories have been written about it. It was a good trip, I can't say that I now like overnights, but it was the best one we have had. The Sunrise picture is of our morning on the water and we were greeted by Dolphins and escorted by the Butterflies. This little guy on Larry's finger actually took a rest and rode with us in the cockpit for a while.















We arrived in Georgetown the Tuesday before Thanksgiving. We anchored out just off the town with many other boats. This anchorage is always crowded partly due to the many local boats on mooring balls put in at random. It makes anchoring a bit of a challenge but even though we were extremely tired from the over night we finally did manage to set our hook and relax. We stayed until Saturday morning. Georgetown is a quaint little town, the third oldest in South Carolina and has many different styles of architecture. The house in the picture was one with the style of porch that I like. You actually enter the lower level tough the archway beneath the steps.

We were able to do some provisioning and site seeing as well. We got together with Linda and Rich on their boat and had a wonderful meal for Thanksgiving. We played a game of Scrabble and left after the sunset. We have enjoyed their friendship and hope we again meet up sometime soon on our journey. We said our temporary goodbyes this morning as we left and they stayed to Our plan Monday is to travel to Beaufort and possibly anchor for two nights. We are looking at a weather window for the outside on Tuesday. Time will tell if the window stays open.