We are still out here.

Arriving in Charleston we decided to take a slip for a couple of days as we had planned on walking the town and needed fuel and water. We have heard so much about Charleston that we wanted to spend a few days here looking around. Having had met Tom and Chris on Polar Pacer prior to stopping here. They knew quite a lot about the city from last year so we had a guided tour basically from them. Seeing a lot of the old homes and mansions as we also took a tour of the slave market. Which proved to be very interesting and educational to both of us. The last few months have been like a living history lesson for us both. As there is so much to see as we would love to spend more time at each place we stop. But the cold weather we know will soon come. Seeing the ICW at 6 KTS gives you time to look as we have seen so much along the way. As oh yea I live in the pink house. Actually we have seen many pink house’s As we have gotten further south we are now starting to see more and more boats heading south. Yes as the veterans’ that have done this before have told us it will be like a parade at times. We now run into other boats that we have seen in the past as we all seem to hop scotch along at different times. One thing is that we did not figure on is staying in more marina’s then we had planed on, It sure blows the budget .It is easy to get into the habit but hey, it is our first time doing this. What is interesting is seeing boats along the way that are just left and abandon. Most are stripped of anything good as I was sure looking. As we were told they have been there last year even, but not all of them. Some were new. What is interesting is to see the landscape change ever so slowly as we get further south and the climate change. Over the miles we have traveled on the ICW we have seen so many beautiful boats and some huge ones traveling the waterway. The further south we get the bigger the tides are starting to become. As I will say I have been so tempted to want to jump out in the ocean to make some miles but as we listen to the weather on the vhf it has been out of the north so much but to strong of winds for us to feel comfortable. As I do not want Jeannie to feel threatened. So I have conceded to doing the ICW as we talked about it when we first started out on this venture. As all the veterans tell us you have to do it once. To experience it. The thing that is the hardest I think is setting and waiting for a weather window to jump out and head south as in like doing a 18 hour run down the coast in the Atlantic. I know we will get our chance as we kind of had it ruff in the first time in the Atlantic coming out of New York. As we have moved on and did the Georgia ICW. Many have told us we will only do that state once as the ICW is so shallow Well knock on wood we never ran aground in Georgia but we have a total of 3 times so far and was in states north of Georgia. One of the times we decide to wait for the tide to come back in as it was just about low tide anyway.That happened when we were trying to help our friends Tom & Chris on Polar Pacer as he got sucked onto a sand bar by the current as we had anchored in a different spot and I had gotten in the dink to try and push his bow around but he ended up calling Tow Boat Us. Getting back to Georgia. It has sooo much swamp land that we traveled through. This part of the ICW we did pay attention to the tides as in Georgia it is 10 feet. Some of the places we had to go through only showed that it had 1 foot of water at low tide. So as the logical thing is to do it at high tide. But not all do as you will hear on the VHF someone running aground. Georgia is by no means a straight shot down the ICW. But we did it in 5 days. In the days we did manage to go through Georgia we hit the coldest of the year and we had 2 days that it was 41 and 40 inside when we woke up. It was dang cold as Jeannie looked like a mole with only her nose sticking out of the covers.
One thing we have learned is that having a schedule on a boat is not wise. So many variables’ come into play in trying we only went 25 miles and found a hole to anchor in and waited till the next day for high tide and would run as far as we dared to before finding a hole again to anchor in.
The guide books that we have are great at telling you where these are and most have plenty of room for many boats. What is something I have not figured out is why the higher tides in Georgia and not in other places. Once we got anchored in the middle of the day it was interesting to stand on top of the boat and watch the mast weave in and out of where we had been or where to keep one. But we have only one left and that is getting to Saint Augustine to see our daughter and son in law.
What we have been doing is we knew our daily mileage average and as it started to drop the closer we got to Saint Augustine it gave us time to stay a few places for a couple of days each. One of the places was Jekyll Island.

There we spent some time walking around the island and had a guy stop and pick us and Tom & Chris up and gave us a ride to the older part of the island where the mansions were. This was a history lesson as well.
It is sure amazing to see where the money was in the early years on the century. Once again we left the camera back at the boat as we keep kicking ourselves for leaving it. Ah yea we will learn eventually. Ya think! The other place that we stopped at and spent some time was Cumberland Island National sea shore. There we finally did take our camera. Hurrah! Here on that island we managed to take a tour with a park ranger and that proved a wise decision. Some of this island is still in the hands of the past owners of the homes and mansions’ that are still on the island,

It is also one of the islands where wild horses roam. We had asked if they monitor how many are on the island and they told us they let nature do it all. But will step in only if needed. There are only a few types of animals on the island as deer, wild boar, and armadillos which we did manage to see a few of. They could care less if your around. Them as they went on their way looking for food. The horse we seen kept there distance but I was suppressed how close you could get as Tom of Polar Pacer tried. Once we left Cumberland Island went to Fernandina Fl and stayed at the city marina to wash and top op our fuel and water and do a pump out. We wanted to be pumped out and have a receipt of it as Florida is tough on over board discharge we hear. The other thing that was on our list to do is to get set up for customs when we come back into the country in the spring.
Fernandina we heard was a very easy place to do all the paper work and it proved to be true. So we are now set to come back into the states in the spring as all we need to do is a phone call and tell them where we are located. At this point we were only 2 days away from Saint Augustine and seeing the kids, Hura!

The last night we spent on anchor before arriving in Saint Augustine was at pine Island, along with Polar Pacer and Snook, a couple out of MD on a Baba 30 that we have met. As there were 9 other boats in the anchorage that night, It was a beautiful night as I could see the light house at Saint Augustine once it got dark out . As we got closer to Saint Augustine things started to look familiar but was rather interesting seeing it from the water this time. It was a nice feeling knowing that we have come this far and that this is a leg of our journey that we were looking forward to. We arrived on the 14th of Nov in St Augustine and will be staying with the kids for 2 weeks as our youngest flies in Monday night for a week to be with us all. Just a note from Jeannie now. We have learned along the way, that multi boat potlucks are a part of the cruising scene, and we love it! Sometimes it is just drinks before our separate dinners or after dinner drinks. It is a life style we find very enjoyable. Every boater we have met along the way has been very friendly! Now we are on land in St Augustine! On our arrival at Leslie & Josh's home I twirled around and exclaimed "I am on land and in a home"! I probably will get antsy and want to get back on the ICW, but for now I am enjoying my family!