Sunday, December 13, 2009 Beaufort (N32 25.751 W 080 40.836) S. Carolina

Foggy, wet, rainy, less cold in the 40-50s

    Wow! What a night… raining, cold, strong winds and keeping an eye on the new guy that anchored close to our boat. As the winds picked up we drifted closer and closer to each other. Wayne finally got up and decided to reset the anchor when he noticed we were right next to each other. Literally. Not touching but you could have jumped from boat to boat. We hated to lift anchor so throttled forward away from him and tried to drag our anchor along with us. Didn’t go very far but enough to give us distance again as long as the wind didn’t drive us into each other again. To try to prevent this from happening, Wayne threw out the other anchor in hopes that it would hold us away from the other boat.
     When I got up in the morning, his boat was in our initial position. How nice of him to claim our spot and make us vacate it. But if we’d stayed we’d have collided for sure.
     We were going to put the dinghy on deck today but the winds just wouldn’t let up and the day was just dreary. The excitement for the day was watching a very large motorcade of police leading motorcycles with blue lights flashing, along the waterfront. Sirens and lights all going. We had to wonder about that. Had an officer died in the line of duty?



I plotted a course in the chart plotter from here to Fernandina Beach Florida. We were going to go to the Savannah River Inlet to go around Georgia, but the Inlet here looks like it would be a good one too. This way we can avoid some of the shoals getting to the Savannah one. So it looks like we’ll be doing the Beaufort SC to Fernandina Beach Fl route on the outside. The weather window looks good for Monday to do a 24-hour trip out and around. The only problem could be dense sea fog and a bit of rain. Winds and seas sound quite “doable”.

Dinner tonight - Chicken Salad on rolls and oranges.