Uncle!

We give up!
One of the most highly touted stops on the intracoastal waterway is Cumberland Island. Canopied trails lead to miles of beautiful sand beach. Wild ponies roam the entire island. We got there on Tuesday afternoon in calm weather expecting to spend a few days exploring. Moma nature had other ideas. The wind picked up out of the northeast and started blowing hard accompanied by rain. A dingy ride ashore would have been cold and wet. We hung on the hook for a day expecting things to get a bit better. They got worse. The wind shifted to the northwest and we lost the protection of the island. So rock n roll we did; for a whole night. The new weather reports showed the wind would keep blowing out of the north forever. Well, at least a week. We could hear the horses, we were that close.

So we threw in the towel and moved on. We just beat the coast guard blockade for a nuke sub preparing to depart Kings Bay. They shut down all traffic in the area once boomer is underway.

We're now in Florida, still a bit chilly with lows in the 50's. Seems like we're always runnin from the weather! But things could be worse, we have friends  much further north, including one still on the Erie canal.

A nice reward

We motored in calm flat seas overnight from Beaufort, NC to Charleston, SC; taking about 34 hours. We were going to fuel up and anchor for the night. But the seas on Monday were predicted to get sloppy so we decided to get moving again. This was around 4PM and it would be a 24 hour run to St. Simons Island in southern Georgia. Sometime around midnight, the seas started to get going again. Not real bad, but on our beam with no wind. When on the beam with some breeze, the sails will hold us steady, but with no wind we rolled quite a bit all night long. Yuck.
But at first light, we were rewarded very nicely by a visiting pod of dolphins. The first sighting was of the largest dolphin shooting up 5 feet into the air 3 times in succession. Very impressive. They stayed with us for almost a half hour, dancing all around the boat, mostly at the bow. I finally stopped being mesmerized long enough to grab the video camera and shoot a short clip just before they swam off. Maybe they're camera shy? This is just a very short slice of the entertainment they provided...

We made St. Simons about 1 hour before sunset to find our friends Jeff & Mary on Echo anchored here. Their plan was to go straight to central Florida, I guess they can't get enough of our company! We've been here before and will go ashore by dinghy with bikes to enjoy the place once more.