Well, things don't always go as planned. I think that I failed to mention in the past few posts that Ann isn't feeling well. She's had a nasty cold for a couple of days, but that wasn't going to keep her from the trip. Then it either moved into her eye, or she has an infection there. By the time we went to bed last night, her left eye was nearly shut and it was painful. Trust me, when she says something hurts, it does. I wish I had half of her ability to push through pain or adversity.

This morning, when she woke, her left eye was swollen nearly shut and it was obvious that it had spread to the other eye.

So our choices were:
1. Go on, it'll probably be OK
2. Stay in Freeport, try to get medical attention (on Sunday), and if that all works out fine, go on, a day behind the group. If not, turn back.
3. Turn back and get medical attention on Monday back at our home port.

It didn't take too long to decide that the most prudent thing was to head back. We really didn't want to. The weather was predicted to be nice where we were headed. and still bad back at home, but it just seemed the thing to do.
After an 8 1/2 hour motor back, we're back in our slip, I went to the pharmacy and got some things for her eyes and she's glad to be here.

The trip back was our first time on our own on the ICW. It went very well. The boat performed perfectly. We made great time due to rising tide as we headed up the Houston Ship Channel.

Ironically, as we headed up the HSC towards Kemah, the rains started again (can't have a day without rain). There were time when the rain was thick enough that we could barely find the next marker. Thank god for the chartplotter. With lighting striking around us, it made me think about how heavily we counted on the chartplotter that could be gone with one strike of lighting.

8 1/2 hours is a long time to motor, but it went very smoothly. We're feeling pretty comfortable that we could do a long passage on the ICW, but not so sure that we want to...