Well, didn't spend last night as I had imagined. Instead of watch shifts at sea we were swatting horseflies and lighting insect coils.

Oh well.

All was not a total disaster. Barb made some cornbread in a frypan. One of my favourites. We are out of bread and had planned to be in Southport and to a grocery store tomorrow night so this is our carb substitute.

As for the day, we were up and did all the normal first of the day stuff and then we were off. Up the ditch. In retrospect we could have made the same trip in half the time by simply squeezing out on the outside and motoring in more or less a straight line up the coast. As it was we did the Georgia zig zag which is not a bad thing since very little of the Georgia ICW is developed and it is mostly wild marshlands and barrier islands. The Georgia State Bird has to be the horsefly, and if it isn't, based only on numbers, it should be. Barb developed a new hunting pastime - stalking and killing the State Bird. Stalk sneak creep quiver and then whack whack whack followed, if successful, by a happy dance in the cockpit.

Everything was going well until we got to a spot called, aptly, Hell Gate. There, if we were to believe them, the guide books all talked about 2-3' of water at mid to low tide which was where we were. We called TowBoatUS and they said the same thing, so, we took the nearest Inlet which happened to be right there and by great skill and courage on my part, for which I really mean a great deal of luck, we squeezed out a shallow Inlet. Next step was to dodge a dozen shrimp trawlers and then fly down the coast to the Inlet between Tybee Island and Hilton Head and around the corner back into the ICW where Barb had researched a nice little anchorage in a place called Broad Creek.

But, before we got there we had one more adventure.

For the last two days we had been hearing this "Pan, Pan" message from the Coast Guard about a reported overturned boat and possible people in the water. They were asking everyone who saw it to report in and help if possible. Guess what?! We were coming up on R2 on our way into the harbour and when I came abreast of what I thought was the buoy until we saw that it was a deployed life raft attached to a sunken boat, the only part of which could be seen was the port corner transom.

We reported in to the Coast Guard and they thanked us for the updated position report but said that we didn't have to hang around. I gleaned that it was a shrimper and that it was part of an ongoing search and rescue op but that was all. They didn't want us to hang around although we volunteered so off we went and arrived at Broad Creek around 1915. Snug and comfy, ready to head out tomorrow for Port Royal to fuel and water and go grocery and liquid sustenance shopping and visit with some friends we had met on one of our previous trips.

For Sunday we have a number of options:

1. Weather permitting we head out for Southport again. A day and a half trip.

2. Weather permitting even more, we go offshore, bypass Cape Fear, and head for Beaufort NC.

3. Weather not permitting we go on up the ditch some more. Sigh.

Time will tell which we have available.