Well Team Hughes is chugging along the Intracoastal Water Way aboard Ruby Slipper. After several nights of anchoring we treated ourselves to a slip at Morehead City Yacht Basin (near Beaufort). Diesel was relatively inexpensive - $2.86/gallon...so we topped off the tanks (160 gallons) as we know further south it gets more & more pricy. This place is terrific! Great dockmaster, Dwayne & Denise as a dockhand. They turned us on to a fabulous restaurant - Floyd's 1921. It was one of the best meals I have ever had! A blackened rare tuna steak (fresh off the dock across the street) atop asiago cheese grits encircled with collard greens sauteed with applewood smoked bacon! My captain enjoyed a shrimp napoleon with grits, tasso ham & a cheese topping. Both were southern meals to remember. Great to get off the boat & have a "date" from the fur babies who are doing wonderfully. Tomorrow we had hoped to go offshore & break from the "drudgery" of the ICW. But the wind would be right on our beam & the expected 3-5' seas would make for a very rolly ride! So, chug along we'll do...ranges to keep us in narrow channels, strong currents at inlets & rivers driving us crossways in the channel, shoals threatening to eat our rudder & prop, doing donuts in front of bridges as we wait for the tender to open for us (we are 14' high & can only sneek under some), fish nets, clorine bottle speed boaters that create wakes to rattle your teeth, tugs & barges that edge you ever closer to shallow waters, going from ICW bouy to bouy to bouy to... But we LOVE IT!! Off we go tomorrow to Wrightsville Beach, NC. Murphy & Trapper send woofs your way; we send hugs & kisses.