Well the strong northeast winds are continuing (and are expected to for another couple of days) and so we are continuing north in the ICW. Unfortunately, the ICW between Florida and Charleston, SC winds back and forth and takes many extra miles. It is also subject to strong tidal currents and has the most problems with shoaling. We experienced all of these today.

We were underway by 0715 and made good time for a couple of hours. Then the currents turned against us and we slowed to less than 5 knots. The Georgia section of the ICW runs through large sounds that open into the ocean and one of these, Saint Andrew's, is particularly open to the ocean from the northeast. It turned not to be too awful, there are shallows that cause the waves to break before they reach the channel, but it was still an hour of 3-4 foot waves coming straight at us, with spray flying and green water over the bow a few times! But, for an hour, it was fun. It make us glad we weren't offshore dealing with it, though...

Once we turned around the appropriate buoy and headed back into more protected waters, the bouncing stopped, but our speed was down to 4 knots and sometimes less as the ebb tide was against us...*groan*...Nevertheless, we kept going and continued to make progress, albeit slowly. Then, just as we exited Buttermilk Sound and only a few miles from where we had decided we would anchor for the night, we ran aground. It was absolute dead low tide and the "channel" had less than 8 feet of water in it and the channel width was about 20 feet while the distance between the channel markers was about 100 feet. I chose the wrong part of the channel and ran out of water. After about 5-10 minutes of backing and turning, I managed to work us off and back into deeper water where we resumed our travel.

Finally, 12.5 hours after we started, we set the anchor in Back river and got dinner ready. Phew!

(31 23.697'N 81 19.537'W)