We woke up to thick fog yesterday and decided we better not attempt to go out into it. We had already decided that we were only going to go until lunchtime and then anchor for the rest of the day so we could watch football. The fog stuck around until about 11:30am and we decided we would go to the next anchorage. We had to go through a drawbridge on our way. It was one of the coolest bridges I’ve seen this trip. Notice in the picture above that there were actually two spans that opened separately.

We also needed to get fuel for the boat. We managed to pull up to the fuel dock without any trouble and filled up the boat. We also bought some fresh gasoline for our dingy engine. Bill went with the marina attendant to pour out what was left of the old fuel and he found some newborn kittens behind the tank. He asked us if we wanted one – the answer was NO!

We anchored for the night in the river behind the marina and settled down to watch football. Part way into the second game a couple of boats that we know came into the anchorage and on their way by invited us for dinner. Of course we said yes. They anchored much further in than us, but we had no problems getting there in our dinghy. We had a very nice time, and dinner was delicious.

This morning we got up early because we had another bridge schedule to contend with. It wasn’t a weekend so there are rush hour restrictions and opening schedules. We headed out and it was really beautiful. I looked behind us at one point and I saw a dolphin jump completely out of the water and do a twist. We see dolphins just about every day but never like that. They may come out of the water a little, or do a dive under the boat but this dolphin really jumped high. Maybe he had escaped an aquarium someplace and was missing his former life. I, on the other hand, am not missing my former life.

Once we got through the bridge, our next issue for the day was getting through Hell Gate. There is a Hell Gate in New York City that gets a lot of press for how difficult it is for boaters, and this one in Georgia also receives warnings. I’m not sure if we just time it right, or the warnings are not accurate but we had no issues with either one.

The rest of the day was pretty easy until we noticed how dark the sky was getting. We were twenty minutes from dropping our anchor when the storm finally hit. We had all our rain gear on but apparently that wasn’t enough. The visibility went to zero, the rain was either driving hard, or was hail, Bill and I can’t agree on that, and the wind hit 46 knots. We were in a pretty restricted area with shallow water around us so Bill decided just to drop the anchor right where we were. That was definitely the smartest thing to do at the time. The storm did not last very long and we were able to go the last twenty minutes and anchor for the night before it got dark. We were pretty wet and definitely ready to be done for the day.