Once again I don't know when we'll be able to post this so I am writing it as we go. Today will be quite the adventure, I hope! Peri will have to forgo his evening walk so as to be able to make a big jump. The weather seems to be favourable; the winds are cooperative; the only negative side is that there is an 80% chance of rain, but we're off.

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OK. Done for the leg and it was a beaut. If you look at the map you will see the distance that we covered in the last 24 hours was in was excess of 140 miles by our route or over 200 on the ICW. We motored away from the dock in Beaufort the toots of their ships horn from Alain and Judy. It was great to seem them and I hope that we'll get to see them again soon during this cruise. We chose to go through Hilton Head instead of out the Beaufort channel as it is a much more direct route. Hilton Head? Hmmm. I wonder if that has anything to do with that pseudo celebrity Paris Hilton. How about that gal, eh? She can't sing, dance, act or anything like that. She is attractive, but the world is full of attractive people. All she did as far as I can make out to kick start herself as a celebrity is make one crappy little sex tape in a hotel bedroom. Hell, if that's all it takes, I can do that! Where can I find a hotel?

Anyway, I digress. Once clear of the Paris Head, oops, sorry, Hilton Head, we put up the sails and away we went, so much nicer night than the last offshore adventure. I sort of had the feeling that we were being chased by Polaris as it was dead astern over my shoulder all night. I watched Orion circumnavigate the celestial orb and we both watched various cities pass by on our starboard beam. Our original plan called for us to stop at Fernandina beach, but we were making 7.5-8 knots all night and we got there about midnight; then we looked at St John River and a trek upstream to Jacksonville, but we got to the inlet mouth at 0400 so we went one step farther again and made for St Augustine where we arrived at 0830. We made every effort to get a spot to anchor south of the bridge there. We ran aground and eventually we did set the hook once only to find out from a very kind woman in a small dingy who came out to tell us that particular spot dies at high tide, in fact we had swung a bit and were already aground, so we said to hell with it and kept going. I can understand why some of the locals in St Augustine are trying to get a law passed prohibiting liveabords from gracing the waterfront of their community. Most of the ones that I have seen here have staked out the choice anchorages; set two hooks and chase anyone else away who wants to anchor anywhere close; and finally since the boat never moves it grows a fine aquaculture project on her waterline and the topsides become a repository of anything the inhabitant picks up in his travels ashore, and half completed projects. In short a total eyesore.

So we gave up on St Augustine, although our friends on Silverheels have the answer - stay at the marina. I wonder how many guests the marina gets by default after the boat has had enough of trying to find an anchorage. We motored off down the ICW looking for a spot where we could give the long suffering Peri his much needed and well deserved walk.

This might be a good point to verbalize on some skills needed in cruising the ICW to ensure that you stay afloat. First, stay in the channel! Du-uh! Easy to say, but surprising how many people don't do that according the TowUS people that we have spoken to. Either they deliberately edge over or they set the auto helm and get complacent or they mistake a buoy from one of the inlets for a main channel buoy. The second skill is to watch the depth sounder like a hawk eying a field mouse. That way if it starts to get shallow you can at least slow down and increase your chances of being able to back off after a soft grounding. Finally, on turns in the waterway, favour the outside of the turn. The reason for this is simple - for a given volume of water the inside of the turn the water goes more slowly. Slower water is unable to maintain suspension of particulates and sedimentation occurs.

After a morning of motoring, finally at noon we anchored at Matanzas River, and high time too. I am exhausted and Peri 's teeth were floating and his eyeballs were turning yellow. We went ashore at the State Park here and he finally got a chance to roam, sniff trees, and try to figure out what fiddler crabs were.

We had a very early dinner for which Barb made the Frogmore Stew. It was really good, very quick to prepare and would be a great way to feed a crowd.

I'm really snufflebagged today, having been up since 0630 yesterday so I am going to close this off and crash. We have found a marina in Daytona that only charges $0.80/ft plus $4 for power. Guess where we made a reservation for tomorrow night? Perhaps I'll even get an internet connection to get this posted.
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