While in Hopetown we enjoyed several long walks through beautiful flower gardens and pastel colored cottages and a fun boat ride with Froggies Adventures to Nippers Bar and Grill on Great Guana Cay for the final Bahamas Barefoot Man concert. We made a brief stop in Marsh Harbour for provisions then worked our way to Treasure Cay for a long walk on their famous beach. We still think there are others way more beautiful in the Bahamas but this one seems to attract the attention, likely because of the resort location. I'm more into the wild, more primitive ones.

The hardest part about leaving the Bahamas is leaving the beautiful water. We planned to take our time in the Northern Abacos, but we were starting to anticipate the crossing back to Florida and saw a brief opportunity followed by what looked like no opportunity for a couple of weeks. We decided to grab it and after one night visiting "the other" swimming pigs and taking a beautiful, long beach walk on No Name Cay, we headed for Fox Town, Little Abaco. We planned to spend a day exploring but our window came a day sooner than we expected. We left for Great Sale the next day with plans to sleep a few hours and leave around 9 p.m. Our departure from Great Sale was delayed by 4 hours due to thunderstorms, but we ended up having an easy crossing to Ft Pierce, arriving around 6 p.m. the next day. The new customs check-in process with a phone app video conference was a piece of cake.

Once again, the weather kept us from going offshore, so we jumped back in the ICW, anchored overnight in Daytona right off the ICW then spent 4 nights on a mooring in St. Augustine while the winds blew like crazy. We were glad to be back there after skipping it the last couple of trips. Our big adventure this time was walking across the Bridge of Lions to Anastasia Island and exploring the St Augustine Lighthouse and the gorgeous State Park. I would have never expected to see such a nice beach with huge sand dunes right near the city! It was over nine miles of walking, but well worth it.

We were able to enjoy calm, beautiful weather for a trip offshore from St Augustine. We had the unexpected joy of seeing at least 8 Loggerhead Turtles between northern Florida and Georgia. Our friends on Minx suggested we go into the North Edisto Inlet rather than the Charleston Inlet for the quiet and beauty. We appreciated his suggestion as our anchorage in Church Creek, off the Wadmalaw River was lovely. The conditions for the remainder of the trip to Charleston were quintessential Carolina Spring. There's nothing like it!

Having skipped Charleston the last couple of trips, we were happy to
return. Our third or fourth time in the Charleston Maritime Center, we love the proximity to all the historical attractions and the convenience to Harris Teeter and laundry. The other marinas are huge and out of the way. We have continued our recent trend of taking huge walks. We revisited the Citadel Thursday and yesterday we walked all the way from the marina across the Arthur Ravenel Bridge, through the park underneath and back. Friday we took the water taxi over to Patriot's Point and spent the whole day touring the USS Yorktown and the Vietnam exhibit.

Since we're not in a hurry and the weather is so beautiful, we have decided to just stay in the ICW the rest of the way back to New Bern, NC. While we dread going through a few skinny spots, going up the Waccamaw River and along the barrier islands will more than make up for it. We're heading out this morning...