February 28, 2007

I spent the day today studying the charts for the legs through Georgia and it is going to be like a maze. I put all of the Florida charts away until I send them home from Washington, DC and pick up the new ones for the way north from there. As soon as I turn the corner here I will be in Georgia and the very first river I come to is the St. Mary’s and then with this comes the navy submarine base at Kings Bay if I remember correctly and the set of instructions that goes with it about pleasure boats being so many yards away, etc. All part of our wonderful Homeland Security Department who evidently does not believe the Navy can handle its own affairs. So you have Navy, Coast Guard and Homeland Security running around with shoot to kill orders if you don’t do what they say. Just another part of the adventure is what I say,” bring it on,” I’m as confident as President Bush.

I did twelve blocks of walking today looking around for some things I needed for the boat but never found anything but antique stores and an ice cream store. I should rent a car and drive around before I leave as there is an old plantation I will miss if I don’t. I am having a problem uploading photos as well as the blog for the day, as they keep timing out on Google. I finally have my email functioning again, thanks to the assistance of an Indian woman named Ruby who would not give up. They kept telling me my server was down and I knew that was not the problem. Once I was switched from the new Beta mail on Yahoo to the old Yahoo mail it now works fine or at least it did today. Maybe all the communication problems are solved for now. If you want to get tired just read charts all day.

I slept so well last night that I did not even hear an 80 ft. tugboat tie up at the dock across from me and was getting up to fix breakfast when I heard him back away from the dock. He was very quiet even with the powerful engines. As long as I am warm I am sleeping really well it seems.

We have a sailboat from Portugal across the way getting ready to leave and sail across the Atlantic Ocean. They bought a rickety boat and are trying to make it seaworthy in a few days because there visas run out on Friday and after that they can not set foot on the docks any more. They also recovered a stolen sailboat here at the docks today from Georgia and took the guy into custody who stole it. The owner had reported it about four days ago so the guy didn’t get far.

We will see what tomorrow brings and some rough weather is forecast for up ahead so will probably stay here tomorrow and let that pass. I have the time as I found out from my charts that it is only 140 nautical miles to South Carolina from here or an easy 2 day run or at most 3 lazy days. The herd will be starting north about March 15th from Florida ports south of here and from then on dock space becomes pretty scarce.