Cleared for Take Off!

Port Royal Landing Marina,
the last time we set our feet on American soil?

We've made our way to beautiful Beaufort (that's byoo-fert, remember?), SC.  Spent last night at Port Royal Landing Marina hoping we would be able to detach ourselves from the damnable ICW and exit the U.S. from Port Royal Sound.  Jane made arrangements with noted weather guru, Chris Parker, for a new forecast with an expected departure date of Friday the 16th or thereabouts.  We've topped off our fuel and water and emptied our holding tank.  We found an anchorage in Stations Creek, just a hop, skip, and a jump from the ocean.  We've attached the jacklines, tied down the fenders, tested the tethers, put the ditchbag in the cockpit.  We even performed the renaming ceremony (thanks, Amy--  I'm pretty sure Neptune/Poseidon and Aeolus are as ibreniated as we are.), all while waiting to get our forecast from Chris who'd already contacted us to say that Saturday was looking good.  (It's just as well that we had to wait until Saturday.  Every mariner knows with what certainty disaster befalls any vessel that embarks upon a voyage on a Friday.)

Our weather forecast has come in and Saturday is a go!  You should have seen us doing our happy dances.  (On second thought, maybe not: what they displayed in delight they lacked utterly in grace.)  So, we finished off the rest of the god's booze and had a steak dinner with ice cream for dessert.  Jane is napping; she'll probably be up long before dawn making last-minute preparations and taking last-minute Dramimine.  We'll weigh the anchor and tie it down at first light and then big, blue water here we come!

Our last ICW buoy?

Owing to the fact that we're on the Sprint network, we probably won't have Internet capability once we get a few miles offshore, so this will likely be our last post from the United States of America.  You can still follow our progress by going to the "we are here" tab here on our blog.  We expect to arrive in Treasure Cay on Tuesday, whereupon we will commandeer Jane's mom's Internet connection to report on our arrival and recount all of our adventures at sea.  It looks as though we may get Tipsy Turtles for Christmas, after all.

New Old Home Week

Remember Michele on Catito, the French Canadian who rescued us from our first grounding during our first day on the ICW?  We were sure she had long left us in her wake.  Jane just happened to be looking out toward the channel at the exact right moment and saw Catito cruising by.  No way?  How on earth did JOY pass her?  Jane hailed Michele on the VHF--we do still owe him a bottle of wine and homemade chocolate chip cookies.  It turns out that Michele had docked Catito in Beaufort for three weeks, flew home, got his wife, and they are now continuing on their way south. They are also headed for the Abacos, but aren't as confident as we are of good weather (or, more accurately, feel differently than Chris Parker does about the forecast) which means we may get there before they do.  We'll have his cookies and wine waiting for them when they arrive.

And speaking of the other B-e-a-u-f-o-r-t, got a call from Craig from Eastern Marine Diesel.  They're the guys who fixed our stepped-on fresh water pump over the Thanksgiving holiday.  He hadn't seen a blog post in a few days and was worried about us.  I mentioned having been saved by another cruiser and out of the blue he asked, "Was he Canadian?"

Wow, what does that say about us?

I have one more call to make/email to send before we lose touch with the land of our birth (Tommy  & Amy, if you read this, we're thinking about you.  Thanks for the renaming ceremony, wish we'd done it before we left.)  We are deeply grateful for the new friends we have made and equally grateful for the friends still back in the North.

Cheers.  See  you in The Bahamas...yee-ha!