Exciting Night

"Sailboat approaching Ladies Island Bridge - are you on channel 9?" "This is Latitudes, yes sir." "Latitudes are you intending to pass through, or are you anchoring?" "We'd like to go through on your seven oclock opening." "The bridge is closed from seven to nine, if you want to get through you need to be here before seven." "Yes sir, we'll speed up, we'll be there in less than 4 minutes". It was about 6:52 AM! Barely light!

Our finely crafted plan to anchor near the bridge in Beauford, SC, spend the night, raise anchor before sunrise,

and save waiting two hours for the seven AM to nine AM bridge closing almost unraveled.

But it didn't. We made it  thanks to the helpful bridge tender.

And passed Beauford at dawn.

This was the culmination of an exciting night. Up at 2:30 AM (arggh!) to see the total lunar eclipse.

The rest of the day was a pleasant, uneventful meandering down the ICW past Hilton Head Island, across the Savannah River, and ending up at our destination, at a friend's dock on the Burnside River in Savannah.

So, with the exception of about 70 miles just south of Morehead City NC, over our past three trips south, we've done all of the ICW from Norfolk to Savannah. We appreciate the pleasant, relaxed (except for a few shallow areas), calm (at least this late in the season) and somewhat tedium of motoring down the ICW

 in contrast to the adventure, ease (most of the time), speed (a 24 hour day is many more miles than a 9 hour day) and, always some degree of uncertainty of an ocean passage. We do appreciate our outside runs and intend to do one from Savannah to St. Augustine in a week or so, if the weather gods are feeling the Christmas spirit!