Woke this morning to 46 degrees outside... went to bed with the AC on and it switched to heat in the middle of the night... Susan had to wear her winter jacket to walk Beecha this morning... LOL

It was interesting getting away from the dock this morning as there was a very strong current that wanted to push SAILS immediately away from the dock as soon as any line was removed… but we made it away safely at approximately 0730 and soon were heading out Lanceford Creek toward the ICW.

The winds had howled all night long and were still steadily blowing over 20 knots out of the northwest. This would make the inlets rough as we crossed them... particularly St. Andrew Sound which is full exposed to the Atlantic.

Crossing St. Mary’s Inlet was first one we had to cross… it is fairly protected from the NW winds and it was choppy… 3-4 waves… no sweat! Soon after crossing the winds started to pickup… 25 knots sustained with gusts to 35 knots…even the ICW was rough on the NW stretches… approaching St. Andrew Sound on the Cumberland River we were seeing 3-4 waves… we opted to not cross the sound and take an alternate back router turning to port in to Floyd Creek just north of ICW marker 40. This is marked as an alternate route on the charts… it adds about an 30-45 minutes to route… but much much calmer… need to have a good tide level as there are a few skinny places that are less than 5 feet at MLW. The back route returns you to the ICW just south of Jekyll Creek… ICW markers 25 and 27.

Just before this turn we had a small 25 – 30 foot boat arrive at our stern… I assumed he would hail us to pass… NOPE… he stayed 300 feet behind us… I believe using us to break the waves and smooth his ride… he followed us into Floyd Creek and the rest of the day until we stopped and he continued north.

It was a nasty windy day and I really needed some computer time to catch up on some of the cabinet design and web work that had come in over that last few days… so we opted to stop early at Jekyll Island. We arrived to our favorite free dock and were secure at approximately 1300 at N31°02.545’, W081°25.390’. We had traveled for 5.5 hours covering 34.65 nautical miles averaging 6.3 knots.