We're in Florida

Well, I sure haven't been keeping these up-to-date. Sorry about that folks but we've been out to sea lately.
Soooo, as the title says ... We have arrived in Florida. Today we arrived in Fernandina Beach, Florida just in time for a beautiful sunset.

As stated earlier, we've been at sea for a number of days. In a nutshell, we finally got out of the Isle of Palms (near Charleston) and sailed up through the harbour without stopping. On the west side of the city was a 200 foot sailboat that had the tallest mast in the world. Very high as you can see.
By the way, the boat to the left of it was about 100 feet long.

So, on we motored, back into the ICW until 5pm came around and it was time to stop for the night...But where? ... All we see is swamp all around us...There are no cities or towns along here. Jan finds this small creek called Tom Point Creek. It gave us some shelter behind some trees in a place about 75 feet wide and 10 feet of water. Plenty of room here. There was no mention of all the gnats, mosquitoes and flies, but that has to be expected in a swamp.

It was really quite nice when we entered, however, in the morning when we woke up the fog was as thick as I've ever seen. You couldn't see any of the banks around you and the tide was now high so you didn't know how far these shoals came out.
So, once again we headed off into the unknown aiming for the North Edisto River and out into the Atlantic Ocean bound for Savannah, Ga.
Thank God our plotter was accurate.

By the way, I figured out where the Louisiana saying Ieeeee! comes from. It means IEEEEEEEE ... Get your ass out of the water before the gators get you!!!
Oh yeah, this reporting to Homeland Security ??? They have their spies all over the place down here.
Take a look at these two checking us out ......
"What do ya think Fred" ... "Well I don't know what that silly looking red flag is on the back of their boat Ralph, but it ain't American for sure".

"Let's call in the rest of the guys and see what they think." "After all, this is a private country ya know and it's only open to members."

All kidding aside folks, US Homeland Security has been very professional when we call in and they always thank us for reporting.
So on with the story ....
The last two days have been rather straight forward at sea. We weren't ready for the fact you have to go 5 miles out to sea to get around the 6 feet of water in the approaches to the inlets, or that at 25 miles out to sea there is only 32 feet of water under you.
The only real danger out here is getting run over by a shrimp boat or tangled up in their trawl if you get too close. You can usually see them miles away and to enlarge their rigging so you can see them better, they carry hundreds of birds.
We called numberous "shrimpers" to arrange passing but nobody would answer.

After two long days (with short stops at night at Savannah and Brunswick), we finally arrived at Fernandina Beach, Fla.
This is a very quaint little town that was first built and settled by the Portuguese in the late 1700's and followed by the Spanish in the early 1800's. There is a large fort at the entrance to the river inlet.

The historic downtown area is beautiful and peaceful. We took a walk through the streets and saw some of the old buildings and Jan was interested in a date with some old pirate guy.

Ron was trying his hand at borrowing this bike to get back to the marina.

Well, all in all, it was a great day of sailing and discovering new areas. We're settled in at the Fernandina Harbour Marina for the night and it's not very crowded here.

Tomorrow, it's back to sea for another round of get those sails working as we continue to head south to St. Augustine.