Steve and Laura's Excellent Adventure

 Greetings from Georgetown, SC!  As you can see, we modified our itinerary a bit since my last post.  We decided to skip Jekyll Island and head straight to Beaufort, SC. We left St. Mary's, GA on the morning of July 9th and arrived in Beaufort the next afternoon. The weather was quite variable during the morning of our journey and we weren't able to sail until mid-afternoon.  After that though, we had calm seas and a following wind...just perfect!  We averaged 6-7 knots with an occasional burst of "speed" to 8 knots :-) I know that sounds painfully slow, but it's really not.  It's quite peaceful and with the breeze blowing, it doesn't feel that slow. The next morning we arrived at the inlet to the Beaufort River and had our first lesson in properly timing your entry into tidal areas. The tide was going out at 2-2.5 knots and Starry Night, under motor power only, does about 5 knots.  So...we had to travel a portion of the 20 miles up the Beaufort River at a

  We are now officially cruising!! We have no hard deadlines and no "must-do" projects at the moment. :-) After several days in lovely Fernandina Beach, home of Florida's oldest tavern (shown below), we moved to St. Mary's, Georgia to satisfy our insurance requirement to be north of the Cumberland Island southern tip from July 1-November 1.  Florida's oldest tavern, the Palace Saloon St. Mary's is a quaint little town with a gorgeous riverside park and friendly residents.  St. Mary's is also the entry point to Cumberland Island, a part of the U.S. National Seashore which can only be accessed by boat.  Darlyn and Brad Kuhn met us in St. Mary's and we motored from there to Cumberland Island, where we anchored for a few days and explored the island. Cumberland Island, first inhabited by Timucua indigenous people, once home to American Revolutionary Hero Nathaniel Greene and his wife Catherine, and later home to Thomas and Lucy Carnegie and their nine chil