Finally moved the boat!

We pulled out of Brunswick early Tuesday morning. The first part of the journey was pretty uneventful, apart from me panicking a little about bridge clearance (unnecessarily, fortunately). We did pass our first deserted beach, and I’m counting that as a milestone. Hopefully there will be many more…

The next leg was a little rougher around the edges. We took the ocean side of Cumberland Island, and sailed about three miles off shore, close hauled into I don’t know how much wind, because all our new (working) instruments are still sitting in a box. I’m guessing it was about 15-20 knots steady with gusts 5 above that, because it was a pretty bumpy journey. I’ll just say we discovered all the things down below that weren’t tied down. But aside from making a lot of noise, the boat handled the pounding nicely. Unfortunately, the last leg, getting back in from the ocean, was straight into the wind and an outgoing tide, so it felt like we crawled the last few miles. But we made it to the marina in time for a nice sunset:

The next afternoon, we hauled the boat out of the water for some much-needed bottom paint, which starts tomorrow, and a few other things like installing our new depth/speed/temperature transducer (today).

So now we’re sitting on the hard for a while. And it’s cold here, but our little ceramic heater is keeping us nice and toasty. We’re making steady progress, and hopefully we’ll be through this and on our way south soon!