11/21/15  Saturday

Hard to keep up with which day it is but with various calendars...we manage. Briskly chilly this morning and beautiful. David hauled the anchor and washed it and the deck - lots of black mud - while I motored us out of Goose Creek and into the ICW for today's adventure.

A lusciously beautiful day. Warm. Sunny with a breeze from the north most of the day. A pretty easy day. A few areas where attention was really acute due to shoaling, generally at inlets. Sometimes David takes over the helm at those spots as he is more familiar with how to respond quickly w/the boat, including reverse which is sometimes necessary. At one spot, between marker 61 and 62A/B the shoaling was really poorly marked. Thank goodness David was creeping slowly by the markers. Bump! We came to a sudden stop. REVERSE and David managed to get us off the sandbar. Phew! Another time the chart had us going on the port (left) side of a couple of green markers. In this area we were supposed to keep the greens to the boat's port side. What to do?!? In spite of the chart we decided to follow the rules and slowly made our way between the reds and greens...me at the helm this time. No bumps. No need for reverse.

Sometimes I get nervous and want David to take the helm and he encourages me to continue...and sometimes I do. Sometimes David gets nervous and wants to take the helm or wants to tell me what to do. Sometimes I give up the helm. Sometimes I do what he says. Sometimes I don't. We're learning how to be nervous, be helpful, be encouraging, be firm....lots of "be"s. Today I learned from David that if our course change for the autopilot/navigator is more than 5 degrees, the auto/nav really over-steers, zigging and zagging pretty widely and wildly. New information. In a narrow, shallow channel - not a good idea. I comply with his suggestion to auto/nav differently.

And we have different ways of setting the auto/nav function. Mine makes him nervous so he huffed and looked away when I didn't do it as he did, after he explained his technique to me again. Harrumph.

And in between our harrumphs, we shared appreciation for the amazingly beautiful views of sea grass, water, sandbars, lots of snowy white egrets and great blue herons - interrupted by some spectacular and ostentatious houses along the ICW water edge. Really?! How many people live in those 3-story mammoths? But the land - seascapes!! At different times of the day....

David said and I agree that if there had been this much view, we would have loved the Dismal Swamp. I think what I love about these views is the longness...the long view aspect...and something of the layered sameness...and the wondering about how far this continues and what's after this....sort of like life....in the micro, day-to-day or hour-to-hour and the macro of years or after this lifetime.

The little tree-tufts on this stretch of land were on bumps of sand/dirt. I suspect that the sand/dirt bumps are formed when the canal is dredged. Hard to see in the photo but pretty weird looking. Sort of Dr. Seuss.

We're tucked in for the night in a turnout just past the Figure 8 Island bridge. A younger couple (and dog) with whom we've been waiting at bridges throughout the day followed us in, knowing they weren't going to make the Wrightsville Beach Bridge opening which is scheduled and thinking we knew what we were doing (silly youngsters). They'd have to wait another hour at the bridge if they missed the scheduled opening. The turnout is noted on one of our chart books but not on others, so a bit risky. They (Fred and Jenny) have a shallower draft boat so we sent them in ahead...nice sailors that we are. "You go first, chillins." No problem. Both boats had enough water and both anchored. Then David and I got to checking the tides (about 4' here in NC) and realized that if we only had 7' coming in at high tide we couldn't get out at low tide and would have to leave in the dark at around 4 AM. Oh PLEASE! Another "what to do?" So we had a dinghy adventure to "sound" the depth at different places in the turnout entrance. HA!! 2 Fathoms plus or about 14' over there closer to the other bank. We'll still leave early so that we don't test low tide but not at 4 AM.

Dinner over. David and I are in separate "rooms" - he emailing, me blogging, Amelia sitting w/me cleaning herself. Soon to bed for all. Looking forward to seeing Conni and Al tomorrow and maybe Sybil and Michael over Thanksgiving weekend. Lots of thanks to give, for sure.