By now, I’ve fallen into a pattern, or a habit: we are up at First Light; we leave at Sunrise and travel 4-5 hours, roughly 80 miles per day. More than that is tiring when you’re single-handling.

Leaving early makes sense for several reasons…first, it gives us time to recover if something goes wrong, and it gives us time to enjoy the next town on the route. I began telling friends that I was a 9-to-5 kind of guy: in bed bt nine, and up at 5 to walk Guinness.

The schedule makes sense for another reason: every day around 4PM, I get out the charts and the cruising guides, and I study the next day’s route – mile-by-mile. For the most part, the ICW is well marked, but there are treacherous ares caused by shoaling, and there are a couple of spots where the ICW turns sharply, and if you don’t watch the navigation markers, you’re going to miss your turn. We also check the clearance for each bridge along the route. And it’s also interesting that sometimes the buoy colors reverse from red to green, depending on whether you are approaching an inlet or leaving one behind.

If things are particularly dicey, or if we’re going offshore, this is when we enter the necessary waypoints into the chartplotter.

We also have to create a new Wi-Fi connection as we tie up at each new marina.
– Laptop – for the blog
– Alexa – for my music
– FireTV – for after-dinner entertainment

Tonight it worked pretty well. Sometimes not so much. Alexa is the flakiest.

And the Internet at some marinas is very poor.

This is a totally different part of the world.

When you leave Carolina Beach, you connect to the Cape Fear River, which empties through an inlet into The Atlantic. You have a choice: Outside to Myrtle Beach, or Inside via the Waccamaw River, which twists and turns through a flooded forest festooned with Spanish Moss. This photo doesn’t do it justice. I probably should have stopped and composed a great photo…But you can see how the pretty the river is, and the sun, and maybe you can see some of the Spanish Moss. I know most of you have seen SM before, but it’s pretty cool to be right in the midst of it.

But it took a long time to get here. The ICW below Carolina Beach is littered with No Wake Zones that slow your progress to a crawl. We covered 87 miles today. At our fast cruising speed, it would have taken us just short of 5 hours. Instead, it took 6.

Actually, that’s pretty much what I planned on: I told the marina we’d arrive around 2, and we rolled in at 1:59. I anticipated it, but it still made me impatient. I mean, come on…it’s the ICW! It’s like building your house next to I-95 and then complaining about the cars speeding by!

I thought about going outside today, because I knew this stretch had issues, but I figured I wanted to see ALL of the ICW for myself. If I do it again, I may go outside.

But everything’s OK now. My puppy made a lot of new friends, and the restaurant here serves fresh river-caught fried catfish tacos! Yowza!

Tomorrow we’re off to see Stan and Susan Harris in Isle of Palms. We’ll stay two nights, and I’m looking forward to the visit!

We arrived on Friday 11/13, and we are leaving today, 11/20.

It’s 5AM. Yesterday we washed the boat, topped off the fuel tanks, and gave Guinness a bath.

I am showered and shaved, I have a new haircut, and we are finally leaving for South Carolina.

We need some extra time this morning to move all our gear out of Jane’s condo and back aboard the boat. I reckon we’ll leave about 7AM, as usual.

And it’s 20 degrees warmer than it was just two days ago. High of 70 instead of 50!

I expect to cover 100 miles today, and we’re going to stay inside (ICW). Tonight we plan to stay at a marina called Wacca Wachee. Near Myrtle Beach. It’s an old Indian name. Roughly translated it means: “Last night I slept in the garbage disposal.” Hmmmm.

Then tomorrow night, we should be in Isle of Palms with our cousins Stan and Susan Harris.

Because I had to cancel all my marina reservations, slip availability will now be a day-by-day thing. Fingers crossed.

Overall, however, Feeling Good!

Today’s our last day here. Time to tie up loose ends.

We did some food shopping yesterday, and a load of wash last night, so here’s the errand list for today:

• Hair cut

• Move everything out of Jane’s place and back onto the boat

• Wash boat

• Wash Guinness

• Chiropractor

• Set up marina for Friday night.

Cheers!

I slept fitfully last night, and when I awoke, I remembered that I had been dreaming about a fellow named Spleen. His parents, who must have had a nasty sense of humor, named him Rupert. So it wasn’t very hard for us to convert that to Ruptured.

In my dream, he was a Dean at our college.
Dean Spleen.
That has a nice ring to it, don’t you think?

Dean Ruptured Spleen to be precise.

Dean Spleen had a tight little mouth and tight little eyes. He sometimes looked like a grenade about to explode.

But he tried…he would always greet us by asking “How are you feeling today?”

We would work on our answer at the fraternity party on Saturday night, and then we’d spread the word across campus. Each week, when Dean Spleen asked “How are you feeling today?”, he would get the same answer from each student he encountered that week:

“Nihilistic”
or
“Reprehensible”
or
“Gaseous”

I wonder what happened to old Ruptured Spleen. I wonder if someone pulled his pin?

[Note: to Reader: The above is a work of fiction. Any resemblance to actual people living or dead is sheer coincidence.]

We woke this morning to a beautiful sunrise, but it is a cold, blustery day.

A 20-knot wind from due north is blowing the tops off the waves as they break. Real Feel just 33 degrees. Yikes! The high today is forecast to be just 50 degrees.

I started imagining that the cold weather from the north was catching up with me…that by delaying a week, I had let winter catch me. Fortunately, the forecast tells me that by Friday – the day we leave – the high will be 70, and the wind will be from the east at just 5 knots. Ahhhh.

I slept for 11 hours last night, and I awoke pain-free for the first time in a long time. I feel like I am about 93%. I’ll probably never really be 100% again – I’m just too damn old. So 93% is pretty good.

I have a few tasks to do before we leave – mainly wash the boat and wash the dog. But it’s too cold right now to do either. Tomorrow will serve.

Sooo…absolutely no agenda for today but to rest and heal. Maybe do some planning and some re-provisioning. Then self-medication with a cigar and a glass of Jamesons. The high point of my day. Maybe I’ll start now…Not a bad idea. It’s 5PM in Lithuania.

OK, maybe not such a good idea…maybe I’ll just read instead.

The marinas we visit usually have a swap-and-read library shelf, and I picked up Midnight in the Garden of Good and Evil. Never read it before. I think it will be a good introduction to Savannah, and great way to spend a day.

[And for those of you who asked, Yes, I had a flu shot before I left.]

I got my test results back this morning: Negative.

Certainly puzzling. I definitely had SOMETHING.

This is very good news, however, because I have learned that – had I tested positive – I would be receiving a call from the Dept of Public Health and directed to quarantine for 2 weeks.

Not sure what really happened here, but I definitely dodged a bullet. And I certainly don’t regret my decision to hole up here and get tested. I believe it was the prudent course of action (the only acceptable course of action).

***********************
Amanda and I are going for a boat ride today. Just for fun.

Tomorrow I’ll rest and think about my schedule, but I’m happy to be looking at this in the rear view mirror.

We woke to a beautiful sunrise today. Guinness always wakes me at 6:00 to make sure I don’t miss it.

We walked for miles on the beach today. At least I did. Guinness ran and ran non-stop.
I hoped he would enjoy the beach, but I never expected he’d take to it the way he did, running at top speed through the shallows to chase the terns and sandpipers. If they took off seaward, he’d throw himself into the breaking waves, barking in fun and frustration. If they turned landward, he’d light the afterburners and take off after them at full speed. At one point, he got so far ahead of me, he was like a small brown dot.

This went on for an hour! Limitless energy!

I am so grateful that I can trust him off the leash; it gives me so much joy to watch him behave like a real dog.

As for me, I’m doing fine. Aleve is controlling the pain in my right hip, and I am feeling pretty good overall. No new symptoms, and my fever and fatigue have not returned.

Jane’s condo faces due east, and we had a beautiful sunrise this morning.
Amanda helped me move the boat to another marina that could let me stay for 5 days or longer. Great. Now we just wait.

This has turned out to be a real blessing – to have the worst symptoms where I have a place to stay and someone to help me – AND a car! Easy to get back and forth between the condo and the boat. My fever is still down and the body aches are limited to my right hip. Sorry to be indelicate, but I can now add diarrhea to my list of symptoms – and I’m treating that, as well.

Today I mostly rested – even took a brief nap.
My brother-in-law Jeff and his wife Kathy called, and I was shocked when they reminded me that next Thursday is Thanksgiving – would I be able to join them?
They are in Hilton Head, just 2-3 days away, depending on how hard I push it, and that should work out perfectly. In my original plan, I would have been in Titusville, FL. HUH? WHERE? How great to be with family instead!

I am so happy to blow up my original schedule. I have always had my best successes when I planned carefully, but – truth be told – it doesn’t matter. We’ll get to Key West when we get there.

*****************

It’s 5PM, and it’s raining now, and I’m on the deck, self-medicating with a cigar and a Jamesons. Watching pelicans: 36 just flew by in a single line, one bird behind the other. I guess folks down here are used to it, but I was fascinated: the column rose and descended, then rose again – each bird following the one ahead. It looked like a roller coaster track.

One of my friends emailed me to say that I couldn’t seem to get a break, but I feel the opposite. I always knew there would be obstacles, but we’re simply tackling them one at a time. Every challenge you overcome builds confidence. And the intervening hours of pleasure are a gift.

I’m truly grateful for all the comments and texts and phone calls. I wish you were all with us.

With love from Rod & Guinness

We are safe and sound in Jane’s condo. It is even cuter than I remembered. Love it here.

Netflix; ROKU; HULU; PRIME etc. Wine, cigars and Jamesons.

*****************************************************************

Guiness and I went for a walk on the beach tonight. Clear skies; bright stars.
There aren’t many lights at all, because these are the beaches where sea turtles nest, and shore lights confuse them.

Guinness is fascinated and excited by the seashore. He has a loud bark, but it’s lost in the crashing of the surf.

The night sea is dark, but the waves, as they break, show up as white ribbons. Row after row of curled white ribbons: one row; two rows; six rows. Gorgeous.

I am walking better and my headache has lessened. I am about 76%. I am hoping after a night on Tylenol PM I will be even better.