Number 2 - our 2nd day south!

We slept halfway decent, considering it rained most of the night.  We knew we didn't really need to leave before 9am due to projected rain, and that's about when it ended and we headed out.  Seas were much calmer today. 
We had some good winds and definitely rode along at 7.8 knots for a while.  Even a rumor on board that we hit 9.9!  The heeling does not bother me at all in the ocean - only our river.  Weird.  Well, except that one gust that put the rail in the water and even made Mark a bit nervous.  (We reefed shortly after...) We headed on down via the ocean again.  We're not making a straight shot down to Florida, more of an ocean passage that kind of hugs the shore and follows the general terrain of the coast.

We realize we are not pros, we're still learning and we want to be safe.  So we keep land in sight for the most part, but have the joy of just sailing along without many obstacles.

We cut back in towards shore around 2:30 or 3pm and headed toward Sapelo inlet.  Apparently it has a similar reputation to Wassaw inlet.  Sun was setting around 5:20 tonight and we wanted to have an hour or two to find a good spot to anchor - hopefully with somewhere for the puppies to make land fall, as they are still refusing to use the pee pad.  Urgh.  They are way too house broken at almost 9 and 10 years old and it seems to stress them out when we tell them to go on deck on the pad.  Eventually their bladders will override their training.  Perhaps tonight.   

The pups love their fleece

Turns out there's not a great many anchorages in the Sapelo area.  At least not for a boat with a 6' 4" draft.  Mark handled the crazy channel like a pro, as did our chart plotter.  We did have one incident here:

Can you see him?  He was so freaky, even before we bumped the muddy bottom.

When you see a demon in the sky, perhaps you should take that as a warning and steer clear.  We bumped the soft mud a bit here while trying to get to an anchorage, but Mark was able to turn us around and get us back into the channel so we could carry on.  We went into the ICW and cruised south.  Further and further south.  When we came to Little Mud River we had to make a call: the tide was coming in, and we can only clear that area when there's water.  If we anchored out before Little Mud River, we'd have to wake up at 4am to catch the next high tide to pass through the area, but we'd be anchored before the sun set. 

This picture does not come close to doing tonight's sunset justice

Who wants to wake up at 4am?  And it was a gorgeous sun set.  All kinds of crazy reds and oranges.  We carried on thru the river while we had good water, and just had to trust our chart plotter, channel markers and our mad marsh maneuvering skills we developed over years of boating in the tricky waters of Savannah.  We found a quiet spot - pretty far down the ICW and are secure for the night.  The puppies, however, may be learning to use the potty pad, as there's no land access whatsoever.  $5 says they just have super-full bladders in morning. 

Thankful today for:

• The snowboarding gear we brought along!  We stayed warm and toasty all day.  I even sat on the bow for a while in the salt spray and was not fazed - just warm and giggly while I watch dolphins dance around the boat.
• Our anchor alarm works.  We didn't drag, just swung around at tide change last night, but used it as a chance to see if the alarm would go off/wake us up.  All good!

Pretty much useless today:

• Swim suits
• Shorts
• Tshirts 

No beach today, but we got some great experience navigating new waterways, saw lots of dolphins and an incredibly gorgeous sunset that we'd have missed otherwise (we'd have surely been tucked down below with dinner and the pups instead of up in the cockpit at sunset.)  Time to check out the charts/weather and decide if we're heading back into the ocean or down the ICW.  Looks like another short day, as we'll likely stop at St. Simons tomorrow for more beach exploring and a restaurant.  And someone else's hot shower!  :)