Beaufort, SC Sunday, January 23, 2011

We arrived in Beaufort SC yesterday morning, after spending a beautiful night in a stunning anchorage in the Bull River about 20 miles north of Beaufort.  We were surrounded by dolphins playing and all kinds of birds fishing far into the night.  The full moon had a spectacular rise, and lit up the night sky like broad daylight.

Beaufort is a small but absolutely lovely city.  We met up with Woody and Janet, friends from our Borden Light Marina in Fall River. They spend a few months each year in Hilton Head.   They have a car, and we drove around the town with them in the afternoon, checking out all the lovely old homes in the downtown area.  We ended up in a great bar (of course) where they were having an oyster roast.  Boy, were those oysters good!!!

We seem to have a very good weather window over the next two days to get from here to Florida on the outside.  The general consensus is that the ICW through Georgia is the shallowest, and after our grounding experience, we thought we would miss out Georgia completely, and make the run on the outside from here to St. Augustine.  We think it will take us about 20 hours so if we leave Beaufort around noon today, we should be there by around 8 am tomorrow.  Our weather checks seem to indicate a very good window over the next couple of days to do this.  In fact, the next front is expected sometime late on Tuesday, so our plan is to get there and settle in before that arrives. 

We may spend a few days in St. Augustine looking around, so we will come back with our report on that in a few days.