Time To Stay...

What a day...

Karen wrote yesterday that it was time to go. She's right - we need to leave. Our projects are done and we're ready to fire up the engines and pull out. Then it got cold last night. Really, really cold. The heat is on all the time. The marina is dripping their faucets so they don't freeze tonight. It'll be in the 20's at night for the next few days. It is definitely not time to go.

Going will mean being out in the weather right away. Instead, we're extremely comfortable at the Charleston Maritime Center. And we're paid up through Tuesday morning. I think we'll stay and let it warm up a little more. Hopefully the calm offshore conditions will persist as well.

So we're sitting in the pilothouse this afternoon planning our next passages to Fernandina Beach and Stuart when Karen says, "there's no one at the wheel of that boat and it's coming towards us." The pilot grabs control from the current but is in a terrible position near our bow. Instead of easing his boat against ours, he does the worst thing possible - he floors the throttles to try to escape. And he came so close to making it.

It could have been a lot worse. He ended up just hitting our monster Rocna anchor. It bounced around a lot and took a lot of paint off his boat. It also ripped off the metal door from his boat. It made a lot of noise and the dog patrol was at full alert barking and carrying on. Ain't no one is allowed to mess with our boat when our crackerjack crew is onboard.

The boat was from the US Park Service and part of Fort Sumter. Everyone around the marina was quite upset but it really caused no problem for us at all. They took a small boat out to inspect our boat and we couldn't find even the tiniest scratch.  I lowered the anchor to make sure the bow roller still worked and to be honest, I think it's working better now than it did before.

So we're going to stay for a couple more days to allow things to warm up a little. Dyna and Dylan will gladly continue going to the dog park - they don't care what the temperature is.