Sat. May 14, 2011

A crazy day!!!! We decided to make a decision when we got to Ferandina Beach whether to go on. We listened to the weather, nothing severe, maybe rain. We decided to go 30 more miles to Brunswick Ga., although a little nervous with maybe some wind crossing St. Andrew's sound. We went about 15 more miles after we just passed Kings Bay, we started to hear thunder and then rain.We closed down the glass in the flybridge and were nice and dry. I shut the windows down below, but left the port open in the head, so there was air coming in for the girls. Then it really started, wind blowing, lightning, heavy rain, we couldn't see the bouys. The flybridge glass was steaming up and we couldn't see.We went down below and steered from the inside station and circled with Dreamchaser and Deep Devocean. We had the wipers on and had to turn on the generator and run the ac to clear the windows. During all this we got turned around and Fred called and said we turned 180. I also forgot about the head port was still open, the rug was swimming. We had one lightning strike in the water right in front of us, it shook the whole boat. That was a scary reminder of the Alligator River in Banshee. We could hear maydays and calls to the Coast Guard on 16. Once the rain slowed a little we started making headway again. By the time we got to St. Andrews Sound it started to clear. All turned out well, another learning lesson. Really nice traveling with two other boats.
Oh, and Ginny went  below in Dreamchaser during all this and made Shepards Pie for dinner for us all when we got in to Brunswick. Pretty Great!!!