we have arrived in Lady's Island South Carolina near Beaufort (pronounced buuu fort). we will stay here for a month or so doing some work on the boat,  visiting with Tim and Morgan, touring local historical places and i need to get my arm all healed up so we can take off for warmer waters. my arm is making progress but still has a long way to go.  i can still only type with my right hand and am limited at many other things it is very frustrating. 
we left at dawn this morning on high tide so that we could get through some stretches of the waterway that were to shallow or shoaling for the draft of our boat.  it was a spectacular sunrise. a dense fog was hanging over the marsh but not over the water, colors of orange and purple were coming up under the clouds and they were glowing.  the water was calm and the reflection from the clouds was perfect.  only the ripples from the trail of our wake disturbed the water.  i will post those pictures on Sunday. we had 36 miles to go so we made it all without any trouble until we got within sight of marina cut the green marker too close and got stuck in the mud for about 5 minutes.  earlier in our trip i did the same thing one morning i tried to cut across to a marker and ran aground and we were stuck there for about 20 minutes so we have both had our turns at that, me more than Joe though. lol.   Joe was driving at the time but he also got us free we took a different approach between marker and bridge and took it very slow into the channel as the tide low. everything goes by tide here not wind because we are so close to the ocean. local knowledge of the daily tide flow has helped us tremendously. 
when we got to our dock there were 4 guys waiting to catch our lines only one worked here.  it was a very warm welcome. the lady in next slip gave me some carnations as she had extra.  while i was talking to her joe already had another guy, tom, on the boat looking at a place to install a windlass.   as the afternoon went on we had people coming over to the boat to introduce themselves and we got a tour of the facilities here.  our new sailing friend rick from spin drift is also here, i told you about him in an earlier blog post.
safe and sound here. will post again soon
maybe i will tell you the story about camp lejune.  hmmmmm!