Help is arriving!

 Pete Whinn is flying down to Jacksonville, FL on Saturday morning to join us for 3 nights. Pete is an old friend of our youngest son Sean and we've known him for many years. He had hoped to join us on the trip from Mexico but the dates didn't work out. Now he'll be helping us get up to Charleston, SC offfshore from St. Augustine. Right now it looks like he and Scott are going to leave Sunday morning and get in on Monday. There is still a possibility that they might manage to get to Beaufort, NC by Tuesday morning, but that's a slim chance. Pete has to return to Boston by Tuesday night. And I have decided not to go. We rented a one way car, picking it up here tomorrow and returning it to Charleston. We will use it to ferry Pete to and from the airports and I'll drive up to Charleston to meet them.

A full moon seen from our slip at the Ft. Pierce Municipal Marina 

We left Ft. Pierce as planned at 6 AM Monday (pretty much in the dark but with no difficult current to deal with), made it through the Haulover Canal Bascule bridge at Cape Canaveral at 5:30 PM and anchored just off the ICW not long after. That was a long day, almost 12 hours, mostly hand steering. The next day Scott figured out how to convert Captain Bob's ICW track into a route we can follow on our autopilot - what an improvement. The auto pilot can be used on the straight away sections and the bright red line helps in the hand steering curvy bits. In addition we have the latest Army Corps of Engineers surveys of the ICW showing the shallow areas (lots of them) and so far they have helped us avoid going aground.

A view the other direction in towards the city and Crabby's Restaurant. We haven't taken many photos on this section of the trip. I'm particularly sorry we didn't get any with Mitch and Diane Korbey!

The next day we took only 8 hours and we happily pulled into a slip at the Hallifax Harbor Marina in Daytona. But the previous months have taken a toll on me. At the supermarket we took our blood pressure (our cuff has been broken for almost all of the trip) and my reading was 210/92 and then 205/94. I have never had readings like that and was very concerned. My urgent care nurse at Atrius Health (on the phone) told me to go to a local Urgent Care. The doctor there recommended doubling my blood pressure medicine. And I had another idea. I wrote Pete and asked if he was still interested in crewing with us. He wrote back last night and said he'd fly down on Saturday for a few days. Knowing that, we decided to take a break from the non stop movement. We stayed another night in Daytona and traveled up to St. Augustine today. We got reservations at the Marina here. Wednesday morning my blood pressure (I did take the prescribed amount of medicine) was 136/76. Big difference! It was up again a bit Thursday evening but it was a long day.

St. Augustine Municipal Marina where we are staying 3 nights.

We're back to walking as well, in Daytona and now in St. Augustine. All in all, life is good and we are lucky.