Our Trek South

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After spending another month in Charleston, hanging out with our friends and exploring this great city and all it has to offer, it was time for us to go south. The weather was turning cold and we wanted to get to the Florida Keys. In the last month Jay, Kona the salty dog, and I have been on the move. We had a great sail down with many stops on the way, visitng towns that we have been to before and some new towns yet to explore.
From Charleston we took the ditch (aka Intercoastal Waterway) to Edisto, our favorite anchorage in South Carolina. Then we continued down the ICW to Beaufort, a quaint antebellum town that we love to visit with one of our favorite restaurants and lots of live music. From there we hopped offshore and sailed down to Fernandina, Florida. Fernandina is our favorite stop-off in Florida with great shops and restaurants and that is written up in "1,000 Places to See Before You Die" (and we totally agree). After a couple days there we continued our sail offshore to St. Augustine, Florida. It was one of the new towns yet to be explored and we had a great time there in the oldest city in America. Then it was offshore again to Ft. Pierce, where we visited extended family and enjoyed thanksgiving on the boat. We actually cooked the entire meal in our small galley, which was a feat in itself. From there we took the Intercoastal down to Lake Worth in North Palm Beach, a great anchorage amongst the big beautiful homes. And then it was offshore again to Ft. Lauderdale, which proved to be a fun city to explore both on foot and by water taxi (there is an elaborate canal system there that connects the whole city). They don’t call it the Venice of America for nothing. And finally from there we sailed on to the Keys.
All in all it was a long journey, about 750 miles, which totaled to over 100 hours of sailing. We were constantly watching for the weather, looking for good windows of opportunity to sail and are a little exhausted from it all. Because we were always on the move I haven’t had a chance to travelblog in a while and am a bit behind. There are some towns that I won’t blog, either because I have already written about them or we didn’t have time to get any photos or really got a chance to explore. But I will share the pictures and tell the tales of a couple of the new places we visited on our trek south.

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Photos

At the Healm
Jen at the healm, sailing offshore to the Florida Keys.

Jay
Jay at the healm, sailing offshore.

Rum Runner
Bashing waves- why is the wind always on our nose?