Out of my comfort zone, but Mark in his!

The weather gods played merry havoc with us. Strong winds hit our little Pearl Bayou in the wee hours of the morning. Mark was up and down throughout the night, checking the anchor. At 5.00am I was awakened to the call to set sail, as our anchor chain had dragged and we were heading for shallow water.

Now to those who are old salts, setting sail would not be a problem. I was experiencing medium to high anxiety. We were in a little bayou with scattered crab pots. We had an unattended and unlit US Airforce boat at the mouth of the bayou. It was pitch black with the sun not scheduled to rise until 7.05am. We had to manoeuver through a small channel with markers not able to be seen and sail under a bridge with no marker lights. Oh, and not to mention any unseen flotsam from Hurricane Michael.

Mark rose to the challenge brilliantly. We were buffetted with strong winds for the entire voyage on the Gulf Intra Coastal Waterway to Apalachicola. We decided not to moor out tonight. We raced for a marina and are now snuggly tied up – just in time before a heavy rainfall hit.

Today was not all doom and gloom. We were up to greet a spectacular sunrise.

And the nice thing about this marina is we have an oyster bar 100 metres from our boat! Guess who is heading there tonight?

Such is Life!