November 6, 2009.

We were up and underway at 0600. If you think that’s bad consider the fact that we weren’t the first boat outta there. Alright, we were second but you’d think that at an ungodly hour like that we’d at least be first. But most people realize that at this time of year you just can’t waste daylight.

It was to be a long day of motor sailing down the ICW. We had 3 bridges to deal with that all had restricted openings. We timed the first 2 within minutes of their appointed openings so they didn’t cost us any time.

Doing the same with the third bridge would have required us to run 5 miles in 30 minutes. There’s no way we can do 10 knots so we killed the engine and sailed slowly up to the last bridge. After the bridge we only had another 12 miles to go until our selected anchorage in Carolina Beach.