November 7. Now that the solar panels have been up and running for almost a week its official. I shall now be known as Ra, the Sun God. Holy crap, what a difference a few amps makes.

Our old solar panels max output was about 4.7 amps per hour. Between it and the wind generator we were able to just about keep up with our electrical demands but I had to be an energy miser. Now with the additional panels in the system I’ve already seen 14 amps being produced.

The refrigerator and the mast head light use between thirty and forty amps during the night depending on the temperature outside and how many times the fridge has to cycle. It used to take the better part of the day to replace those amps while the boat was still using power during the day. Now the batteries are fully recharged by noon. This upgrade has made a dramatic improvement in the quality of our shipboard life. Don’t worry though, if the sun doesn’t shine for a couple of days I still remember how to be an energy miser.

After staying well protected in Factory Creek for a few days we moved through the bridge and anchored out in front of Beaufort, SC. While we were anchored in Factory Creek our friends Jim & Deb on Freedom caught up with us.

When we moved across the river to Beaufort the Freedoms took a slip for a night to do a little boat maintenance. A big plus in taking a slip there is that it entitles you to an hour with the marinas Courtesy Car. Since they were taking the car into town and the back seat was empty it only seemed natural that we should tag along. We dropped Deb at the grocery store, Christy at Wal-Mart while Jim and I hit Radio Shack and Best Buy. Retracing our steps and picking up the girls we still made it back to the marina in our allotted one hour. Talk about focused power shopping.

The waterfront part of Beaufort has a nice couple of blocks of shops and eateries. The waterfront itself is as beautiful as any we’ve seen with its landscaping and waterfront bench swings. We ate out a bit, found a happy hour or 2 and even enjoyed an evening of outstanding live music.

Overnight the wind picked up to over 20 knots but we were protected from the north and weathered the front’s arrival nicely. The downside is that it’s suddenly cold as hell at night and supposed to get worse.

We had a very short day to the town of Port Royal planned but the next couple of nights the temperature is supposed to drop into the thirties. New plan. We’re going to start heading south again.

We were up and underway at 0900. After a well executed fuel and water stop, which included docking between 2 boats with wind, current and a nasty chop washing onto the dock, we were again headed south.

We’ve stopped for the night in Turner Creek a tributary of the Wilmington River in northern Georgia. We’re going to keep moving south at a more relaxed pace of 40 miles a day or so. Today was a nice day as we got to do quite a bit of sailing and we’re planning a few offshore legs in the next week as well. So things are good but warmer would be better…….