S/V Sweet Liberty : We're off and running!

We departed from Little River, as planned, Monday morning May 9^th at about 9:30am on an absolutely beautiful morning. The temperature was about 73 F and was expected to get to about 88 F!! Gracie was not thrilled with the prospects of being a “boat dog” again. We still have her square foot of sod on the foredeck (which she still has not used for relief) but she seems to be determined to let us get to someplace by day end that allows her to go ashore. Monday we returned to St. James Plantation Marina – a really wonderful marina that is extremely inexpensive! Believe it or not, there seems to be fewer boaters out on the ICW and we don't know if it is because they have already headed north and we are late, or whether we are early! We think we are late. Yesterday, towards the end of the day we caught up to sailboat that might end up becoming our “buddy boat” - Katydid – from Rock Hall, MD. They went further than we did yesterday (all the way to Southport, NC) but this morning as we were coming into Southport, NC guess who came out into the ICW just in front of us!! Katydid! We followed them up through Snows Cut and then they headed south to Carolina Beach for a mooring for the night – we turned north to come up to Wrightsville Beach, NC. We made such good time today (at one point doing over 8 kts with a combo of wind and current on the Cape Fear River) that we arrived here in Wrightsville at 2pm! Anchored and in to shore for Gracie (and don't tell anyone, we hit the gourmet doughnut shop for our breakfast tomorrow.)

Speaking of buddy boats – remember the Botula's (Alan and Janet)? Well they are on the move again themselves. They left from the Bahamas Sunday heading about 800 nm out to Bermuda. We have been getting regular reports from Alan and all is going great for their crossing so far. Yea, Janet and Alan! We miss them, however. They picked up an extra crew member, Jack Pekarik, to assist them on the crossing. Not sure if we are going to connect with them again on this trip – we think maybe in the Chesapeake but it seems unlikely. They are not coming back to Long Island. They want to go again next winter to the Dominican Republic and Cuba so they want to keep the boat south for the summer. Not sure where they will put it.

We too have a new crew member. Got Gracie a little friend. See below. So now we are having a contest. We are trying to name our new crew member. Parrots, I thought had something to do with good luck on a boat but I am not sure that that is true. Parrots and Pirates! I am thinking of calling him Flint after Long John Silver's parrot! Send your suggestions!

Tomorrow is a long day for us. We plan to go about 55nm (an about 10 hour trip) to Swansboro, NC.

Leaving Little River we were escorted by the Casino boat, Big M