We left Savannah, Ga., with 576 miles to travel before we make it to the Chesapeake Bay, our home for the summer. Next stop is Beaufort (pronounced Bewfort), South Carolina, a real gem of a small Southern town. There is also a Beaufort (pronounced Bowfort) in North Carolina and it’s wise to pronounce each correctly when you’re visiting. We had a nice walk through this one which is the second oldest town in South Carolina, founded in 1711, almost 300 years ago. Jim had ice cream while Lisa window shopped during the afternoon. The next morning we walked around town and the surrounding neighborhood to see all the old estate style homes.

The current runs pretty strong through the Beaufort waterfront and when it was time to leave the next morning my job (Jim) was to simply kick the stern out and backwards, do a 180 and head into the ICW. All good plans should have a back up plan and in this case the stern did kick out but the swift current caught it and moved us in the opposite direction. So in very tight quarters I had to do a half dozen back and fills to get repositioned so I could head straight out into the openess of the ICW. It was not the most graceful exit but it worked.