Our Newest Crewmember

As we travel down The Ditch, we decided that we needed a little help keeping track of our position. After several hours of travel, with one buoy looking just like the next and and ever-changing but consistent rows of houses, docks, sand dunes and trees, it is easy to forget where we are on the chart. Accordingly, we enlisted, or should we say Shanghaied, one of Amelia's toys named "Meat" (yes, an odd name, particularly when the namer is a vegetarian six year old.) Meat is a two-inch tall meat-eating dinosour who now moves accross the chart each time we pass a navigational aid (buoy, day mark, turn, etc.).

Thanks to Meat we know know where we are on the chart at all times. Now if Meat could only tell us where the US Corp of Engineers has neglected to maintain the ICW water depth at more than six feet. This would enable us to avoid running aground when the chart says the water should be deeper, as we did leaving Oriental and three times yesterday. We had hoped that buying unlimited towing insurance would mean that we would not need to use it. We were wrong. Perhaps forward-looking sonar should go on Dave's Christmas list.

We are now in Southport NC, near Cape Fear. Southport is famous in Civil War history for being one of the few ports that the Union blockades could not keep closed, foiled by the tenacity and skill of local blockade runners (known locally as shoal runners). We will try to follow their good example and avoid runing aground (again) on the ever shifting Cape Fear shoals as we cross the border into South Carolina tomorrow, provided the weather cooperates, with the goal of Charleston by Christmas, or maybe New Year's Eve.