We have made it through Arthur, the first tropical storm of the season, which moved up the coast from Florida and hit the North Carolina coast Thursday night. Fortunately, we were far enough south by that time that we got winds of 20-25mph, 3-foot seas and only about ½ inch of rain. But that didn’t come without some excitement.

We anchored in a protected inlet Wednesday evening with the current running strong. About 3am Thursday we were awoken by “Drag Queen” our anchor alarm but after investigation things looked fine.  Up early, we took the dinghy to the shoreline and were happy to find 10 feet of water just 10 foot from the shore. Covering all bets, we put out a second anchor and then settled in for the day to wait out the storm.

here's what it looked like much of the day

There are always things to clean in down time, but this day also included reading, Scrabble and paint sticks. Several of the windows get much better ventilation with a paint stick propping them up, so I decided to start decorating some of those sticks.

By 4pm the main storm had passed us and by 5:00 the sun came out and it was a beautiful evening.

The days before Arthur’s arrival provided some good scenery.  For a brief stretch the ICW was close enough to the Atlantic to have great looking blue-green water instead of brown.

We often pass through areas with homes on one side and natural vegetation on the other. 

But while most homes are beautiful, there's just no accounting for some folks color preference.

We passed by many picturesque little towns, most all decked out for the 4^th of July.  Bridges have been plentiful and sometimes come two at a time.

I wish I had good pictures of the wildlife. The first alligator of the trip was sighted in South Carolina. We are seeing pelicans now and love watching them dive into the water for fish. Dolphin are also getting more common, several within 6-10 feet of the boat on occasion. 

And then there are two incredible people stories.

1) One morning after leaving Beaufort, N. C. a passing sailboat hailed us on the radio asking us if we were headed north or south on the ICW.   What?   He said his GPS wasn’t working and he didn’t know what direction he was going! He’d left the same city we had going south, but somehow did a 180 and was heading back north.

2) The evening of the storm, after it had cleared off and we were sitting on the back deck a jet skier pulled up. He had been out on his jet ski in the Atlantic that day during the storm and was trying to head back home but was almost out of gas. He was miles from his harbor and couldn’t call anyone for help because his phone was out of battery power. We called Tow Boat USA who came with 5 gallons of gas for him. 

And that brings us to July 4th in Charleston, South Carolina. We just finished watching fireworks all around the city while sitting on the boom. Must have been at least a dozen towns shooting them off, a couple fairly close. All these pictures are with my iPhone so they are not the best, but here's one of our Fourth celebration.