April 15th, 2012. Tax Day

"When the Johney's come sailing home again, hurrah, hurrah"....

Well, not too much to tell this time. We are now in South Carolina having stopped at Beaufort early this morning. We had to find a docking place so I could go and find a mail box and mail our income taxes. So, once again it was at was the very last minute. Since we owe you cannot blame us.

We had a little bit of excitement a couple of days ago when we passed Daytona Beach. We had very strong back winds so we were bombing along at all of 10 mph when we saw an over turned sail boat. The 3 people in it were in the water. Two were trying to turn the boat upright and the girl was swimming to try and get back to the boat. We could not do much for the "boys" by the boat as they were in very shallow water (they all had life jackets on) so we went after the girl. When we pulled up fairly close to her to throw her the life sling (it is mandatory that our type of boat has one of these) we saw she was carrying the rudder. No wonder the boys could not upright the boat. We pulled her on board and took her nearby to the place they launched their little sail boat. She told us she thought it was too rough to go sailing but the "boys" thought it would be a good experience. What an experience it turned out to be. The boys and the sailboat were pulled to shore by a much smaller boat than ours that was able to go into shallow water.

Shrink wrapping of boats is very popular in Maryland for when you want to prepare your boat for the winter weather. So, how is this for shrink wrapping? I would like to have seen them do this. 

David M, was this the light house at St Augustine Larissa was telling me about?

We pulled into St Mary's, Georgia a couple of days ago for gas and saw this old steel schooner. I would love to have gone on board and seen what she was like below. Her name was "Steel Away" which I thought was cute.

We passed the degauser again and this time it had a submarine in it being de-magnetised. I caused the security boat some concern as you can see in the bottom picture as he followed us the full length of the degauser. There was another submarine docked over to the side. I took a photo but it did not turn out and Gary did not want to turn the boat around and give the security boat cause for concern. The water was very calm after passing the degauser so I shot a picture of one of the channel markers to show you how smooth the water was.

Yesterday, we were up before dawn to get an early start. We had a fairly nice sunrise but as the saying goes". Red sky in the morning, sailors take warning". We had strong winds yesterday with the threat of a thunderstorm. Luckily, wind and tide was with us and the thunder storm never materialzed.

We passed Jekyll Island yesterday afternoon and the really fancy Jekyll Island Hotel. To stay there it is $282 a night. If you are over 50 and have an AARP card you get a 10% discount. That would probably allow you to buy a glass of water!!!!!

I like the above photo due to the way the water glitters. In the middle is a pelican although you can hardly see it.

As you know I have fallen in love with the pelican. In the above photo of the white pelicans preening themselves you can see their black wing tips. Usually, you do not see the black on them.

We have passed a Mosquito Cove without anchoring as Gary said "We are not stopping here" and a man at Beauford said of the "no see-umms" that they were a first defense against over development. These "no see-umms" are exceedingly tiny (you can hardly see them on your skin) but you sure can feel "em when they bite you. They bring up a welt about 10 x the size of their body and boy oh boy, do they itch. I consider myself to have good restraint with not scratching mosquito bites but these "no see-umms" are up there with chigger bites. 

As many of you probably know, our son David donated a kidney to Britanie from California in December of 2010. Since then he has actively volunteered his services with the Kidney Foundation and is doing a sponsored walk on 11th May to raise money for the foundation. David says he walks for Britanie (whom he keeps in touch with) and in the memory of Gary's youngest brother, Glenn who passed away from the complications of diabetes resulting in him receiving a kidney donation. If anyone would like to donate to the cause, the web site is:
http://donate.kidney.org/site/TR/Walk/NationalCapitalArea?px=1417945&pg=personal&fr_id=5360


Donations can be made from anywhere in the world (hint, hint)!! 

For those of you who like having the coordinates of where we stay, we stayed at Hilton Head Island last night :

 Hilton Head Island