If you look at a map you'll notice that Georgia is pretty far to the west - coastal Georgia is west of Pittsburgh, and the shape of the coast causes the tides to be quite large - up to about 9 feet.  Between the big tidal swing and the prevalence of marshes, docks are built very tall and they can be ridiculously long to reach across the marsh to the water's edge.  For us, the big tidal swings mean strong currents that either slow us down or speed us up.  You'd think that statistically the push-pull would be about even, but it always seems that the current is against us more often than it gives us a nice push.

What's nice about this trip is that we're not traveling during the "migration" season, and the waterway is pretty quiet until the weekends - then it gets crazy with local boats.  During the week the waterway is like a scenic highway; on the weekends it's more like driving on I-95.  We've been trying to stay off the water on weekends and visit some places we've always wanted to see, like Beaufort, SC.  That's pronounced "byoofert" as opposed to the North Carolina town pronounced "bofert".  Near the Marine Corps' Parris Island, Beaufort has a nice downtown with cafes, little shops, and art galleries.  Most of the homes are traditional southern style architecture and the streets are lined with big live oaks draped in spanish moss.  The riverfront park has lovely landscaping and instead of traditional benches, it has benches that swing - how cool is that?

One advantage of stopping to visit town was to tie up at a marina so we could run the air conditioning, but the town docks were having power problems and the breaker on the power pole kept tripping even if we minimized our electrical loads.  Very frustrating on sticky summer days!  Of course Jim found other ways to cool off...

...since there were several ice cream shops in town.