Up a PRETTY ROUGH Stretch....

Slowly I'm making my way to Charleston. A questionable decision to proceed too late a couple of days ago has slowed my progress and the weather has been a big factor yesterday and will be again tomorrow. Moving up the ICW from Palm Coast, we had a nice stop in Fernandina Beach. The devastation from hurricane Matthew last year has been evident all they way up the coast. We stopped in Ferdnandina Beach at the marina, which took a direct hit. Most of it was destroyed but luckily we found dockage there. The town has hit but damage was either repaired and it looked quaint as usual. We left early the next morning trying to get to Savanna to let Bruno off to go home for a doctors appointment. Bruce was on his way up to take him back. It took much longer than expected as the channel narrowed and "shoaled" much more than we expected. Seeing we were not going to make it to our planned destination, we turned around and attempted to return to another Marina about 2 miles away but lost our daylight. Traveling up channel against a receding tide, in the dark, with shoaling all around and with the depth gauge reading 0.3 is NO fun! Finally we turned around again heading back down the channel and decided to anchor in a safe lagoon at around 11 pm. In order to proceed through a narrow portion later in the day, appropriately named "Hell's Gate" with depths as low as 3/4 in places, we decided to leave at high tide at 4:30 am! Leave we did but cruising at only at 3 or 4 mph (normally we're going at 8 - 11 mph) in pitch dark again, is NO fun.... again! We arrived at our original destination around 10 and stopped for the day at Thunderbolt Marina. Bruno caught his ride back to Tarpon Springs and I had an electrician on board to repair a minor annoyance. We took the rest of the day off and "hunkered" down for the up coming storms with predicted tornado's. I had brought new batteries with me and wanted them installed but they couldn't do that until Monday so I'll just wait. We dodged the bullet on the T's but got rained on pretty hard. Thursday we left for Beaufort SC with strong winds predicted. After about 4 hours we decided to stop early again because we were getting beat up by 25 gusting to 35 mph. Most loopers didn't even leave but we're wanting to be in Charleston on Friday. We couldn't find dockage in Beaufort so we took a marina 7 miles short of there at Hilton Head. That's going to make our trip to Charleston even more challenging at 80 miles and a full day. That along with strong winds again may mean we have to stop early again, which is always a possibility. I am learning about shoaling and weather being very important to Dailey progress. Boat is running nicely with only a couple of known issues which are not too important. Several bad decisions had me testing the sand here but fortunately we wiggled our way out. Touching the bottom is not a pleasant experience and a dangerous learning one at that, but we're making progress still. We had hoped to be able to these narrow channels in GA & SC and run outside in the Atlantic up the coast to save time and avoid the shoals but things weather wise has prevented that. Hoping for better in the next few days while I visit Charleston.