Ecologies

The Wacamaw River
33 32.14 N 079 26.04 W

The weather is not cooperating with our desire to go offshore.   Our tentative plan was to go outside tonight at midnight from Little River and head for Cape Fear.   However, the forecast calls for windy, damp and very cold -- 44F (6C).  I'm afraid that would be too bitterly uncomfortable to be out at sea in an open cockpit.  We'll have to find a new plan.   Ironically before coming, Sten-Orjan asked me how to dress.  I said plan for warm to hot. I could not have been more wrong.

I think we're having fun anyhow.  Sten-Orjan got to see the salt marsh Ecology yesterday, and right now we are passing through the Great Pee Dee Swamp, surrounded by cyprus trees.  It is one of those, "Nothing could be finer than to be in Carolina in the morning" days. It's very beautiful, and, I'm sure, new to a Scandinavian.  

FLASH NEWS:  This morning on the VHF radio, we heard the Coast Guard in Charleston talking to someone who said that a bridge had closed on a sailboat.  Oh no!!! That can be a fatal mistake.  It is a mistake that should never ever happen, but it does.  It seems to happen about once every two years somewhere on the USA East Coast.  There are protocols with bells, whistles, cameras, and numerous other safeguards to prevent that from happening, but I think that the problem is that not all bridges have adopted the full suite of safety protocols.   I think that is scandalous.

If you go to news.google.com this evening and search for bridge sailboat, you will probably find a more complete account of what happened this morning.