So what in the world are we doing?

Well, after consulting the budget gods, it turns out that the haulout and repairs we contemplated will have to wait. So...in the month we have left before we need to be up north we have decided to trek north with the boat to see how far we can get. We'll then find a spot to store the boat for 6 weeks or so while we visit family in NY & MA. (California contingent, we'll get there sometime, we just don't know when the budget gods will make allowances for airfare.)
So the adventure continues for the time being. Today, we are in Jekyll Island, home of the Federal Reserve. For those of you who don't know the story, it seems that in 1910 the whole country was up in arms over the abuses of the "banking trust." So the banking trust held a secret meeting at the Clubhouse in Jekyll island to write the "banking bill." Senator Nelson Aldrich (for whom Nelson A. Rockefeller was named) introduced the bill in Congress in 1913 and Wilson signed it. The country's economy has never been the same. Since then we've had inflation, the Great Depression, numerous recessions, the housing bubble and the current crisis - all of which economists of the Austrian school blame entirely on the Fed. Being an amateur Austrian myself, I just had the see the place where the creature was born.
In St. Augustine we caught up with our friend Kieth from South Pasadena. He left Marathon the same day as we did, but sailed on the Atlantic side and got well ahead of us. Since then we've traveled with him and shared our anchorages. We've had afternoon or evening thunderstorms almost every day, but nothing severe.
Last night we had another anchor dragging incident, but no harm done. We just learned that the claw anchor works better here than the Delta.
Keith also had a little anchoring mishap. He misjudged the tides and was awakened this morning by being rolled out of bed. The boat was resting on the bottom, heeled over to about 45 degrees. Fortunately, the tide came back in and lifted him off.
The colorfull fellow in the bright costume is one of the performers in St. Augustine's "junkanoo" celebration that we attended while we were there.
The next few days we will likely be out of contact as the ICW through most of Georgia is sparsely populated and there are few facilities. We don't even have good cell phone coverage here in Jekyll island. We will send SPOT messages (when we remember...)