Hey Tom,

Well, that's what I get for only having read an assorted handful of his posts so far... It was this one that threw me, from his entry on the Little Alligator River:

"The wind came up nicely as we left the Pasquotank and entered Albemarle Sound. I took off the sail cover with some trepidation. Would rats and birds have made nests in the sail? Would I remember which lines to pull? Would the cloth simply have rotted away since its last, barely remembered, use? All was well however, and it was a delightful sail, close reaching almost exactly along the route line on the chartplotter.

Sails were furled and covered again about four miles from our day’s destination, the Little Alligator River just past Middle Ground. The day was fairly short which suits my current ambition and state of mind perfectly. Maggie, the alpha dog of the armada, demands frequent walks ashore and, what Maggie wants, Maggie gets.

I had found a road and a place called Southshore Landing on the chart which looked promising for both human and dog walking and Google Earth confirmed the presence of the road."

Thanks again, I'll read more when I have the time... My point about his not going further south, was that it seemed to me (again, based on my minimal reading of his blog) that he may have been overly deterred by some of the negative feedback he was receiving from other posters, regarding some of the problems in Florida with limited shore access, overly zealous law enforcement, etc... I've lingered in Florida this trip for longer than I usually do, and while there are places that are less than fully welcoming to cruisers like Roger and me, it's not all THAT bad... Even in a place like Lake Sylvia in Ft. Lauderdale, there now appear to be no hassles whatsoever from the police, people are now lingering there for WEEKS, in a beautiful spot they used to kick you out of after 24 hours...

Hell, the main reason I didn't stay longer, was the presence of a few other cruisers running their on-deck generators - one guy literally all day long, and well into the night... Sounded like a freakin' construction site, far and away the loudest generator I've ever heard on a boat... IMHO, any of the local shoreside residents would certainly have been justified in trying to get that clown evicted, it was astonishing how clueless he was to the disturbance he was creating...

best regards,

Jon