December 18, 2000 -- I wish we may I wish we might

I woke up this morning to Mike telling me that he thought we could leave based on the TV news. I got up and we started listening to the VHF weather forecast. At 8:00 AM, we came up on the SSB to talk with a friend who has been listening to the weather south for us. We discovered at this point that the current high and the next low are moving significantly faster than expected. The 36 hour weather window had now dropped to just over 18 hours. While we certainly could have pounded our way for the last 18 hours of the trip, we decided that waiting would be better than going. We have resigned ourselves to staying in Fernandina Beach forever, which all told isn't actually a bad place to be. The people are friendly and the place is nice (except for the paper mills). We then set about doing some of the things that we needed to do. We called Rybovich and let them know that we are still delayed, then called to have our mail sent. Next we walked to the Boat House to pick up some fenders for the 20+ knots of wind that is coming tomorrow. After that, we headed over to the hardware store in an effort to find a replacement light bulb for one of our combo strobe flash lights. No luck there! After we returned to the boat, we did laundry and I equalized the rest of the port battery bank and the starboard bank and we cleaned up the outside of the boat a little bit