We woke up this morning to the weather buoy reports saying that there was 26 knots of wind out of the west at the buoy by Frying Pan Shoals with seas of 7 feet! This was certainly not what was predicted last night even as late midnight when I went to bed. We hemmed and hawed and listened to the weather again an hour later. The winds were reported at 21 knots and seas of 6 feet. Things seemed to be getting better. The next report had the winds at 17 knots and seas of 5 feet, still not what we wanted but it was getting better. At 1230 GMT (07:30 AM EST), I looked at Mike and said, "You know, we are being stupid. The winds and seas are dropping the later in the day it gets and it's 5 hours until we get to the buoy, why don't we go and we can turn around if we want to." We raised anchor at 1252 GMT with the understanding that we would listen to the weather hourly when the buoy reports were updated. If things started to get worse we would turn back. As time marched on, the winds diminished, though the seas did not drop as fast. At 1330 GMT, we received a call on the Cruisehiemers net from Brit and Elana on Wyndom. We caught up with them briefly and told them about the inlet at Wrightville Beach since they are planning on stopping there.. We continued on. At 1437, Mike did his flipper call. It is definitely an ocean passage. He also did a Shamu call, for which I snarled at him. I had absolutely no desire to see a whale and have to dodge one in four to five foot seas. By 1600, the winds had stabilized. Unfortunately, they stabilized in the south west. We hoped that this was due to land effect since we would be beating into the wind and seas once we rounded Frying Pan Shoals. We did quickly fall into our offshore routine, though this time our schedule was a little longer on watch than previously. At 1800, we rounded Frying Pan shoals. Unfortunately, the wind did not swing as well. As the wind swung on the nose, our stay sail snagged our upper radar and caused it to blow it's fuse. The fuse itself is easy to replace. However, the fuse location is difficult to reach and we will not be able to replace it until we get in at Port Royal. Thankfully we have twin radars for just this reason. At 1828, shortly after rounding Frying Pan shoals, we saw a playful family of dolphins swimming towards our boat. There must have been 10 of them! At 2003 GMT, Mike saw another pair of dolphins that hung out off of the pilot house so Mike could watch them. At 2007 GMT, Mike saw another 8 dolphins. Yup, that's what we do, scan the radars and horizon for other boats then scan the seas for dolphins. There were many more dolphins than boats, and we prefer it that way, at least the dolphins know what they are doing! The wind would stay out of our sail area blowing from the west south west until 0600 GMT on November 29 when it shifted to the west / west north west. It hung out there until 1200 GMT when the wind went variable. I learned something this trip. Variable means that the wind may change directions at any time, usually when the boat changes direction. In fact, it changed directions each time we did so that it would stay on our nose for the rest of the trip. On November 29 at 1600 GMT, shortly after we made our turn to head into the Port Royal Sound, we saw a bunch of dolphins swimming around lazily. We dropped anchor at 1844 just below Beaufort. I noticed at that point that it appears that one of the guy wires on the radar guards appears to have snapped or disconnected from vibration, and that could have been the cause of our sail hitting the radar causing problems! Overall, I thought the trip was pretty fun, if a bit on the cold side. Mike thought it was lumpy pounding into the sea's all day & night and far to cold for the spray that would hit him every now and then. Still, we both feel the best, and are the most rested that we have been of any trip thus far