We woke up to an absolutely still Alligator River. It's called a river, but it is 3.5NM across, and so it looks like a giant bay. Always neat to see such large bodies of water without a single ripple on them, especially so when you are floating on them. Beautiful warm morning and we went to get underway. Weighing anchor ended up being troublesome. Our rode was stuck in a few different places and seemed to break free as I used force, probably caught on all kinds of branches and who knows what. More troubling was the anchor chain that wasn't budging no matter how hard I pulled. The anchor roller was bending under the strain, but it would not move at all. I went to get some rope I could use to tie to the chain and start winching it, but as I got back up there it was mysteriously free, and I was able to pull the rest of the chain up without much trouble. Huh.

So with that we motored out on the glass calm bay. By the time we reached the ICW channel the winds had picked up and were on the nose with waves building. Weather changes so fast. At the bottom of the bay, we turned and I was able to put up the sail and spend a short bit of the trip sailing through the channel.

Once we got to the entrance of the long canal, it was time to put the sails away as the wind was very close reached, and gusty coming of the land. Not a great place to be sailing in the narrow canal anyways. And so we motored down the long (10 NM!) narrow canal. At the other end things opened up, and we found a cozy little anchorage up a small creek. Narrow inlet but no problem with depths if you follow the sonar charts. Anchored and had a nice relaxing evening.