Waccamaw River to Georgetown, SC

26.5 nm
Wind: NE 10 knots
Maximum speed: 6.4 knots
Average speed: 4.9 knots
Latitude: 33°21.96’N
Longitude: 079°17.13’W

Today, the bad news was that I did the budget, something I’ve been putting off since early December. Throughout this trip, I’ve been trying to ignore the looming threat that is money. We do have a fair bit saved, and we had hoped to make it out of the US with most of it intact, but we’re spending far more than we bargained for.

We’ve tried to make a resolution that January will be “not-go-to-land” month, or “not-spend-money-on-anything-but-fuel” month, but we’ve already broken it, making a $60 trip to the grocery store this evening, after we ended up in a harbor with amenities, thanks to more rain.

That’s at least better than the $90 we usually spend, and we were tempted by very much, just fresh vegetables and fruit, bacon, and fresh bread. Our carriage is always filled with staples, but it’s still probably more than we need. We do have lockers full of canned goods, after all.

Everyone keeps scaring us with tales of how much things cost in the islands—we thought once we got out of the US, things would be cheaper. But there we have to worry about things like entrance fees and cruising permits, as well as paying 25 cents for a gallon of water. But we keep hearing conflicting things from everyone—one person will say that the Bahamas are more expensive than the States, and then someone else will say that the Bahamas are dirt cheap.

So who knows. I just can’t get too far ahead of myself, worrying about money. When we run out, we’ll just have to find jobs somehow. I continue to have the naïve belief that when the time is right, we’ll find a way to find the finances we need, or just learn to do with a lot less.