This part of the ICW doesn’t really offer many places to stop.  We decided to stay at Laguna Harbor last night because it is just off the ICW and protected.  Our destination today is Shell Island, Texas, about eight hours away. We left Laguna at 7:45 this morning so we could anchor before dark. It was an absolutely beautiful day and the first couple of hours of travel was interesting with lots of cute houses along the shoreline. Then it got pretty boring where there was very little to see except birds and cows and every mile looked the same as the last mile and there was LOTS of barge traffic.

It was a rather long day……We have owned Scout for about 2.5 months and really haven’t had much moving-through-the-water time. It’s been mostly sitting-at-the-dock checking, reparing, and replacing stuff to be sure she would be able to take us on a “safe” voyage. So today was a true test – eight hours without a break or stop. Scout did a great job and so did the crew. Everything pretty much went as planned. Michael loaded the way points on Navionics and the Chart Plotter and set the auto pilot and we let Scout do most of the heavy lifting – steering from one way point to the next. We kept a vigilant watch and made minor adjustments EXCEPT when we had to dodge barge traffic and, did I mention, there was LOTS of barge traffic. I must say it was interesting meeting barges coming around narrow, blind curves. We were very happy to have our AIS to communicate with the tug boat captains.

We arrived at Shell Island about 4:00 and set anchor. Dinner tonight was left over Gumbo. We figured we better get rid of the gumbo before we hit the Louisiana border.