Despite our anxiety that we might not arrive on time, we actually ended up tying to the dock in Jekyll with a full six days to spare before my sister and two nephews arrived to celebrate Thanksgiving with us.  We were beyond relieved to have made it on time.  Kathy was brilliantly understanding and agreed to meet us in Charleston if it came to it, but I feel like she has pulled the short straw in Dragonfly vacation planning a few too many times and I was really glad we were able to arrive into Jekyll Island as we hoped.  The folks at the marina were very helpful and made both a golf cart for local errands and a slightly worn out Lexus for driving into Brunswick available to us whenever we needed.  We had a flurry of chores and errands to prepare for our guests.  Dragonfly has four beds, but really only three that are available as we have long ago converted the smallest one to a workshop/shed/junk drawer.  Even with that space devoted to...

      Plans are the bane of sailors.  It can be very difficult to arrive at a fixed location on a fixed date.  When making arrangements to visit with people, we often tell them that they can pick either the day to meet us or the place to meet us, but not both.  It’s a bit of a joke because of course airlines don’t work that way, but there is also a lot of truth to it.  You really can’t predict accurately when the wind will blow or which way it will be blowing more than a few days in advance and both of those things are very important to sailors.  Sometimes we have VIP guests and our usual approach is to try to arrive a week or so early so that we can coordinate with their schedule.  But even that big of an adjustment doesn’t always work.       This year, we had VIP plans of that sort.  A previous attempt to meet up with my sister Kathy and her two boys had gone awry when our plans were driven by weather and boat work in a ...