Mile zero, land, and one more roadblock, but we're in!

At 0630 this morning we passed within a few yards of navigation buoy 2W.
That's the waypoint we've been using for the past 1000+ miles as we made
our way toward Savannah. From there we just had to follow the navigation
buoys and motor about 10 miles up the Wilmington River to the marina. It
sounded simple enough after what we've been through these past several
days, but just as with few other things on this trip, things didn't
exactly go to plan. We sucessfully navigated the tricky approach to the
river in the early morning hours.

Not more than a few minutes after reaching the deeper water in the main
river channel the engine sputtered and lost power. We hoisted the jib and
rusty went below to check things out. We believe it was a problem with our
primary fuel filter. We brought several spares, but he wasn't able to get
the old one off to change it out. We were able to get the engine restarted
and running at a lower RPM for a while, but it wasn't long before it died
again. We were about 6 miles from the marina. Rusty and Steve went back
below and tried bypassing the filter entirely while Scott was navigating
the River. Unfortunately their efforts were unsuccessful.

The good news is that we had a favorable wind angle so we able to enjoy a
leisurely sail up the river enjoying the majestic southern mansions as
Scott skillfully made his way up the river against the ebbing tide. Steve
comment how odd it was to be able to look in any direction and see land.
We made our way lazily up the river until we got to within sight of the
marina. The marina was less than 1/4 mile away, just around the corner a
little ways up Turner Creek. We sailed back and forth around the mouth of
the creek and discussed our options. Entry to the marina under sail but it
was just too risky. Bad wind angle, a blind entry to a narrow channel, no
way to know if there were any slips that were accessible without using the
engine, and few if any options to bail out if things didn't look good. We
were close enough to swim ashore and walk to the marina in about 5
minutes, but we were stopped in our tracks. After circling around for a
bit we dropped the anchor and waited for a tow. It wasn't too long before
the towboat arrived and began leading us up the creek to the marina. Even
this didn't go exactly as planned... With the traffic in the channel
behaving unpredictably and some tricky winds it wasn't long before our
keel hit the muddy bottom. The towboat driver quickly pulled us out of the
mud, but a sudden wind shift nearly took us into a nearby pier. The
situation was quickly brought under control and within a few minutes the
boat was safely tied to the dock at the marina. At 1220 we took our fist
steps on dry land.