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December 25 - 8:00AM  We awoke to a slightly foggy morning, but it was at least warm!  I fired up the stove for some coffee, and made us some Christmas breakfast - blueberry coffee cake.  We had a little bit of a leisurely morning, calling home to our families (who we miss very much), finally pulling anchor at about 9:30.  We set off down the ICW heading for our next anchorage at Sloop Point.  Again, we had a very uneventful trip which was accompanied by dolphins at a couple of points throughout the day.  The weather wasn’t quite what we’d hoped, we had sunshine when we set out, but by about noon we were being rained on, not hard, and it wasn’t a cold rain, but rain none the less.  We reached Sloop Point at about 3:45, only to discover that there was already one other boat there, and not only that, but they had anchored dead center in the limited anchorage, making it a real challenge for us to find a spot to anchor.  Now it does say in Skipper Bob’s that it can be shallow, but we nosed into the ground at least 4-5 times trying to find a spot that was deep enough to accomodate us while staying a reasonable distance away from the other boat that was anchored there.  Settling on a spot behind the other boat, and out of the channel, we set our anchor, and I set about making us Christmas dinner.  I had bought us some special steak fillets when I went to the grocery, as well as some Boursin, and I whipped up some Boursin potatoes au gratin and we made Adina asparagus (not nearly as good with canned as it is with fresh, but tasty nonetheless).  We opened the other nice bottle of wine we’d purchased for Christmas dinner, and sat down to enjoy our second Christmas together.  Although it was sad not to be with our families (and I was a little homesick) we had a great dinner, chatted with a few friends and family, including Don and Terri and Pat and John,  before turning in for the night with the plan being to make it to Southport the next day so that we could jump out into the Atlantic and head to Charleston.
2:20 AM - I woke up to use the head and lo and behold, we were heeled over about 15 degrees to port!  Apparently while we were sleeping, the tide went out.  Hmmmmm.