Eight Bells and All's Well

We went to the Annapolis Boat Show last weekend - boat heaven for Capt. Jeff. It is the biggest, in-water boat show in the nation and was very impressive for the number and variety of boats there to explore and all the stuff that goes along with boating. I found my new favorite phone app: a ship's clock free app from Weems & Plath! Now my pocket chimes bells marking each 4 hour span with from one to eight bells. It can even be set to be quiet at night (unlike our clock at home)! It makes me smile every half hour.

We left Annapolis and made it almost all the way down the bay, stopping in Solomons, Maryland, for a much needed marina stop for laundry and groceries. The dock was full of big Krogan trawlers; they had just had a rendezvous at the marina and many were still hanging out there. One of the boats was from Afton, MN - just down the road from our home in Stillwater. At another dock nearby was a sailboat from LaPointe, WI, just across from our home port of Bayfield in the Apostle Islands. The Midwest was well represented.



Laundry was done and all electric items were charged up. The weather report was for a lot of wind and waves, so we stayed put the next day and I had a delightful birthday day: beautiful sunny weather, a great maritime museum, delicious lunch of oysters and some knitting time with my Nova Scotia yarn.

Our oil mishap kept us in Solomons an extra day - which turned out to be a good thing. Our friends on Ke 'Ola Kai came in and reported it was a day of waves and pouring rain as they crossed the Chesapeake, not the kind of day we like to travel in. We were able to clean the engine room, do more laundry (of all our oil spattered clothes) and have dinner with Lisa and Dave! We traveled with them the next day to Deltaville, Virginia to a lovely anchorage. Yesterday we finished the Chesapeake, making it all the way to Norfolk.

This morning we left and headed up the Elizabeth River and into the Dismal Swamp. George Washington helped survey this long ditch, dug by hand to drain a swampy area. We locked through at 11 AM with 13 other boats and had a slow quiet passage 18 miles to the visitor center near the middle. We are tied up at the dock tonight with 8 more boats and will leave early tomorrow to the lock on the southern end then continue down a river to Elizabeth City, North Carolina, where we have our absentee ballots to pick up.

Now we are trying to make time going south so that I can get back to MN and then to Vermont and Jeff can have the boat worked on (the keel repaired and batteries replaced). The weather looks good to make some distances in the next week. Sally