"It's More about the Journey Than it is About Arrival at the Destination" Well, not always!!!!

Still pushing South, still cold and dreaming about the Bahamas!! We left Norfolk, VA yesterday under grey, rainy skies and arrived at Goat Island anchorage under grey, rainy skies (although Mark continued to wear boardshorts).

We encountered 5 bridges, 2 locks and a pinhead on a 45' Hunter. Things did improve when the Hunter hit bottom at mile 3 of the Dismal Swamp http://www.fws.gov/northeast/greatdismalswamp/ and decided to head back towards the Virginia Cut. I was very polite when I asked him if we could pass to starboard since he got so spooked and had reduced speed to under 3 knots.

FYI to brother-in-law Jim, I am reading a great book called "Blackwater: The Rise of an American Mercenery Army". The name Blackwater comes from the color of the water in the Dismal Swamp where the firm owns a 6000-acre training facility. Read the book everyone, scary , scary...

We have some video showing the colour of the water, it's just like Newcastle Brown (mmmmm.....). The kids mentioned it looked like beer. Mitchell was afraid the boat was going to get drunk.

O.k. So maybe we are expecting too much from todays technology. We are currently anchored "apparently" way off the beaten track on the Alligator River, North Carolina. We have just spent 30 minutes trying to get a Google Earth link for you, but no luck. Even our GPS plotter lost satellite signal just as we were entering the anchorage. So you will have to be satisfied with some pics (no video) and my wonderful prose!!

So we will head out again early Saturday morning, trying to maintain at least 50 miles per day (to get us to Georgia before Mark goes back to work).

Long days on the water, ending with a rousing game of Sorry or family movie night (just started the Indiana Jones Trilogy, we don't count the Crystal Skull because it was so awful!).

Hope you are finding all this as interesting as we seem to think it is.

"Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday, Thursday, Friday, Saturday, Sunday.

See, told you there wasn't a Someday!"

PS. Stolen from a T-shirt in Annapolis.

Sunny skies from the Crew of the " Dad, the port bilge is STILL leaking".

Pushing South

So I was a few days late getting back to the boat, but we are off again. I arrived back in Virginia on Sunday night, and after a good meal with Steven and Jodi, it was back to the boat as a complete family for the first time in 5 weeks!!!

Monday was used to get a few last minute projects out of the way, including the installation of our new water heater (cold showers just not going to cut it).

We said our good-byes with a special thanks to everyone at Olversons!! Steven, Jodi, Jacob, Beverly-Anne, Fred and Cass, and of course Uncle Pete really made the place feel like a second home. We have already threatened to return in the spring!

Thanks of course to our old (old meaning we have known them for awhile ;-) friends Bobbie and Gord. Without them we never would have wound up in Lottsburg!!

So the push begins, yesterday we put around 50 miles under our keels and spent the night anchored in Horn Harbour http://maps.google.ca/maps?hl=en&ie=UTF8&ll=37.36528,-76.271768&spn=0.017157,0.042186&t=h&z=15. Another great spot for our shallow draft catamaran, we saw less than 5' of water depth a few times coming in off the Bay.

It was a pretty breezy night, gusts over 30kts, but we all slept great. The forecast was not looking good for Wednesday, 4-6' seas and 20kts gusting to 25kts. We got underway around 0900hrs, the wind and seas weren't much of a concern, and we made it to Norfolk by around 1630hrs. Below is a pic as we motored down "Carrier Alley". The aircraft carrier "Harry Truman" was there. 6200 crew, 80 aircraft, cost of $4.5 billion , range of 3,200,000 miles on 4 nuclear reactors!!

We are sharing the anchorage at Hospital Point http://maps.google.ca/maps?hl=en&ie=UTF8&t=h&ll=36.844358,-76.29962&spn=0.004319,0.010546&z=17 with 8 other boats, 5 of which are from Canada (and one, another Gemini, we saw in the 1000 Islands last summer).

After a nice supper, we had another family game of Sorry (I continue to kick butt in the standings!!!), then read another chapter of Farley Mowats "The Boat Who Wouldn't Float".

We also had hot showers onboard Charlotte-Ann for the first time.

Kids are in bed, Lisa and I are having a glass of wine (Merlot Box-o-Vino). We have another early start tomorrow, hopefully we will get all the way through the Dismal Swamp.

Heading South Again!

This will be short, not even any pics. Mark (that's me) got home late from work on Sunday. We got a few projects done on the boat on Monday and left Olverson's this morning. We are now anchored about 25 miles north of Norfolk, VA and hope to get there tomorrow. Weather looks a bit dodgy so we will have see how it looks in the morning.
Our Internet connection is alot slower than normal so I'm gonna end here. More info once we get off the Chesapeake and closer to civilization.

Later,
Mark, Lisa, Delaney and Mitchell.