Back In Oriental

View off the front porch of the clubhouse, Celebration is upper right.

  Yes, we're back in Oriental, NC, our adopted east coast home. We're sitting in the lap of luxury, at the Whittaker Pointe marina, large clean showers, washer and dryer, beautiful clubhouse, great friends Beth, Jim and Cameron on Wild Haggis, just off our stern.  (What we really came for is unlimited power, it just seems very ungreen and unsailor-like to admit that right up front.) We have lots of things to do, large and small projects, sewing, grinding, routing and having 110 power in all the outlets is such an amazing thing!! I don't have to find the inverter to charge anything. Well, actually I don't have to check the gauge on the panel first to see if we have the power to charge anything and then I don't have to find the inverter. It's the little things in life. sigh.

We've signed up with the Salty Dawg Rally for our trip to the Virgin Islands.  A rally is a group of boats all going to the same place at the same time. In this case, about 50 boats will leave Norfolk VA and Beaufort NC on the 4th of November and head to Virgin Gorda in the BVI's.  We'll get weather forecasts and routing, daily check ins with on shore watchers, lots of good stuff. The nice thing about this rally is that there are no fees and no safety checks. The only requirement is that we have to have done a long off shore passage before this, then we're considered to be competent captains and we'll have the safety equipment on our boat that we feel we need. If you would like to see more about it go here.




Shades of blue, sunset.

We had a beautiful motor sail down the ICW from Norfolk, warm days and chilly nights. The cool weather has taken care of most of the mosquito's and no-see-um's.



More shades of blue, sunrise.

Thunderstorms forming over the Atlantic, or still more shades of blue.