It’s Wednesday morning and we are sitting on a dock in Hampton VA. It’s raining but the forecast calls for clearing later today. Hope so.
Over the weekend we enjoyed a visit, here in Hampton, with other boaters at the first Cruiser’s rendezvous which attracted some 40-50 boats. The local planning crew put on quite a show with great seminars and terrific sponsored (free) meals and even some free drinks thrown in for good measure. Anyone planning to head down the ICW in the fall should add Hampton to their itinerary. It’s a great place to visit an well worth the stop.
One of the presenters during the day of seminars was Mark Doyle. He and his wife Diana, long time ICW cruisers, have a series of guides that detail their favorite anchorages along the 1,000+ miles on the ICW between Hampton and Florida. The “On The Water ChartGuides” are a must for anyone taking the inside route. As Mark was presenting, I was struck by how different he looked than most of the folks I have seen standing in front of PowerPoint slides over the yeas. In my “old life” the dress code was a bit less casual. Mark and the others, including me, at the seminar were dressed in “T” shirts and shorts which Mark rounded off with Crock sandals. Not your usual corporate meeting presentation wardrobe. I am just so happy to be in the “crock world” now. 
After the meetings, we rented a car and traveled north to CT for a funeral for my late uncle Dick. Dick and his family were a big part of my younger years and it was very nice to participate in such an important event. It was also wonderful to see many of my relatives and old friends, some of whom I have not seen for years. All and all, it made me and Brenda feel good to make the trip. It was exhausting, as we drive about 1,000 miles, round trip, in two days. We didn’t actually leave CT until around 6:30pm on Monday evening after the reception and finally stopped in a hotel to sleep around 3:30 on Tuesday morning. I had hoped to make it all the way back to Pandora but ran out of steam before we made it back. Besides, the idea of making up the bed (we had stripped the bed to do laundry while we were away) and climbing into bed as the sun came up wasn’t too appealing. Yikes, I was pooped. Yesterday we were pretty worn out and weren’t very productive. I am definitely getting too old to stay up that late, or early, depending on how you look at it.
Last evening we had cocktails with some old friends and made some new ones aboard Pandora. In particular, we ran into Pete and Stephanie from Brilliant, who we ran into last fall on our run south. Pete and Stephanie began cruising in the Med, crossed over to the Caribbean and have cruised up and down the east coast over the last few years.
We hung around with them for a while last fall and in particular, they were the ones who rescued us when we fouled our prop with a plastic tarp in Savannah. It was nice to run into them again. It seems that they are planning to spend the winter in the Bahamas too so we will probably see them along the way. I hope so.
We also had two couples aboard who were staying in the marina where we are and talked about the trip south as it the first time for both of them. We enjoyed telling them about what to expect along the way.
I continue to marvel on how often we are running into folks that we know and look forward to seeing other friends as we move along.
Today we will be leaving Hampton in the late morning to begin working our way down toward the Deep Creek Lock where we will enter the Dismal Swamp. The “official” beginning of the ICW is mile marker “0” and is located in Norfolk off of Hospital Point, where we were anchored for a few nights last week.
We are not planning to try and make it all the way to the lock today as there is a nice little anchorage just before the lock. This suggests that we will make the 8:00 opening on Thursday morning. After that we will mosey along the first 18 miles of the canal to the visitor’s center. No point in rushing. Besides, there is a small dock, just after the lock, where we can stop and visit a supermarket that is a short walk from the dock. We never want to give up an opportunity to provision with fresh food when we can.
Not much to post in the way of photos so perhaps a shot of Pandora sitting on the dock is about the best I can do for now. Pretty neat to have her stern too on the dock as getting on and off is a cinch. Don’t ask me how it went backing her into the slip though. Not a pretty picture. Glad that it wasn’t in front of a big audience. Oh well, that’s what rub rails are for.
I guess I had better sign off for now. The day’s a wasting…