Day 129 Tuesday October 29th
Julie wakes up almost giddy with excitement as today we will
reach our destination at Hampton, VA. We
don’t start out quite as early from Fisherman’s Bay, as normal as we only have
40 miles to do today. By the time we head
out it is around 8:00 and most of the boats are ahead of us. There is a bit of wind, but it starts to
die. We try the assymetrical, however
even with our big colourful sail we are doing under 4 knots which is
unacceptable. There is still coastguard
announcements of the fisherman who fell overboard so we are reminded to be safe
and keep our eyes out. By now it would
not be a rescue we assume.
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| Free Rein (fellow salty dawg) at sunrise |
Most of the boats are quite a ways ahead of us and there is
little wave action so we play a game of Kings cribbage as we go along. By 2:00 we are starting to close in on our
destination. There are tidal flats and
shoals so we need to take care on our entrance.
We can see lots of military ships, and air activity as this is at
Norfolk which is a very large military installation. It is a bit intimidating to have it all
around us.
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| Lighthouse at Hampton |
By 4:00 we are at the fuel docks topping up in anticipation
of our trip to Bahamas. They assign us
our slip and we note that everyone is backed into their spots. There is a cross wind where they have
assigned us and Julie decides we are doing the Ontario, bow in regardless of
norms here. We get in fine. It is a bit more difficult to tie up as there
are just 4 posts and the fixed dock is only about 10 feet long. We manage just fine and head in to meet some
of our fellow salty dawgs for the 5:00 weather briefing, and attend a happy
hour that turns into dinner with a group of 8.
About half the boats have checked in so far. There are 120 boats in the rally and about
100 of them will depart from Hampton.
Only 10 are heading to the Bahamas, of which we are one of them. The rest are heading to the BVI’s which is a
12 day crossing vs. our 6 day crossing.
We head back to the boat for a good nights sleep at dock.
Cheers
Julie and Dawson
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