Day 132, Friday November 1

Day 132, Friday November 1

Today we pick up our first crew member to arrive.  Julie starts the day with a yoga class while Dawson once again heads to the library in an attempt to get our satellite phone data ready.  By 11:00 we get picked up by Enterprise for our weekend car rental.  We have the car until Monday so will be able to get all our last minute purchases done.  Greg arrives at 12:30 so we head straight over to Norfolk which is only about a 30 minute drive, but the tunnel to get there can get backed up and we do not want to be late.  A  12:30 arrival works nicely around rush hour. We have about 30 minutes to kill so decide to pop into a grocers and start the provisioning.  Julie is planning on cooking all our passageway meals so even to get what we need so that can occur will be good.  By the time we get to the airport, Greg is waiting outside.  Only for a couple of minutes so the timing is good.  We head to Hampton for a bite to eat on the boat.  There is a provisioning seminar being offered so Julie attend that while Greg and Dawson head back to the library.

Greg at the weather briefing

After the provisioning session, Julie makes some spaghetti sauce and vacumn seals some snacks.  Dawson and Greg have returned as Globalstar will not allow the software to be installed on a second computer and Dawson had taken Julie’s laptop with that intent.  WE are getting very frustrated with the globalstar service.  Dawson is now waiting for a call back from someone a bit more technical.  The guys head up to West Marine to buy a few things and Julie gets cooking.

By 4:00 we are attempting to attend a weather live chat by Chris Parker, but there are technical difficulties so we hang out awaiting the 5:00 briefing.  After that there is happy hour “pain killers” hosted again for free, followed by a pig roast and entertainment.  This rally is the best thing going.  The pig roast tickets we bought but everything else is hosted.

Greg is exhausted and peels off early, after a few painkillers and introductions to a few of our Bahamas travellers.  With a bit of effort we have managed to locate 6 other boats heading to Bahamas and have a meeting scheduled for 8 the next morning to start discussing routing and weather.  Dawson and Julie also call it an early night.

Cheers

Julie and Dawson