Steve and Laura's Excellent Adventure

Since the summer is passing so rapidly, we're trying to pick up the pace so we can spend some time in Galesville, Maryland which is near where our oldest daughter and her husband live. In doing so, we left Gloucester Point on August 23rd even though it meant motoring the whole way.  Fortunately, it was a nice day so, although boring, it was not absolutely terrible to just motor and enjoy the scenery.  Deltaville is a small town which seems to be centered around sailing life, with several boatyards, marinas, and not much else.  Typical home in Deltaville The main draw for us was an anchorage near a marina that allows boaters to use the dinghy dock and laundry facilities for a small fee.  It turns out laundry facilities are a big topic of conversation amongst cruisers.  Who'd have thought? The marina is a nice place though, with a swimming pool, screen room with gas grills, and a courtesy car that we can use.  It's not fancy but the folks here are friendly and the sunset was

We've now clocked over 1000 nautical miles during our journey from Florida to the Chesapeake, for a total of 3340 NM since we set sail from Grenada last November. We arrived into Yorktown on the afternoon on August 13th and were greeted by a flawless day and magnificent weather.  For the first time since June we had high temperatures in the low 80's and lows in the upper 60's!  (This, of course, meant that I needed a jacket since I've completely acclimated to life without air conditioning!) Yorktown is an absolutely gorgeous location, with a thriving historic downtown, beautiful Riverwalk, an American Revolution Museum, and small beach with tons of families enjoying the last bit of summer.   The Riverwalk on Saturday morning is an active place. There's a market with arts and crafts and other vendors, live music, walkers, beach-goers, and my favorite - a fife and drum corps! Saturday morning parade:  Fife and Drum Corps of Yorktown We spent the first day walking alon

We left Ocracoke, NC on August 10th and sailed overnight to Virginia Beach.  The exit from Ocracoke was a bit challenging, as it was low tide and there were a couple of very shallow spots.  Once free of the inlet, though, we had smooth sailing and gorgeous weather all day. Later in the evening, however,  Mother Nature decided to put on a fireworks display for us.  We sailed through a bit of wind and rain, but we were never really close to the lightning so I count that as good luck! Weather During Overnight Sail to Virginia Beach  On the morning of the 11th, we arrived at Virginia Beach and went to a lake that had been recommended in one of the cruising guides.  It was a protected anchorage and had good holding, but the "lake" felt more like a neighborhood retention pond and I felt like we had driven our motor home into someone's back yard.  Since we had been sailing all night and would have had to sail another 24 hours to get to the next viable inlet, we decided to stay t

  Hello dear friends and family! Greetings from beautiful North Carolina. As planned, Steve and I left Georgetown, SC on July 27th and sailed overnight to Carolina Beach, NC.  We've been blessed with calm seas and mostly advantageous wind direction for the last few legs of our journey.  The sail was pleasant and event-free, except for a short-lived squall as we were heading from Georgetown to the inlet.  It was my turn to be at the helm with shifting winds and loss of steerage 😕, but there's no better way to learn than by doing and we managed to get through it without issue....other than Steve's brief panic when he looked out the window from the galley and saw we were headed towards land and the shallows instead of out to sea! Once moored in Carolina Beach, we had fine weather and a change of scenery from the small historic towns we'd been visiting in South Carolina. The mooring field was conveniently located near a dinghy dock that was basically across the street from