Some good sailing, on the bank in 6 metres or in the Exuma sound in about 2 Kms (depth) of water. Some fishing success with a Bonito getting on the line and then onto the barbie.  Caught a barracuda but only realised they aren't recommended for eating after I'd cleaned it.  

Girls made many new friends. Katie dominated on the volleyball pitch.

Could have been warmer, and the wind could have been a bit more seasonal, instead we got a lot of Northerlies.  Anchored out in 40knots one night, no drama as the holding was good.

Girls flew to NY from Nassau and my brother Ed came over for the sail back to the US.

We had a some good sailing - 8.5 knots sustained boat speed at one point - and some slow motoring in fog, which was pretty odd.  After a funny night out in Bimini the crossing was easy and I bagged a nice skipjack tuna off the US coast.

Went through the Carolinas at reasonable pace, then outside (in the ocean) through Georgia with two stops. Then on to Florida, starting with St Augustine, and then hopping down the coast via Cocoa Beach with Disney side trip to Orlando.  On to Fort Lauderdale, 5 days on a mooring ball fixing up stuff.  Autopilot broken.  Bought a new one as warranty repair takes too long. On down to Miami while the weather for the crossing was no good - high winds from the NE.

About 5 days in and around Miami waiting for the weather, and then fixing the main engine alternator.

Finally hopped over to Cat Cay south of Bimini and cracked on across the Great Bahama Bank to Nassau.  Couple of nights in Nassau, and then on to the Exuma Cays.

Met up with s/v Rachabel in Nassau - a family we met in Fort Lauderdale - and have been cruising together with Chris and Rebecca and their daughter Rachel.

Finally clear water (visibility 30 feet, easily) sandy beaches, coral, fish.  No fish on the barbie yet, but we are slowly getting tooled up to catch them.

The first section below Norfolk has two options, the Dismal Swamp Canal, or the Chesapeake and Arbemarle Canal.  I had come up through the C & A route, and was keen to try the Dismal Swamp route.  This canal was started in the 18th century, dug by slaves to join the Arbemarle Sound through to the Chesapeake, which efectively connected North Carolina to Maryland and Delaware.  

We left Norfolk and blew down the river with the cold North wind still chasing us Southwards.  At Deep Creek we turned off the main ICW route and headed West toward lock which marks the start of the canal.  The lock only works a few times a day and we arrived a little early for the 3:30pm operation.  The lockmaster called us on the radio and invited us to come in and tie up to wait for anyone else who may come along.  Meg and Sophie and I climbed up onto the lock side and checked out the gates and looked at the difference in water levels.  When the time came the gates closed and the we could see the long screws operating the flood doors below the water.  The Office slowly rose up from 8 feet below the dock to around 1 foot.  We went through into the canal and tied up at some free docks on the other side.  There was one other sailboat there, a Catalina 34. We met Bill and Bette and after doing some shopping and dinner, I went over to talk to them.  They were also heading to the Bahamas.  Bill is a retired draughtsman who worked on jet engine design for GE, they do the usual up and down the coast following the summer North and the winter South.

The next day we motored down the canal between tall trees and dense undergrowth.  There was some dodging of floating logs, but with only 30 feet of width the steering challenge was really to keep in the centre of the canal.  We stopped at the visitor centre at the North Carolina border and collected some information brochures and went for a walk in the swamp, which is really like a forest with waterlogged ground.  By 2:30 we had reached the lock at the other end and we tied against the wall outside to wait for the 3:30 opening.   The girls did their maths class while we waited.

Through the lock we joined the Pasquotank River that wound through more drowned forest country, with the odd house here and there.  We anchored off the main route behind Goat Island in the still black water.  The night was still and the water completely flat, the trees were reflected perfectly in a circle around us.  In the morning a mist clung to the surface, we made breakfast and motored on to Elizabeth City.

Across Pamilico Sound overnight. Dead calm with dolphins and stars. Down to Morehead City, and then down the ICT to Caspars Marina, Mile Hammock Bay, and then Carolina Beach.  Out into the ocean at Cape Fear, rough night but got all the way to Charleston.  Stayed with Jon and Genee until Halloween, met Nick and Angela Metro with their kids, Nick and Eileen. Great people.  Continued on down through Beaufort, and out to sea. Some good runs down the Georgia coast.

We have been moving quickly south ever since returning from the UK.  We returned to The Office in Piney Narrows and stayed an extra day as the wind was strong and from the South.  The following day we sailed to Oxford and anchored in Town Creek.  Oxford is a pretty little town on the sleepy East coast of the Chesapeake and a yachting centre with several boat yards and a generally welcoming attitude to visiting boats.  We roamed on shore for a few hours and had a very peaceful night in the still creek.  Continuing on the next day we planned to go to Smith Island, one of the strange and isolated Chesapeake islands where everyone has the same surname and speak with strange accents.  

The days run was slower than I expected and we did not arrive at the Smith Island channel until about an hour after dark.  I don't often get an uneasy feeling about these sort of approaches, armed with the GPS chart plotter at the helm its usually pretty easy to pick the way down channels. This time I wasn't so sure.  We entered the channel and only about a 1/4 mile in we hit the bottom and stuck fast.  No amount of wiggling around was going to get us off.  We called Tow Boat US who came across the bay from the West coast, which took about an hour.  They had some trouble getting us off, eventually using their prop wash to blast a channel for us.  My earlier attempts to get free sucked sand into the cutless bearing and chewed it up so that will need replacement at the next haul out.  The bay was flat, without even a rustle of breeze, so we dropped the anchor outside the channel and went to sleep.  Of course the wind came up at 3am, blowing fairly hard from the the North East.  I snoozed in the saloon and watched our position on the GPS until about 5 am when I pulled up the anchor and started sailing.  The Chesapeake is littered with strange obstructions which makes sailing in the dark pretty nerve wracking, there are crap pots to get tangled in and huge fish traps made of piling that stick out unmarked in the middle of the bay.  

We didn't encounter any problems and sailed to Tangier, the next island to the South.  The channel into Tangier is known to be better maintained and easier to navigate than Smith Is and we tied up at the crumbling marina in the town by about 7am. In the marina was Harmony a boat we'd seen up in Buzzard's Bay in Massachusetts.  It belonged to Dickie and Helen an entertaining couple originally from Ireland and England.  We went together to get breakfast at a B and B, that was the only thing on offer.. The island has a huge population of semi-feral cats who hung around listlessly in every yard.  The people on Tangier speak with Cornish accents, its permanently 'Talk Like a Pirate Day'.  The restaurant was 'family style' which means the food is bought to the table on big plates and you help yourself.  We had mountains of crispy bacon, scrambled eggs, sweet toast , coffee and juice.  We set out from Tangier about midday and sailed across to Deltaville on the West Coast. 

Deltaville is another well known boater-friendly spot.  We anchored in a creek with a marina nearby.  Dickie and Helen were also anchored up and I had a funny night drinking on their boat Harmony.  There were a bunch of boat repair businesses and the marina had a courtesy car so we took the opportunity of to get some work done to repair the sail bag and bimini cover.  The stitching on both had started to come apart although the canvas was in OK condition.  I also got the boat yard to cut up some plywood to create a box for the generator, so that I could sound proof it.  Once we were all done and ready to leave the wind came up and was blowing 25 knots from the North, so we decided to wait a day.   The North wind brings the cold air and the temperature was dropping to the point where we were wearing all our jumpers and still couldn't get warm.  We had to get moving southwards. 

The following day was much the same, We motored out of the creek and had a fast sail down to Hampton at the South end of the bay.  I was dressed in about 4 layers covered in a dry suit with rubber gaskets around the neck, wrists and ankles, and then my normal wet weather gear over the top.  It was fairly comfortable.  We were chased by dolphins for a short while, the first the girls had ever seen.

Hampton was an odd place, we went for dinner at a pub called The Taphouse which did the usual burger type food.  The next day I took the girls to the Virginia Air and Space Museum.

In the afternoon we sailed across the Hampton Roads to Norfolk, finally saying goodbye to the Chesapeake.  The sail was much the same as the day before, and we were frozen through by the time we tied up in the Waterside Marina.  We showered and went to Hooters as it was the closest place.  Terrible food, but at least it was warm.

We restocked at the supermarket the next day and Harmony arrived that night.  The girls watched a movie in their cabin while we had drinks two slips down with Dickie and Helen.  We took the little walkie-talkie radio with us so the girls could call if they wanted us. 

The next morning we would leave Norfolk and sail into the Dismal Swap canal system, it was the start of a new phase of the trip.

We stayed with Aidan and Borra in Barnes in their beautiful house, surrounded by Aidan's collection of Mercedes cars.  Katie went straight to the US embassy to get visas for herself and the girls on our first morning.  Meg, Sophie and I walked from Mayfair through Hyde Park, past Buckingham Palace and on through St James Park, the Horse Guards, Trafalgar Square and on to Leicester Square. We saw 15 squirrels, the girls counted them. After a snack at Pret-A-Manger we walked up Charing Cross Road to look in bookshops, and then caught the tube home.

The next day we borrowed Aidan's 320E and drove up to Cambridge, getting taken on a horrible path by the GPS through central London.  Eventually my sense of direction and memory of the London roads returned and I ignored the electronic directions to fast-track us out of the traffic.  We stopped at motorway services on the M11 and had some truly horrible food. Some things don't change.  We parked up in Cambridge and had an afternoon wandering the streets, around the colleges and along the river.  We spent the night with Rebecca and Grant in Waterbeach, a railway stop village north of the city.

The next day was a cross-country bash from Cambridge to Wiltshire to visit George Spence at his family farm in Wiltshire.  Nerves were frayed as we negotiated roadworks, one car country lanes, market towns and motorways.  At the farm we had the usual country hospitality with roasted game birds for dinner, and drinking late into the night. George left around midday to go to a wedding, we did a tour of the local area, including the local stately home, a pub lunch and a walk at the White Horse of Uffington, a stone age chalk carving on the side of a hill with fantastic views north to Oxford.

Back in London we hung out at Aidan's, enjoying daily showers and a well appointed kitchen as much as the museum trips and river walks.  Thoughts of the boat resting gently on the bottom of the marina pen with the murky waters slopping around in the cabin had plagued me when I realised early in the trip  I left the engine raw water stop cock open. But of course the chances of that happening were pretty remote, and it didn't.  

Yesterday was a good fixing day, some Draino in the black water tank seems to have things moving there again, and I have worked out how to chop up the battery powered LED lights and wire them straight to the 12v circuit.  I also have done lots of reading and learning about the battery charger and monitor so I now understand how the batteries work.  I'm trying to tee-up a canvas person to fix the sail bag and bimini cover which have been a little bit toasted by the Florida sun.

We sail today up to Kent Island, only around 10 miles, and tomorrow The Office will be put into a marina for two weeks while we go to London.  Katie and the kids need to get proper US visas, rather than the Visa-on-entry that they have now.  I'll get mine re-stamped for another 6 months.

We motor sailed down the Delaware river to the Chesapeake and Delaware Canal, arriving at the canal mouth after dark.  The tide was going our way thanks to some pre-planning with the tide and pilot guide "Eldridge". We were getting around 8 knots through the canal and around 10 pm reached Chesapeake City Basin, a man made anchorage area toward the Chesapeake end.  We dropped the pick in the calm water, the marina was heaving near by and a live band was playing in the restaurant.  Sophie had gone to bed while we were underway, and Meg followed as soon as we were anchored.

We left early the next morning and sailed into the top of the Chesapeake.  We had no guide for the bay and so simply picked a part of the chart that seemed interesting and went there.  A nice breeze came up in the afternoon and we had a fun time tacking into the wind to get to the creek we had chosen for anchoring.  The anchorage was protected with good holding, but not as secluded as we might have wanted.  The shore was developed with lots of small house blocks and jetties.  We went ashore, but it wasn't like the quaint villages of Connecticut, instead it was the land of the 4 x 4 pickup, football flags and neglected fishing skiffs.

We sailed the next morning before Meg and Sophie were up.  We were heading to Baltimore.  The weather was similar to the previous day, warm with light winds that picked up in the afternoon, blowing, of course, right from where we wanted to go.  Sophie helped me tack by pushing the + and - 10 degree buttons on the autopilot while I handled the genoa sheets. We did well and made it up into the main harbour before giving up and cranking up the motor.  The marina had a 4 midweek nights for the price of one deal, which we couldn't ignore.  The centre of town was a short dinghy ride away.  The inner harbour has been extensively redeveloped with a display of 5 ships as floating museums.  We visited the Constellation, a square rig US Navy ship that spent its final years as a training ship at West Point.  We also walked from one end the USS Torsk, a WWII submarine, 300 feet long and stuffed full of the most incredibly complicated systems.  The science museum was closed until Wednesday, so we returned the next day to visit there.

Docking the dinghy supposedly incurred a $15 fee. When we returned a notice had been dropped into it by the harbour masters office stating that they had our registration number and we'd better cough up.  I didn't really agree that our 8 1/2 foot boat should cost that much, so we chose to ignore the notice.  The next day Katie dropped us infront of the musuem, and I saw someone from the harbour masters office come racing down in a golf cart.  Too late! Katie was already on her way back to the marina, so the city employee watched wistfully for a moment before turning around.

Then on down to Annapolis on a morning with light rain and grey skies.  Sophie appeared briefly in her rain gear, Meg devoured another in the Lemony Snicketts series in the saloon, and Katie read in the aft cabin.

Booked a marina by phone, when we arrived it was a tight fit and the college kid dock hands got a mild telling-off from Katie as they chatted amongst themselves while we threaded The Office into the impossibly narrow slip.

Today posted a question about my engine water leak on the Cruisers Forum, and got a pretty good suggestion straight away. After getting stuck in I found the usual few problems in systems around the one I was looking at.

We rounded Cape May and washed up the Delaware river with the tide to Philadelphia.  The girls flew in and Peter caught the train out. After a few days touristing in Philly we are underway again, heading down river to the Chesapeake Bay. 

The day was windless and we motored at a steady 6knts across to the tip of Cape Cod. At Provincetown we picked up a mooring in the dilapidated marina.  The town is highly developed for tourists with a strip of restaurants, art galleries and clothes shops running behind the waterfront, but not in a tacky way. It is also a gay mecca, and the streets were hung with rainbow flags, men in towels spruiked for a nightclub and a self-proclaimed 77 year old cross-dresser crooned love songs on the sidewalk.

We finally had a lobster dinner - I think it should have been free as compensation for the mental angst caused by dodging lobster pots for the past two weeks - it was made into a tasty pasta sauce with a bit of chilli. After some dodgy face painting and soft-serve icecream for the girls we took the tender across the flat black water to The Office.

The following day the girls went to the beach while I attended to some DIY around the boat.  On their return we moved to the public dock to attempt to get our black water tank pumped.  I can't give any more detail about this experience as its too disgusting.  We left around midday heading for the Cape Cod canal which would be flowing in our favour about 3pm.  The bay was dead calm the entire way across. Despite being under the pump to make the ebb tide, we stopped midway to swim in the surprisingly warm and clear water.  There were millions of lemon-sized jelly fish in the water, almost entirely transparent except for small glittering threads along their bodies.  I could occasionally feel one brush against me, but they didn't sting.

The canal was running up to 5 knots to the Wests and we made up to 11 knots over-the-ground for part of the transit.

Buzzards Bay was blowing hard as usual, and on the nose, of course.  I managed two pretty tight tacks, losing some boat speed for a more advantageous angle and we made it to Quissett harbour by 7:30pm.  

Katie drove while I threw in the pick, we were snugged up with a well-set anchor in no time.  There was only one other boat in the harbour with people on it, so it was a quiet and peaceful evening.

We walked in the woods up to a waterfall with 4 or 5 other families and had a picnic lunch and swam in the icy pools.