Surely in the middle of summer (school is out, summer vacation) there would be boats everywhere in the bay. We were prepared for it, but knew we had no choice but to grin and bear it.

There is nobody here!

Fine with us!

So we are slowly making our way north to Annapolis to drop Ryan off at BWI for a 2 week stay with his other family in Atlanta.

We took a different route this time after we left The Alligator River and crossed Albemarle Sound by veering East and up through the Albemarle Chesapeake Canal. It was cool but the Dismal Swamp is hard to beat!

Norfolk is always interesting. First we are coming into a city after being out in the proverbial wilderness since Beaufort or really Charleston.

And of course it is always a thrill to see the U.S. Navy fleet and all the commercial traffic.

In Hampton we stayed at a dock for a night to visit cruising friends Dave and Cathy. We had stayed nearby at Fort Monroe last year so it was just a howyadoin and off the next morning for a 1/2 day trip to Yorktown on the York River.

We spent the next night anchored way out in the open in Mobjack Bay at Point Comfort sort of by an abandoned lighthouse about a half mile from the beach. The beach was cool but the black flies that are usually just annoying starting viscouslly attacking and we had to retreat to the boat. We even had to tape up all the screens to keep them out.

We sailed back across the Bay headed to Deltaville Va and got caught a bit in the back of that Nor’easter – enough for Shelly to say it was the worse we had been in since having Yume. Damn flies.

Deltaville was nice with super friendly people stopping to talk to us. We got the bikes out and gave Goose a nice 5 mile exercise run visiting some of the thousands of sailboats that are here. We were in a beautiful creek, and the weather just perfect. This is at daybreak, looking east out into the Chesapeake. This is the same place we came in last Thanksgiving on our way south to get out of the weather and drug our anchor at 2am… Sure is different this time.

We pulled down the Mizzenmast sail and tried our hand at flattening the sail. It was a good interesting afternoon project. Although we weren’t successful we didn’t do any damage either and learned some!

Shelly loves her sewing machine. I do too as I am not always trying to fix it like the old one we had.

This morning we sailed out of the Bay and around to the north of Deltaville and up the Rappahannock River to Irvington Va. It is a very small, quaint village win a hotel called the The Tides Inn that looks like it has been here forever. Nobody is here. I guess they come on the weekend and pack the place. We took the dingy and poked into all the creeks watching the herons and Ospreys and looking at the old and new homes.

Goose does love to ride in the boat!

Tomorrow we plan to leave early, and head back out to the Bay and north to Tangier Island. This is a special place we are really looking forward to, known for friendliness, and crab cakes. And we certainly hope no one else is there!

Unless of course you care to join us!