2006.11.23

Happy Thanksgiving to all our American family and friends..

We have just returned from a Thanksgiving feast and it's only 6:45 !!! we did have reservations for 5:00... real old fart stuff ...at home I would start thinking about preparing dinner so we could watch Corrie (Coronation Street) and maybe have a G&T...(my mother-in-law has quite an influence on me).

We are STILL in beautiful downtown Great Bridge Virginia and yes Bobby I had some delicious Virginia ham with my turkey.. we have been weather bound here for almost four days... but tomorrow is supposed to be nice so we are off bright and early.

GB,VA has been an interesting experience.... nobody walks here, if we ever met anyone on the sidewalk they were from our little dock on the canal... boat people only!!!

Crossing the street takes on another meaning here, you have to walk forever to find an intersection to cross at and then double back on the other side.. we think it might be safer to cross the Atlantic!

We have experienced a veritable deluge in the last few days.... yesterday we could not even get off our bank of the canal because of floods, we needed to get to a hardware store to buy more alcohol for our heater so we would not freeze and just could not get there....Jacqueline and Heinz launched their dinghy and motored across the canal and brought us back 2 gallons, when the flood receded later on we went and bought another one... we now have a nice little store...you see what an adventure cruising is, before all I had to do was raise the thermostat...

Today, after four days, we decided we really needed a shower and did not want to deplete our water reserves on the boat so we walked up and across to the Marina and did some laundry as well as took showers....

Now here is another interesting cruising phenomena...laundry is a very social function... you meet all kinds of very interesting people from all different parts of the world (a boat on our dock is from SOUTHAMPTON!!) you chat, exchange info and tips...and the fun part is you will probably see them again along the way or hear them on the VHF.

Well, it is now ten past eight in the evening, the boat is nice and warm, Catherine is about to go to bed with "Sarum" (she's on page 515 out of 1,344 so should be good for another couple of years) and I shall join her, not to read but to sleep to prepare for tomorrow's adventure. We shall be leaving Virginia and entering North Carolina, Catherine has booked us all a dock in a place called Coinjock NC, it's about 37 miles from where we are, but with all the bridges and narrow passages that we must negotiate it will likely take us the best part of the day. We intend to leave here at 07.30 in order to make the first bridge opening at 08.00 hrs.

Bi for now.