Zero Hour, 9 AM

At long last, our departure day has finally arrived.  Stomach butterflies have been replaced with excitement!

After a mad last-minute gathering up of our very last items on Friday night. we drove to Dolce Vita and moved aboard.  Our daughter came with us to drive our car back home.

The boat was sitting low on her waterline.  I estimate we've loaded between 1000 and 1500 lbs of food and equipment.  The V-berth looks like a storage locker, as it is the only large space to store most of the bulkier items.

Loaded V Berth

Unfortunately, this means that we have to move all this stuff to the main salon every evening, and move it back every morning, as we sleep in the V-berth.  So, we moved it for the first (of many) times and went to sleep.

Saturday morning was lightly foggy, with a heavy dew.  The 7 am temp in the cabin was 58 degrees, which had made for nice sleeping under the blankets, but made it somewhat hard to get out!

Heavy Dew

Our friends Bill & Lisa (s/v Greater Expectations) and Jim & Faith (s/v Dreamcatcher), drove down to the dock to see us off.  It turned into a regular mini dock party!

Sendoff Party

Away from the Dock

And We're on Our Way!

There was almost no wind, so we motored.  (Good practice for the ICW!)  Later in the afternoon the wind came up to about 5, but came around to blow from the South!  Two weeks of North winds, and now that we're moving, we get South!  Oh well, at least we're moving!

Around 1, Joan asked if I was hungry.  I said a little, so she went below to rustle up something.  I was expecting a quickie snack of cheese, lunchmeat, and fruit.  I should have known better.  This is Joan we are talking about.

Lunch is Served

Today was a somewhat short day.  We went down to the Rhode River to anchor for the night, and got there by about 3 pm, covering only 28 nm for the day.  But it would have been a really long day if we had tried to go all the way to Solomons Island in one day.  This is supposed to be a fun trip, not an endurance contest.

Once into the Rhode, we called our friends Pope & Amber (s/v Echo II), who we knew were docked somewhere nearby, and are also preparing to go south shortly.  Turns out they are docked right across from where we were going to anchor, so instead we ended up tying up at their marina and having a most pleasant dinner with them.  Tomorrow, we head for Solomons.

FOLLOW ALONG WITH US

For this trip, I'm going to try and use a position-tracking app on my iPhone called "On Course", that will let folks check up on where we are and show our track for the last day or so.  The link to get to it is http://www.marinetraffic.com/en/ais/home/shipid:4130443

If you have trouble with this link, our MMSI is 338125454. Just enter it in the search box on the marinetraffic.com site.