Hello Chesapeake Bay!

YES!

Spill the Wine and her crew at the Waterside Marina, Norfolk VA

Not sure if you can tell, but we're pretty happy about being here!  In fact, we've almost bruised ourselves from patting each other on the back.  But we're here, in the Chesapeake Bay - YES!

Al (a.k.a. "Mr. Fitch") is off to Germany on a school trip so now we are on easy street exploring the bay with some time on our hands until we reach our final goal of Baltimore.

We left Wrightsville Beach with forecast winds of 30 knots.  Normally, that would be too high for a pleasure cruise but it was to be following seas so we decided... heck yea!  The wind didn't disappoint and NOAA was just a little off on their wave predictions of 3-5 feet.... it was more like 5-8, but with the following seas it was an easy ride and the 30 knot breeze pushed the boat beautifully, we actually felt it could be a lot more before any kind of concern.  The green water breaking waves were fun to watch and ride.  My only disappointment was that we should have spent an hour or so heaving to... it would have been very very excellent practice, but we wanted to get to Beaufort.  Sometimes I really have to ask myself.... "what's the rush?"... that's such a ridiculous question when a sailor asks that upon oneself.

From Beaufort, NC we sailed thru the night around Cape Hatteras (231 NM) with nearly perfect weather.  We choose to take two hour shifts and that worked perfectly.  The sun went down at 8:30 p.m.  the moon came up at 2:14 a.m.  and the sun followed by coming back up at 5:40 a.m....   In between Barb, myself, the autopilot, the radar, the chart-plotters, the AIS, the VHS, the SSB, the genoa, and the mainsail all had a fantastic time.

We're really not sure about the schedule for the rest of the trip.  The Chesapeake portion of the above schedule is just something I wrote down looking at a cruising guide.  We have some time and plan to slowly make our way up the Chesapeake.  We've spent two days now in Norfolk and have really enjoyed this town.   Once again we feel lucky to have a great slip close to everything downtown.