okay, the snowbird rendezvous first which, as usual, was its typical organized self thanks largely to charlene clark of hampton, who, unfortunately, was recovering from some kind of bug. we saw some old friends from last year and the year before and made some new ones. for this year, the SAIL rally members were part of the snowbird rendezvous as well, attending mark doyle's ICW 101. we were also scheduled to have signature canvas make a set of chaps for our dinghy and it was a production getting the dinghy down on the dock to be measured in that tight little space. tom was in and out but mostly out and when it came time to raise the dinghy up again to its usual home on the bridge, he was nowhere to be found so i had to supervise that project and find bodies to help. that is when i discovered that my crocs were missing. apparently, tom put them on and walked away because all of his shoes were still on the boat! and he didn't notice that the shoes were a little small??? in any case, that alone was indicative of the week tom was having. i mostly stayed home and worked or took aurora out for long walks. as is usual with the snowbird rendezvous, food was plentiful!
when the rendezvous was over, we had two days before the official start of the SAIL rally - not that it made a difference since the members were mostly there and tom was kept very busy inspecting boats, solving problems and giving advice. then disaster struck. aurora went into heat. she is 7 months old after all and we simply did not have the time to have her spayed and said we would have it done in FL by the vet who took care of consuelo. it has been a while since i have had to deal with this. joan conover, the seven seas cruising association representative who was taking care of inspecting onboard communications, brought me a package of disposable diapers - the human kind. one merely needs to cut a hole in the right spot to pull the tail through. but it is still a pain and poor aurora was just confused about the whole diaper thing. so, well, there is that to deal with now for the next month, on top of everything else, good grief.
we finally left hampton on friday, october 23, 2015. we were to be the "sweeper boat," the last one and let me tell you, when everyone starts their engines all at the same time and then take their lovely time leaving, we sure ate a lot of diesel exhaust. i was running up and down the dock and telling everyone, "go on, get out of here before you kill the rest of us!"
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| sunrise at hampton, ready to roll, let's go ducklings! |
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| it got chilly so in celebration, i wore my duckling socks |
a railroad bridge had been a problem at norfolk causing a lot of bottlenecks but by the time we left, it was no longer a problem, however, there was congestion at the deep creek lock from the pileup and that took a while and we had to anchor and wait for a bit. some people dragged. here we go again... sigh. i'd say we dropped and pulled up anchor about five times before we finally got into the lock and by the time we got out, we had just enough time to get to the dismal swamp welcome center before dark. the fleet was scattered, some rafted up at the welcome center, some at the south mills wall past the bridge, one at arbuckle landing and three at the new free dock north of arbuckle. the last boat to arrive at the welcome center decided not to stop at the arbuckle landing saying it looked too much like "deliverance" and that really cracked me up. the guy was terrified of snakes. i haven't seen a snake yet but i did see a beaver that day!
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| the great dismal swamp canal |
that evening, aurora got to let out some steam by playing with a fixed tibetan spaniel named mocha who tried to hump her anyway. tom and i were worried because we hit something along the way and we had a vibration afterwards indicating damage to the propeller. we could hardly sleep that night and we had to get up early because the people we were rafted to were planning to catch the first locking at south mills. in the end, we decided to go on as well, find some deep water and then run the boat hard to do a diagnostic. al, the lockmaster at south mills, told us that he'd lock us through special if we decided to come back. that was the temporary plan since we were looking forward to robert peek's presentation at the welcome center. but it took us forever to find a straightaway with deep water and by the time we did, we were pretty close to elizabeth city. the good news was that the diagnostic did not indicate a need to haul out and change propellers immediately. we had our good friend, aurora's uncle norman, lined up all ready to drive down from norfolk, too, just in case.
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| passing the south mills wall in search of deep water, getting ready to enter the south mills lock |
so we never got back to the south mills wall as was the original plan and ended up docking at elizabeth city instead. at least we got to go to the albemarle museum this time. that same afternoon, three boats from the fleet arrived. we were a bit disappointed with them not staying for the scheduled presentation - they missed something really good. but they got turned off by the raftup at the welcome center and i suppose i can understand that, but there was lots of room on the south mills wall and a van came to pick the others up to bring them to the welcome center - they could have stayed. the explanation was that they didn't want to run out of space at the free docks in elizabeth city. geez... oh well, you get all kinds. those who stayed were blown away by the presentation. yes, robert peek is definitely worth the price of admission! we managed to get caught up with him while we were at the deep creek lock since he was working there that day. we told him that the same day he had us trapped there for three hours last spring on our way north was the day uncle norman drove us two hours one way to pick up aurora at the beagle farm!
anyway, today, the rest of the fleet arrived and this afternoon, was the rose buddy reception for cruisers that i did not attend because i was too busy working. the original plan was to leave for dowry creek on tuesday, october 27, 2015, because we were supposed to tour the blimp factory tomorrow. unfortunately, that tour got canceled because some military blimp arrived and they shut down the place secondary to security reasons so the plan changed to leave tomorrow instead of the next day but now weather has come up and everything is up in the air about whether to stay or go. i would just as soon stay and avoid getting beat up on the albemarle sound and alligator river but the rest of the week is not looking much better either. the advice to the fleet was to stay one day and go the next, but ultimately, each boat will need to make its individual decision. tom will be up very early in the morning checking the weather and conferring with mark. some of the boats were STRONGLY advised to stay and i think they had no problems with that. quite a few members of this rally have a bit more experience than last year's group. but not all....
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| the elizabeth II was visiting from roanoke island |
quite frankly, there isn't a whole lot in elizabeth city to recommend it even though it calls itself the "harbor of hospitality" - the courtesy docks are nice but the museum wasn't open today nor will it be open tomorrow. i have to work anyway so it makes no difference to me. i just wish aurora would quit bleeding all over my boat. she keeps picking at the diapers. i hear this "heat' thing takes at least three weeks. wonderful. oh well, just this once. and when we get settled in cocoa, off she goes to the vet to get spayed!
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