Down the Chesapeake Bay...

We had beautiful beach anchorages in Cornfield Harbor by Point Lookout State Park on the Potomac River and then on Mobjack Bay by the abandoned lighthouse. The Chesapeake Bay doesn't get any prettier than they were. Then the wind came up and we got to have a daylight sail toward Norfolk, VA. We inflated our dinghy and carry it upside down on the bow.  Towing it slows us down and we dislike deflating it each time we use it. So the compromise is to bring it aboard and carry it on deck.  We have a dinghy cover we will use to protect it from the sun.

You can laugh at the head phones -we did, too!  We saw them at the Boat Show a few years ago and chuckled.  They are called "marriage savers", guaranteed to reduce friction during anchoring.  Jay's hand signals used to work well for forward, reverse, neutral, power up and slow down. Then we noticed one dark night after a night sail that the signals did not work when it came time to anchor since I couldn't see him in the dark. We began to consider the headphones as being a practical solution and finally bought them last year. They were perfect when we left the Little Choptank the other night and when we anchored in Solomon's at 3AM.  So we have been using them all the time.  I get to hear all the little comments Jay has been making for years and I have been missing. Those comments are happy ones since the Captain loves his windlass and wash down hose.

After much discussion, we bypassed Hampton and came on to Norfolk.  The naval ships are impressive .

Much commercial traffic is here, too, with tugs, dredges, ships, and Coast Guard vessels. We had to include this photo of a freighter being loaded with containers.  This is how we thought our boat was going to look as we kept packing on more gear and equipment for our trip!!  But we are all still floating...

We could have meandered much longer coming down the Chesapeake Bay but decided we could do that on another future Bay trip. Here we are anchored at Mile Marker 0 - the beginning of the Intracoastal Waterway from Norfolk to Florida.  We took the dinghy ashore to a public dock behind the USS Wisconsin to find some milk and fruit in Norfolk.  Portsmouth is on the other side of the river behind the boat.