Rain, fog, etc . . .

I was taking it easy this Friday morning, as I knew that I only had 32 miles to go. I saw a trawler, named Talisman, leave around 7:30 and myself I left at 7:45. As soon as I came out of the canal and into the Currituck sound, I found Talisman, going no more than 3 knots and zigzging in the channel, obviously only relying on its depth sounder. As soon as they saw me zip passed them (this is not that often that a sailboat can pass a trawler), they jumped in my wake and stuck in there. Having the benefit of MaxSea, a good radar, an excellent depth sounder and a compass for which I had checked the deviation, it was not all that difficult to stay in the channel even with only 400 yards of visibility.

The fog cleared up as we were entering the North Landing river and I slowed down to time myself with the opening of the North Landing bridge. Talisman called me on the radio and thanked me for leading the way, which I felt was nice of them.

At North Landing, we had great difficulties waking up the bridge tender. Actually, Talisman called the Centerville Turnpike bridge, pretending they were worried with the well being of the North Landing bridge tender. Coincidence or not, the bridge opened within 2 minutes, too late for Talisman to make Centerville in 24 minutes. So we stayed together thru Centerville and then Great Bridge. I tied up on the west side of the waterway between the bridge and the locks while Talisman carried on.

And then, the temperature which had been almost all right during the day, dropped significantly to the point where I was shivering inside the boat with all my cold weather gear on. So, when Stew showed up at dinner time, it did not take him much convincing to agree to go to a restaurant nearby and get some heat.

By the time we came back to the boat, the temperature was improving, and we were able to sleep comfortably.