Don't Make Plans

Everything was great,and still is really.We got away from Oriental and had marvelous sailing all the way to the southern end of the Pungo -Alligator canal where we anchored for the night and then had a slow sail up the canal to the south end of the Alligator River,only 20 or so miles .There we celebrated Independance Day on our own with not another thing in sight except "swarms "of wasps who somehow spotted us way offshore and figured we'd be a nice place to spend the night.Like most wasps though they didn't hang around once they knew they wern't welcome.FLIES...LEARN SOMETHING HERE!Another triffic sail up the Alligator and over the Albermarle then finally had to motor up the Pasquatank where we decided to go through the bridge and an hour or so closer to the first lock at The Great Dismal Swamp.

Had a great bug free night at marker 13 behind Goat Is and raised the anchor at sun up
This year,instead of travelling over a "mirror" we were cutting through a carpet of green.Unfortunately just as we raised the anchor a huge alumin(i)um boat overtook us and parted the way for us but it was closing in behind us again so thatwas pretty neat.
The trip up the canal (the weed had cleared) was its usual beautiful thing except ,for the first time for us,it was the attack of the killer flies.Well they bit and we killed.Withapologies to any Budhists this was about half an hours worth of the carnage.
A couple of days in Norfolk was fairly uneventful except one afternoon a distant rumble heralded the arrival of about 50 " cigarette boats"It was quite impressive really as most of them were crewed by guys that looked like bouncers or something and decorated with bikini 'girls' draped over them.The boats that is ,not the bouncers.Anyway had to get my crew into a bikini but she didn't want to 'drape'over any part of the boat.
So on a sunny Monday morning we left Norfolk,passed a sub on its way in (lost concentration and 'kissed ' a huge green channel marker!) and headed out between Cape Charles and Cape Henry picking up the forecast 15 to 20 from the SW and on the way to Cape May to wait a couple of days of northerlys out and continue to Newport or Marthas Vineyard.But....at about 1am we got hit by 40-45knts which shredded our(ageing)genoa and gave us quite an exciting 20 minutes or so.At the same time the 'tail' of the wind generator came loose and added to the excitement.Well,Jabiru wasn't that worried and if we'd had a camera going we might have even caght a wry smile on her.So on went the motor for the rest of the trip to Cape May (about 50 miles)where we licked our wounds,slept and ordered new sails.That's about it .We're still here,which is cool cos it's a nice place and the sails are all measured and ordered.Should be about a month. So we'll go for a sail around Long Island Sound for three weeks or so and come back through and pick them up on the way south again.Seems like a PLAN. Doh...there goes that word again.
Here's atypical pretty Cape May house.