Well, we made the trip to Virginia without issue. That's not to say it was boring.
In my last post I said we were going to splash the boat on Saturday. Friday morning that changed to doing it right then. Fortunately we were pretty much ready so when George came by at 8:30 and said we couldn't do it Saturday, we were ready to go and got her in the water in about an hour. Here's a picture of Good Morning Vietnam in the travel lift on the way into the water.
It took Faith, our delivery captain, and I four days to get to Deltaville, Virginia. The boat was in the water on Friday but we didn't leave until Monday morning at 7:00 AM. That blew our "up and out by 11" streak. We had issues getting the halyards (lines that pull the sails up) rigged before we left so we had to motor the entire way though we did have a couple of stretches where we could have sailed had we had sails.
On the second day, still in North Carolina we saw a bald eagle (the bird kind) flying around. A bit later we had four F-15 Eagles (the airplane kind) doing some sort of maneuver over us. They put on quite a show for about 15 minutes before moving out over the ocean.
On the third day we passed through Norfolk Naval Yard. Now that was some interesting scenery and we were boarded by the US Coast Guard. We passed the inspection. There weren't a lot of ships in the naval yard but we did pass the nuclear powered aircraft carrier USS George Washington as she was getting some work done.
We stayed the night at a marina in Hampton, Virginia before our last day on the water, heading up Chesapeake Bay. As we headed out of Norfolk we were passed by the destroyer USS James Williams as she was headed out to sea.
Once we were in the Chesapeake we heard the aircraft carrier USS Eisenhower radioing that they were on there way into Norfolk from sea. From several miles away she was pretty impressive, I wish we'd been a bit later or she had been a bit earlier so we would have gotten a better look at her. We made it to Deltavilla about 30 minutes after Susan and Duncan who had driven up from Beaufort, North Carolina that morning. Just in time to have Good Morning Vietnam hauled out of the water again. Deja vu all over again.
We spent the next couple of the days cleaning, cleaning and cleaning the boat. The broker that is going to list her came by and let us know they had someone that wanted to see the boat on Monday so we worked hard Friday, Saturday and Sunday to have her in good shape. She looked good! Maybe good enough as the wife really liked her on Monday so this weekend her and her husband are going to look at her. It's too much to ask that we could actually sell her the first week she's in Deltaville. But we're still hopeful.
Today we visited historic Jamestown on our "day off". Jamestown, the first permanent English settlement in America, was established in 1607. It's worth a visit if you're in the area, pretty neat. Tomorrow we go back to the boat to do the last couple of maintenance tasks before leaving her.
That's it for now. Take care.
Brian
