Whoa, What Happened!!!

I got lost since last I posted. Sooooo much has happened this summer, I can't keep up myself. We stayed in Deltaville VA, for a month and met lots of new friends that we hope to see along our travels. We went to many parties and potluck dinners, learned several new card games, and how to play "fancy" dominos. Our good friends. Tim and Mary, are in the process of selling thier house like we did and setting out for a cruisers lifestyle. We've met a lot of people with Colorado roots including our friends, Kevin and Becky, traveling with thier dog, Danny. They hail from the Gunnison area and we hope to see them again this winter in the Bahamas. They are already there and it is rumored that their trip there was quite the adventure. We did make it to the Boat Show in Annapollis and spent lots of "Boat units" there. We didn't however make it to Washington, DC, because it started to get cold in the north and we had lots to do to get ready to head south again.
     Back to Deltaville, we went and had all the goodies we bought at the show delivered there. I spent several weeks there installing our goodies. The best thing I installed was a new linear drive autopilot. It has been great not having to manhandle the helm at every point. I also installed a new anchor windless, an 802 Icom SSB radio, an FM antena on top the mast, and rerigged the dingy to ride better on the davits. So now we have broken free of the hold that Deltaville, we can get have headed south again.
     We decided to travel down the ICW (Intra Coastal Waterway) for a while since most reports of travels on the outside have been pretty bad. The Hateras area can be nasty in the best of times so we decided to skip that and the Cape Fear area.  We did manage to go through the Dismal Swamp Canal which happened to end up a wonderful trip.  The trees in the east were in full color and not to be missed.  Way nice!  The ICW is challenging enough in itself.  There are bridges and shoals and trees to

be avoided. 

    

     We know about the trees in the Dismal Swamp since one took out our wind indicator on the top of the mast and Shane had to climb up there and change it out. Shane doesn't mind that a whole lot since he is our deck monkey and likes climbing around in the rigging anyway. Fortunately, we didn't have to experience a grounding on any of the many shoals along the way even though it came close a couple of time. It is waaaaay stressful in some areas. So we did the ICW to the Cape Fear outlet and took off across the Atlantic to Charleston, SC. We are now tied up again at the Cooper River Marina. It's nice to visit with old friend from our stop here in the spring.

So that is the short story. Lots of stories could be told and I'll try to get to some of those.

Really, I  mean it this time.