Here I am at Deltaville Marina in Jackson creek just off of the Chesapeake bay.

It is time to blog to you all again. I have a few days to catch up on because I was getting acclimated. No more excuses, so here goes...

Deanna and Dave drove me out on tuesday we left home and arrive in VA Wednesday. We drove straight here! so thursday was just sleeping and unloading my stuff. I forgot my razor - yup so I'm going hairy for a few days. That's not too bad in the scheme of things. I have met all of Ben's "guy friends". He has quite the male bonding thing going on here. I think Kurt might be sad he lost his coffee mate to me. I'm not getting in between those two. They can continue their coffee clutch in the mornings... I just happen to tag along. Then there is Roy, Dave, Hugh (which I have not met yet) and Graham. Here I thought Ben was lonely, ha ha ha, nope he was well taken care of, or maybe he took good care of those guys. Anyway what a nice community here. Everyone is so willing to help and tell stories of sailing. Especially Michael who is an 82 or so year old man that is all bent over with arthritis and he sails every year to the bahamas and back. He has been living on his boat for 30 years. yikes! He has many stories and on wednesday we have a date to meet in the lounge so he can show us the bahamas. ok, i have digressed ... friday was filled with moving our boat closer to the water but still on the hard. We are having a bunch of work done on the boat so we can sail it easier from the cockpit. That is we are mounting new equipment on the stand that holds the binnacle at the helm. I will be so happy to not run up and down the companion way to see our gps and charts and radar. The radar will be mounted in front of me so when the big ships are coming I can see them better without leaving my post. I can't wait. In doing this we need to de-mast the boat, so they can put the radar up there, the wind transducer, (tells us the wind direction and speed - now a real sailor would not need such an instrument, but I like things that rhyme with safety. and I will feel more safe with that, plus we need our anchor light to shine brighter! last year one speed boat was heading for us in the late night - they might have been a little happier than during the day time - anyway - as they just missed us they were yelling that they could not see our anchor light. ok they have a point.) Also some new exciting equipment is called an AIS humm what is the name oh yes, automatic identification system. this means when a big boat is bearing down on us we will be alerted on our radar the boat's name so we can hale them and we will send off a signal that we are around with our name. It also gives us information about the vessel plus their heading and speed. All good for me and good for those that come and visit. this all will take a while for things to get done on the boat. meanwhile we have our list of projects on the boat. I will get to those as the days progress. so today was us in a new spot. I'm sure Ben will talk about our precious cutie-cat named Lila! oh my she is a dear! She climbs up and down the ladder with ease. She explores the woods and prowls about during the night. You guessed it. Once we moved she was disoriented and went back to the place where the boat was and was crying and crying until the neighbor sailor picked her up and brought her back to us. She climbed up the ladder and did not move from this place all day. Right now Ben and her are out walking around so she knows how to get to the woods and back again. Today was a great day filled with to-dos. I'm also trying to work from the boat more this year so I did accounting stuff today, caught up on all emails, and I will tomorrow start writing scripts for some vlogs that our Deaf Advisory Board will produce this year. all fun! Oh and Ben bought me a small keyboard that hooks into garage band so I can play the piano and compose music on the computer. amazing. I'm sure I will have fun with that project in my spare time. So today we pulled off as much of the rigging that is connected to the mast as we were comfortable doing. We biked to a small farmers market and picked up some fresh strawberries and other yummy healthy food. Then at night we had the perfect date. there was a band playing just down the way. We kayaked - note the picture of me kayaking - this year we plan to kayak more than dinghy places. This was my second time kayaking - the first was on a calm day (see picture) tonight the waves all had white caps. humm if I was in a canoe I'd think twice about going out and also there would be a good chance of tipping. Ben was all gun-ho (as normal), i know I'm an excellent paddler and I've rarely tipped a canoe, but I have to say those white caps looked big from far away. We packed a small supper of sandwiches and headed to the kayaks. I got in and I said, "I have to say I'm a bit apprehensive with the white caps." Ben replied, "we only have to go as far as you want if you think it is too hard we will go back." On one hand I wanted to try the adventure on the other hand I have not tipped in a kayak before - i don't know how to right it once I flip over, I think I could pull the skirt off and get out if I could not right it. I brought nothing with me so to lose anything important except for my glasses (I have a spare pair but they are from the late 80s and are quite funny looking on me). So I cautiously got in the kayak and waited for Ben to join me. It was a little wave y at first and we had not even come close to the white caps yet. We were paddling against the wind and current. To my happy surprise I was moving forward into the wind and current and making progress. The waves seem to just splash around me. This was so fun, I was bobbing like a cork not tippy like a canoe! I felt real solid in the small boat. I decided to have a few waves hit me on the side of the boat to see what would happen and I just floated up and down. amazing - who would have thought it?! I could not wait to kayak back. we went to a concert called The Little Big Band. It was two women and one drummer. They play piped in music from the computer and sing live to that music. At first I was smiling inside as to how silly it was, but by the end of the night we were dancing to their oldies songs. It was very fun! It was then time to head back, it was dark. What fun it was to ride the waves at our backs! what a hoot! now I am in the cabin listening to the wind blow hard but not rock the boat. I have gotten a lot of sun today, worked hard on the boat and played hard with dancing and singing. All-in-all a great day and a great few days. Let the blogging begin. please feel free to comment or email or just plain call me for fun. I'm not that far away. blessings abound Pam