We looked carefully at the surface analysis and forecast charts, using an iPad application called WeatherFax. It is fabulous. I didn't have to mess with the SSB as long as I had wifi or 3G for the iPad. I also consulted with Jeff Dunn, retired USAF meteorologist who said, "Defiantly [sic] Thursday". So Thursday it was.

We left the dock at 7:15 headed for Norfolk with a good forecast of beam to broad reaching and that's what we had.

We reached for about 24 hours then had to start the engine and motor into Norfolk, arriving 27 hours after departure which gave us an average of 6.7 knots for the 180 mile passage. We tied up at Bay Point Marina at about 10:15 on Friday morning. I had a sense of wonder as we motored across the Chesapeake Bay Bridge/tunnel where cars we under our keel traversing the waterway at 50 feet below the surface. It's an engineering marvel to be sure.

The overnight passage was marked by cool temperatures and clear skies. Orion was a familiar friend as was the North Star, high in the sky at northern latitudes. It was fun layering on the sailing gear and changing watches every three hours or so. Yvonne tried to let me sleep more than my share - and I loved her for it... She cooked most all the meals while I ran the systems and kept tabs on the machinery. Time goes quickly when passagemaking - oddly enough. Yvonne reads e-books and I listen to music on my Sony Walkman MP3 player. I marked a waypoint on the Garmin 76 GPSMAP every hour or so in case the Raymarine C80 took a dump but it never did. I must confess that I didn't even pull out a paper chart for these passages, relying entirely on the C80 and backing it up with a Garmin 76 GPSMAP, iPad and iPhone and also had the laptop with Fugawi on it, so four chartplotters on board to back up the main unit seemed safe enough. And it was.