Today we finished our trip north in the ICW. We got an early start having spent the night anchored behind Butler Island in about 7 to 8 feet of water. Nice calm spot just off the ICW. An early start for us is now 6:30 to 7:00. Sun is up and it is generally calm. As we got closer to VA and the very busy ports of Hampton, Norfolk and Newport News the number of bridges escalated dramatically and many of them we lift bridges that open on the hour or half hour. Some only open on the hour and we just missed one by about ten minutes, so you wait going is circles, backing up consuming time and trying not to run aground. Then we just got through that one and found out the next one was closed until 4:00 for maintenance. So it's now 1:15 and we have to burn up time until 4:00. I decided to drop the anchor in the middle of the channel figuring no one would care since the bridge was closed. So another two sail boats show up, then about six power boats, two more sail boats and we had a crowd. It was time to get clear of the growing herd so we started pulling the anchor, Oops we caught a log, a very big log.

For any of our readers who followed our trip out the St. Lawrence Seaway, you may recall us talking about our angels. People who show up a just the right moment offering assistance. We guess what, we still have our angels. Picture Alice looking over the bow of the boat with this huge log caught in our anchor chain, boats everywhere in a channel no wider than a two lane highway with wind and current pushing us the wrong way. Not a really good situation until out of nowhere come two guys on Stand Up Boards. Those surf board like things you see people standing on paddling. One of the guys sees the log and immediately paddles over to us and starts working on it. Out of nowhere this guy appears and a moment later the log is gone, the anchor is safely stored and we are clearing out of the mess. How many times do situations similar to this happen to you where you could use some help and voila there it is just when needed? Is somebody watching? You bet!!

We are just about to close a very big loop. back in November of 2009 we sailed out of Hampton, out of the Chesapeake and south to Tortola to begin our Caribbean 1500 adventure. Within a day or so we will sail north across that line officially closing the loop. The pile of memories is awesome, Lucky Bird is simply fantastic and we are so, so fortunate.