The boat is leaking! Luckily it is leaking from the top and not the bottom. I guess it is also lucky that we have mostly caused all the leaks. One of the projects that we only got half done when we were in Annapolis last month was to pull the old waterproof fabric off of our center butterfly hatch to replace it with new fabric. Who knew it was still working as well as it must have been working. Without it it rains in the cabin below. We also only finished putting on half the mast boot that keeps water from pouring down the mast when it rains. There are also a few other leaks that we can see where they are coming from but will have to wait to fix them. Our old boat leaked a lot, Moonraker has never leaked before, time to get working on fixing that.

The weather report today was for some rain and high wind. We only planned on being underway for three and a half hours , we could handle some rain and high wind. We pulled up the anchor around 10:30am this morning and as we started out to the bay the rain came down very hard. It was also foggy. We both agreed, let’s turn around and anchor again, it was too miserable out. We waited for about an hour and the rain was a lot slower and the fog a lot less dense. Off we went again and this time we kept going. It wasn’t pleasant. The rain wasn’t too bad but it was pretty rough, we certainly were getting wet. For the first part of the trip we were pounding into the waves. I didn’t enjoy the ride much but Bill took over and got us there. We even sailed half the time. The wind was sustained 28 to 30 knots with higher gusts. We sailed under jib alone at over seven knots!

We are now basically in Norfolk. We are anchored in Willoughby Bay right before the I-64 tunnel. We can see the tunnel approach from our boat. This is the first “new” anchorage we have stayed at this leg of the trip. I know the picture of our view isn’t very good but it also shows how miserable the weather still is. We are hoping for better tomorrow, but we aren’t very sure it will be. We plan to start through the Dismal Swamp tomorrow. We should be going through the first lock tomorrow afternoon.