After nearly 40 hours of sailing, we arrived to the Chesapeake Bay and anchored in Hampton Flats off Fort Monroe at 10:30PM on the second night of our trip. Again, there was little wind on this trip and we had to motor sail the entire trip. But given that we were rounding Cape Hatteras which can be a bad passage given the currents and counter winds that have wrecked hundreds of ships we were thankful that the weather, though not optimal for sailing, was good for making this passage.

Hampton is the place where our offshore trip started with the 1500 Caribbean Rally in 2007. We crossed nearly 1500 miles in 9 days to Tortola, British Virgin Island with a group of 69 other vessels. It was exhilarating to be back to the Chesapeake and to Hampton. We celebrated 4th of July at the home of one of the Caribbean 1500 volunteers who two years ago had taken Daniel to her house for Halloween. Daniel reported having a fantastic Halloween with Ms. Trudy.

Hampton is also a very historic town. The city has done a marvelous job in restoring and creating a very attractive downtown with a wonderful science center. Their History museum is also worth a visit. We docked Kikuyu at the Hampton Piers, the city marina, right in downtown. From it we walked the town and saw many of the places of interest. We felt very welcome at Hampton and are now considering moving Kikuyu there for some of the time during the year.

After 6 days we headed up the Chesapeake. We said good bye to our friends Paul and Lynne from s/v Beaudacious who decided to dock their boat in Hampton while they returned to their home in Sacramento, CA. We had sailed with them since mid March from San Andres to Providencia, Colombia and had had a wonderful time exploring places together and eating numerous delicious dinners together. For sure we were going to miss not having them as our "neighbors".