As you can see, today was anything but dismal but we have entered the Dismal Swamp and so....Now yesterday, THAT was dismal! Fog, rain, rain, mist, a cold, raw wind, just the sort of day for staying in port. We enjoyed our one day in Norfolk greatly and even managed a lucky reunion with our friends from the sailboat Atalanta whom we met five years ago on our grand Scheme.

By leaving from Norfolk today, we catapulted our selves five days ahead of our previous trip, which makes us hopeful we'll be in Charleston for Thanksgiving. but for now, its just nice to be motoring along through this gorgeous canal. Of course, I managed to get sick so really Anne and Evelyn and Leslie did much of the running of the boat while I tried to do some work and ended up sleeping in the cockpit! Ah well...

tonight we are tied up with eight other boats at the North Carolina visitors center. It's just a typical highway-side welcome center except that this one has the ICW in its backyard so they built a dock to welcome the boaters as well as the motorists. The dock only fits about three boats so the rest of us are rafted off the sides of those boats...Its reported that as many as twenty-three boats have been here at once! Mind-boggling. Of course, one benefit of being rafted like this is its very social: We had wine and cheese with the folks next to us who turn out to be from Quebec...a lot of Canadian boaters heading south!