As you may have deduced from the weeks of silence, it's been a pretty slow news month in Time Bandit land.

However, we have made it to the USA, Gary and Greta's, Ocean Cruising Club Port Officers for Norfolk VA in fact.

As members of the Ocean Cruising Club we enjoy a number of benefits including in-port support from the resident Port Officers around the world. For example turning up in Orkney to be loaned the PO's car for the day. Motoring the dinghy ashore for the first time in Tasmania to be greeted with, "You must be Stuart and Anne". It scared the pants off us that one, thinking customs had finally caught up with us. But no, it was Jeremy, the PO for his neck of the woods. He'd seen our Ocean Cruising Club flag, looked us up on the members directory and cycled down to welcome us.....feed us pizza, take us on a tour, shopping and laundry.

In 2015 we parked up outside Gary and Greta's riverside condo, leaving there in the November, unravelling our very long bit of string to head for, well, Gary and Greta's where a week or so ago, eight years and a few sea miles later, we tied another knot in our string.

We like the US. It's sunny, the people are polite, supermarkets are bountiful and, the east coast has some great cruising grounds. It also has super fast WiFi so I'm at last making progress on my YouTube backlog.



However, like everywhere, it does have some quirks, the weirdest of which, for a country whose pioneering engineers put the first man on the moon, is the "rest room" doors. For reasons beyond me, or some I don't care to think about, all have a 1/4" to 1/2" gap down each side of the loo door.

It doesn't half put you off your stride.