The Day It Snowed!!!

For those of you who don't know me well, I HATE being cold. I'm not so happy right now, we are experiencing abnormally cold temperatures. When we last left you, we had left Deltaville, VA en route to Norfolk. Well we found a magnificent little free town dock in Portsmouth, it's a tiny little basin that fits about 5 boats, with a beautiful christmas tree. Fantastic. What was even more fantastic was that someone had left the locks off the electrical outlets!!! After much convincing, Josh let me plug the boat in. (Why is that so important, you ask, we have to be plugged in to have power to run our heater) So after dark, I snuck out with our bright yellow extention cord in tow, to the nearest outlet.

If you think that was bad, at least we didn't ruin christmas. Liberty, a boat we're traveling with, also wanted some heat. The closest outlet to them was the one under the christmas tree. So Benoit very stealthily sneaks under the tree to plug in. It's all good, he gets back to his boat turns on the heater....and it all goes dark. He blew the breaker and the entire christmas was unlit!!! And as if that's not bad enough, he now has to crawl back under and claim his electrical cord, while his wife, Sylvie, stands guard.

We left Portsmouth yesterday, Tuesday, for Coinjock. We had a day filled with badly timed bridges. The bridges don't just open when you want them to, that would be to easy. And until that bridge opens you do circles, usually in tight places with people trying to get to the front of the line. And yestesday we had the wind blowing us too. One bridge opening we missed by 5 minutes! We had to do circles for 25 minutes until the next opening.

Somewhere along the way, it SNOWED, not a lot, but little flakes fell from the sky. Needless to say we were frozen. I seriously cannot remember the last I was so cold. Josh had lost feeling in his toes by early afternoon. I had hidden below to get out of the wind. We have been wearing all our warm clothes now for days, they are beginning to feel not so fresh. I didn't know we had to pack snowsuits!

Once we'd passed all the bridges, we leave the narrow and protected channel for a very shallow sound. That was about the time we noticed Ambition, my dad's boat, had stopped rather unexpectedly. His engine had died. Ambition drops the anchor, so they don't get blown in to shallow water. They didn't have any extra fuel (which could be the problem, but my dad thought it had to be a different problem, he wouldn't have run out of fuel), luckily we had one, a very heavy one.

All we had to do was pull up next to Ambition and hand them the fuel jug. Easy, you say....Not at all. It was blowing a steady 30kts, with a decent size chop. Thank goodness Josh can handle the boat like a champ. Ambition refueled, which was the problem, and we were off again. See even pros make mistakes.

(For those who are reading this who know my dad... I'm sure he would like for me to explain how this happened. He's been running his generator and espar heater to keep warm. Well his fuel gauge is not properly calibrated, and he didn't take into account the extra fuel he was consuming to keep warm...so he ran out of gas! He has a long to go before I let him live this one down. You'll all be happy to know he filled his jerry cans at the marina that night.)

Also just in case you think we're making this "cold" stuff I took a picture on the ice on the dock. I can't tell you how happy I am that we are staying in another marina tonight, money very well spent.

We miss you
Josh and Roxanne