It's been a very wet and windy four days as Hurricane Joaquin has headed northeastwards and clashed with a high pressure moving southwestwards with Chesapeake Bay just about where the two weather systems met. The good news is that we've survived all this and today the weather is a lot calmer with even a hint of sunshine. The forecast for the rest of the week is more sunshine so we've put the bimini back up and plan to head off north tomorrow.
As ever when we sail the wind is from the wrong direction! And the next few days are no different so we'll take our time and not put ourselves under any pressure to be anywhere by a deadline.
Surprisingly the last few days have passed fairly quickly: We went to Richmond on Saturday and visited Christ Church this morning, one of the oldest churches in the area, dating from the early 18th century but not so old by UK standards. Evenings have been spent with Dan and Jackie off the neighbouring boat and have been fun. So all in all not a bad few days and the enforced rest has at least given Paul's ribs time to ease a bit. He will still have to take things steady for a while yet. Tomorrow will bring another first as we will be pumping out our holding tank on the dockside. Our normal evacuation procedure (opening the valve and letting gravity do its bit) is not permitted within 3 miles of the coastline and they are pretty hot on that round here. Better be good!