Two weeks of family time with our new granddaughter has ended. We needed to move south before cold weather arrives. Claudia had tears in her eyes as we painfully said goodbye to Shay, Kara and Ryan. I tried to comfort her but I know it didn’t help much.

During our stay in D.C, with the never ending tropical storm Ian, we were able to fix some major and minor things that came with the aging of the boat. We’re ready for Norfolk, VA, getting to the bottom of the Chesapeake, and entering the ICW proper, our next agenda.

Weather forecast for the next 5 days is nice but cool, with highs in the 60 and lows in the 40s. We’re leaving on the Columbus day long weekend so recreational boat traffic might be busier than usual. We’ll need to pick our anchorage carefully to avoid places that normally attracts the beer-drinking weekend boats as they tend not to set anchors properly that leads to disasters.

As we finally headed out, we had beautiful conditions. A breezy but well mannered westerly gradually veered northwesterly. The water was flat. The sunshine was out and we had a delightful day. As the sun started to set, we dropped anchor north of Port Tobacco River, near the town where a historical meetings of the Lincoln kidnapping conspirators were held at a hotel in town – a town with two female Confederate spies.

We are now one third of the way out of the Potomac River.