screen shots

Having pledged to myself not to turn on the television until 6:30, just in time for the kickoff, I've been doing a little web browsing and found Barry's video from a sail we did in the fall of 2013 (I think).  I had forgotten about it.  Barry has been on board a couple of times and I'm usually thanked with at least a nice bunch of photographs and sometimes a video.  You can find this one here.  

You can tell it was a busy, blustery day on the water.  I think it was the weekend of the Great Chesapeake Bay Schooner Race,with all the tall ships heading out the morning after the captains and crew party, plus a festival of some sort - maybe the wine festival - at Town Point Park.  Throw in gusty wind and some traffic - tugs and freighters - and we had an interesting fun day on the water.

I regret to say I will not be doing as much sailing on the Elizabeth River as in past years.  The ramp is still marked "closed" and there is no sign of any attempt to rebuild it.  There is a nice ramp up the southern branch of the river, but it involves motoring through an industrial/military area - lots of security boats, flashing lights and weapons on display - and a train trestle too.  Instead I will be making the drive down to Elizabeth City, NC for a lot of my daysailing, which will be fun.  It's a nice drive, the river is beautiful down there and with the mile-plus motoring through the shipyards of the Elizabeth River it is basically a wash on time - twenty minutes of motoring past shipyards and commercial docks vs. 25 minutes extra time on the road driving along the edge of the Dismal Swamp to a nice ramp in a park area on the Elizabeth City waterfront.  I'll take the extra time on the road.