Amor Fati

It was a brisk sail across the Albermarle Sound. Winds of 27 knots. We reefed and had a speedy sail across it but man! it was cold. We had our very own air show as the fighter jets flew past us.

We moored in Lambs Marina just beyond Elizabeth City. I needed to get something printed and went into the marina to ask them to do it but they had just reopened and all the printers were at his house. So he told Randy, just another boater to take me to the library, which was closed because they were moving. Randy continued to drive me around until I found somewhere, waited and brought me back and point blank refused to take anything for it. Later we tried to get an uber to go into town but there wasn’t one available and the cost was $35. I found out the number of the taxi and it was $8!!

The weather the next day was awful. Cold wet drizzly and I thought the lock opened at 11 30.am We were too early. We arrived at 11 10am. and then found out that it was at 11.00 am. Not to worry. we went off a side creek and I found one or two things to fix and we got ready for the 13.00 opening and promptly went aground. We hit a log and had to wait until 17.00 pm for tow boat to get us out. The cost of the tow was $1900 thank god for tow boat insurance. But as we had discussed earlier. Amor Fati means embrace fate. The weather was so horrible it probably would have been misery in the swamp. We hunkered down for the night, played a couple of games of quiddler and Race sang us a few shanties.

Race spotted a beautiful fawn still with its spots on in the swamp but it disappeared before we could picture it.

This was our last day with Race on board. He was fantastic. Its not easy being on board with the same people for 10 days but Race aced it. We are very sad to see him go but hope he returns soon.

In the meantime we have been FB messaging. Hayden and Radeen Cochrane the gurus of Island Packets. Their boat is called Island Spirit. Hayden met us in the most amazing free dock in Portsmouth. The first night we went to the Commodore theatre to see Top Gun which was pretty ironic after our air show.

The next day Hayden showed us how our stay sail boom wasn’t necessary and this freed up the whole deck on the bow. He then showed us how to put our preventer on so that we can control it completely from the cockpit. How wonderful is that!

We had a great night at the German beer garden and a bit of a sing song after. Parting is such sweet sorrow. Race is gone and Island Spirit is gone. but we hope to cross paths again.