6/8/11 - 6/14/11   There is NO place like New York City.   It makes your senses go on overload.   The brightness and the heat of the day on one side of the street and the dim shade and the cold air conditioning coming out of the doors of stores as you pass on the other,  the smell of pizza then the smell of bus exhaust, the sounds of horns honking, cops whistles and conversations in more languages than you know.  We had people tell us "Don't look like tourists because you'll make yourself a target".   I don't believe it matters.  We saw everything from a guy in his underwear and boots playing a guitar in an intersection to a guy in a three piece suit stepping into a stretch limo.  The marina was the least expensive we could find but it was at the extreme southern end of Brooklyn at the edge of the "projects".  It took a fifteen minute hike, two buses and a subway ride each way every day to get into Manhattan.  We saw a Broadway musical "The Addams Family" (very very good), Central Park, Trump Tower, The Plaza Hotel, and went into Tiffanys and FAO Swartz on Fifth Ave.. We saw The NYC Library, Ground Zero, the outside of the NY Stock Exchange (no entry permitted since 9/11) and went to the top (almost) of the Empire State Building.  We spent one whole day at the Metropolitan Museum (absolutely overwhelming!).   We went to Coney Island and the NY Aquarium.  Lace needed a hair cut so we walked into a hair salon near Wall Street.  Lace sat down in the chair and explained briefly to the hair dresser how she wanted it cut.  The hair dresser nodded and made all the right sounds but we found out later that she mostly only spoke Russian.  The hair cut wasn't exactly what she had in mind but Lace was very gracious and we took a group photo.  On Sunday we took the requisite bus and subway rides up to the north side of Brooklyn and attended services at the local Presbyterian church (which is a school cafeteria most days) with our friend Elsa.  Later we ate lunch with her and her daughter Cassie and then visited Cassie's apartment where we met her husband John.  After a week of New York and again on the edge of exhaustion we put some groceries on the boat and shoved off past the Statue of Liberty and up the Hudson River.

5/31/11 - 6/7/11   Our next aim is New York City and Lace is not feeling well at all so we wasted little time heading north.  The temperature approached the high nineties for the final day in the Chesapeake so we headed for Worton Creek Marina where we could plug the boat into shore power and get all three a/c's working.  A short transit of the C+D Canal (connects Chesapeake Bay and Delaware Bay) and we stopped in Delaware City Marina to wait for weather and tides for the trip down the length of Delaware Bay.   This transit proved to be a tough one.   The start was very rough and slow going but eventually the tide changed and we ended up making almost 10mph with a following wind when we turned the corner into Cape May New Jersey.  We anchored out for four more days as we made our way up the east coast of New Jersey (marshy and unremarkable) and we pulled into Marine Basin Marina in Brooklyn, New York.  The odometer now read 3238 miles since we left Seabrook, TX.

5/24/11 - 5/30/11  We always wanted to see Washington D.C. so it was exciting to arrive.   Gangplank Marina was not much.  It was more geared for "live-aboards" working in D.C..   It was, however, very convenient for us because the subway and grocery store were within walking distance.   Over the next four days we visited the Smithsonian Air and Space Museum (awesome!), The Sackler Arthur Gallery (okay), The African Art Museum (very good), The Hershorn Museum (okay), The U.S. Capital Building (private tour by our representative's aide was worth the trouble to arrange because we avoided huge crowds), The Library of Congress (worth the visit), Museum of Natural History (not so much), American History Museum (very good), and several art galleries.   We walked and gawked and snapped pictures in ninety degree heat until we couldn't walk anymore.   Lace picked up a bronchial problem that left her coughing and weak so after some last minute provisioning we shoved off for the three day trip back down the Potomac and back into Chesapeake Bay.  I don't believe we could have survived another day.

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5/20/11 -  5/23/11  There is so much to say about the Chesapeake Bay that it is hard to start.   After reading Michener's novel "Chesapeake" it was actually sort of a disap- pointment to begin motoring up the shore line and not see indian teepees with camp fires smoking in front of them.  It is, after all, only a body of water with thousands of expensive houses built to absorb it's beauty and fertile fishing.   Our aim was Washington D.C. so we didn't dawdle making our way to the mouth of the Potomac River.   The first evening in the river we made anchor in the middle of a small inlet called "The Glebe".   It is only a couple of hundred yards across surrounded with modest homes.   As we sat on the back deck for after-supper cocktails a lady came out of one of the houses carrying her french horn and sat down at her dock.   After some scales she gave us a 30 minute concert of popular song fragments ending in a full length rendition of "Somewhere Over The Rainbow".   She even responded when we yelled "More!".  After one more song she curtsied as we applauded.   Unforgettable!   A couple more days and we made our way into Gangplank Marina in Washington.

5/4/11- 5/19/11  The Dismal Swamp is a very narrow waterway with tall cypress trees on both sides that leech tannin into the water making it the color of mahogany.  It is also pretty shallow so one is well advised to pay attention to the depth sounder.  After that we entered the Elizabeth River and the huge Navy seaport of  Norfolk / Portsmouth, Virginia.  Suddenly we felt dwarfed by the commercial ship traffic and the even larger naval vessels and dry docks that line the shore.  The America's Great Loop Cruisers Association "Rendezvous" was to be held in Norfolk but wasn't for ten more days so after one night at Fort Monroe we settled in to Scott's Creek Marina in Portsmouth to rest, catch up on engine maintenance, see the sights and socialize with our Louisiana friends Larry and Jane on the Bavarian Cream.  A good time was had by all and on the 14th we moved the boat over to Waterside Marina at the Sheraton Hotel.  We had three straight days of class lectures on what to expect on the waters ahead and in the afternoons we opened the boat up for interested people to board and discuss the finer points of  looping. Back to Scott's Creek for final provisioning and we were off again and into famous Chesapeake Bay.