Beyond Halloween...

Steve Madden (from M Yacht Services) and his wife Wendy  

were kind enough to invite us to their home for Halloween

Arriving, they had the front of their property looking great...

The children, and parents that came knocking on the door were gorgeous,

All dressed up… We had many Ninjas, The Simpsons, Wonder Woman,  Little Policemen.  

Wendy had made us Roast Lamb for dinner, we had a great night of wonderful food, free flowing wine and great company!

We had spent one month in Annapolis.

Our Rose had all the jobs completed on her that we had organized (thank you to M Yacht Services)…

We reprovisioned to overflowing, taking the opportunity of having an address for a month and stocked up on filters, cleaning products and anything else we had found hard to source, then finally it was time to move on.

We anchored at a spot at Solomons Islands.  We walked to the Annie Marie Gardens and Sculture.

There was an art exhibition on showing “edible” type art - the first two are both "knotted" fabric

This mural is made out of plastic bottles…

The sculpture gardens were great, with lots of artistic bird houses

And many other sculptures, 

including this “miniture” park bench in a playhouse

We dropped anchorage at a beautiful spot in Irvington…

We walked to the local vineyard and had a winetasting

While in Irvington we bought insulation to wrap around our hot water cylinder – it is certainly cooling down!

It is now getting extremely cold.

This is "ice" in the bottom of our dinghy.  

Washington DC

We were so lucky that a friend of Beryls – Ann called and invited us to join her for a day of custom Site-Seeing.

Ann picked us up in her car at Arlington Cemetary… where we began.

Arlington is a military cemetery, now the resting place for over 400,000 people, 
one of these being Ann’s late husband

Whilst there, we saw a horse-drawn caisson, carrying an American flag-draped casket.  We stopped to pay respect as the lone bugler played the 24 lingering notes of Taps, and the 21 gun salute

We went to the final resting place of John F Kennedy and Jacqui Onassis Kennedy

A lot of the places we went were quite surreal, having seen them in movies

The view from Arlington House, The Robert E Lee Memorial was beautiful

We then went to the Kennedy Arts Centre Building...

They had flags of the states and flags of the world
- we were amazed that the NZ flag was so prominent!..

The DC Cathedral, which took 83 years to build was amazing

with beautiful stained glass throughout

We are extremely grateful to Ann for a wonderful day.

Mythical Cousin...

Knowing we were going to be in Annapolis for a month, we contacted Richards Cousin Peter - the Mythical Cousin!  Hearing of him over the years from family, however never meeting.

What a treat we were in for!

We spent last weekend with Peter and his lovely wife Carla.  

We had the most fantastic time.

We chatted together as if we had known each other all our lives

We wined and dined, eating Maryland Oysters and Crab

They took us touring around their town - Baltimore, 

showing us the family home from when Peter was a lad…

They even taught us the game of "American Football"

It was sad to say goodbye, however we have no doubt we will meet again somewhere

They showed us the art of eating "Crab" - yes the table is loaded with whole Crab

(using your hands and a hammer is the trick to it)

While showing us around, we came across this little town with the most interesting name!...

The scenery was gorgoues...

Two guesses what time of the year it is???

Richard with his (not mythical) cousin Peter...

Thank you Carla and Peter for a lovely weekend!

Colours...

We received an email from David & Diana letting us know they would be visiting their son in USA.

It had been 10 years since we had seem them when we visited them at their home in the UK.

(David and Richard had been at Primary and Secondary school together.)

They invited us to join them for the weekend…
We had a really lovely time with them, enjoying the beautiful colours of Shenandoah National Park, and catching up on the 10 years gone by with lovely food, wine and fantastic company…

Thank you so much to Diana and David for inviting us.

Time Flies...

It has been a month and a half since my last entry - where has the time gone???

From Gloucester Harbour we headed back to Boston, collecting parcels that had been sent - 

The most amazing being a parcel from home… 

Lynnette and Dean had sent a box of goodies - thank you, thank you, thank you…

We motor-sailed down the coast and through the Cape Cod Canal.

Vineyard Haven there were hundreds of "Gingerbread Houses"…

 We stopped at many anchorages, with names such as Great Salt Pont, Lake Montauk, New Haven.

Leaving Port Washington, we headed back through Hells Gate, and passed the Statue of Liberty for the second time, arriving at Great Kills.

Here we went ashore and had a fabulous long lunch, followed by a bottle of Champagne on Our Rose to acknowledge having left home two years ago (16 September 2012).

We had a wonderful 20 knot easterly, averaging 7 knots, 

sailing from Cape May to the East Side of C & D Canal, where we anchored for the night beside a "Nuclear Power Station" - something you certainly don't see in New Zealand!

The next morning we came through the C & D Canal and into Chesapeake Bay.

We went to an anchorage called Dollar Ninety Eight and had our good mates Brett and Teresa on Seismic Wave come join us for the night - always great fun catching up.

We spent the next few weeks at various anchorages in the Chesapeake,  having to get our "vacuum packed" winter clothes out of storage (which haven't had to come out since we left South Africa).

We have seen some beautiful sunsets in the last month…

The Annapolis Sailboat Boat is one of the largest in the USA.  

Teresa and Brett left Seismic Wave for a couple of nights and driving up to join us to go to the show.

Rudi (and his partner Robert) from Maverick came to see us on Our Rose, joining us for dinner.