Hampton, Virginia - Sail Rally

For four days we have all been doing many tasks and chores to prepare for the start of the Sail Rally down the ICW – cleaning, fueling, shopping, installing, repairing, maintaining, pumping, and on and on.  West Marine has a courtesy shuttle that will take us to their store and grocery shopping or any other store we need.  They only do this during the week of the Salty Dog Rally and the Caribbean 1500 which is this week – how lucky!  We stayed at a wonderful marina at the Hampton Maritime Center.  There are 19 boats in the Sail Rally and all but 3 boats are here at this marina.  Salt water is so very different on a boat than fresh water.  Since we spent almost a month sitting in Annapolis, we hired a diver to clean the bottom of Silent Dream this week.  Our boat speed wheel had stopped recently due to something on it – could have been barnacles!  The Sail Rally had cocktail parties several nights and meetings for us in preparation for the trip which starts on Saturday, November 1 st.