Day 3: November 18, 2008

Port: HHN in Deale, Maryland (38.79N / 76.53W)

Weather: The forecast for today was for winds up to 20-25 knots with gales of 30 knots. We had a maximum temperature of 40 degrees F and a minimum of 31 degrees F. NOAA reports that our highest wind speed was 28 with a 38 knot gust coming out of the NW. We had slight snow fall and a humidity averaging 61%. In layman's terms, it was windy and cold!!

Due to what we thought the weather was going to be, we did not leave HHN today. We believed that the wind was going to be too strong. We did travel over to HHS (the other Herrington Harbour) to fuel up. The wind was brisk and freezing cold! But we made it back to dock within 2 hours. We have since then hid ourselves below, eating lunch, and getting warm. I've already finished one book. By the way The Secret Life of Bees, AMAZING!! I would recommend it to anyone as a quick, fun, and heartwarming story. It's also a new movie!

As always, something exciting has to happen... Our setup for our dingy broke today on the way to HHS. We didn't completely lose our dingy but suddenly it was held on with only 2 lines. Upon returning to HHN, we called Frankie (the designer/builder of the contraption) back at the boat, where he picked it up to reweld some parts and rework some design so this doesn't happen again. For some reason, when starting the motor we had also lost our tachometer and voltmeter. We continued to HHS, but again, upon return, we had Larry, our mechanic, was also down fixing that. Turns out it was really simple and easy to fix, as the alternator was accidentally turned off while working on some other part of the engine.

We were able to have some nice warm showers this evening, and hid in the heated lounge until our hair was somewhat dry. We spent the evening with some good friends of ours here at the marina, Danny and Sharon. We sipped on some wonderful Bermudian rum and shared some good laughs, despite being cold.

Mentally, we all are ready to go. It's frustrating to not be able to leave yet. We believe that Thursday will be our day.

Good weather and happy sailing!