Hampton to Hospital Point, VA

12.1 nm
Wind: calm to S 5 knots
Maximum speed: 5.8 knots
Average speed: 4. 0 knots
Latitude: 36°50.60’N
Longitude: 076°18.04’W

So we’re having Marcel and Lise over tonight, to repay them for all of their hospitality. I’m making a Cuban black bean soup, which I pray won’t be too spicy. I put in dried habaneros from Karl’s brother’s garden, since the Joy of Cooking called for a Scotch bonnet pepper, and then I found out Lise doesn’t like spicy food. Oh well. I had to pull it all out and infuse some olive oil with it.

But I’m making a salad and biscuits, and Karl rowed across to the mall to buy cheese and crackers, after making one of his infamous fruit punches, and I’m scrubbing the floor and putting on the good tablecloth and burning candles that smell good to take away that “essence of head” that seems to permeate even the best-kept sailboat. Which, as anyone who had read this far can attest, ours is anything but.

Still, though, even in our humble abode—or “aboat,” haha—I feel a desire to entertain grandly, to show our friends as good of a time as they’ve shown us. We don’t have much, but we have I want to be able to share. I think it’s one of the best things about sailing versus hiking. You never have people over to your tarp-tent the way you can have them over to your boat. And it seems like any excuse is good enough for cruisers to invite each other over and then repay the favor. It’s like our own little neighborhood. We’re getting to know the Joneses, and they’re getting to know us.

Tomorrow we enter into the Dismal Swamp canal, about which I’m super excited. Supposedly George Washington used to pal around their with his swamp-loving young buddies, when he was a wee lad. He surveyed the whole thing in about 1740, and your lovely congress is looking to cut funding, even though it’s the oldest continuously operated canal in the United States. And George Washington basically built the thing. It doesn’t get much more patriotic than that, does it? God bless America.

But I’ll get off my high horse. I have Canadians to entertain. French Canadians, at that.