Short 14NM motor day today. Lazy morning watching the planes fly overhead. I finally braved the water as I wanted to jump in to check for some play in the rudder which I need to do from the water. I've kind of been dreading this as the water isn't very appealing or warm. It was about as unpleasant as I expected at 18C or so. I'm not sure how warm it was (our sea temp gauge is giving random readings lately), but it felt even colder than 18C. The visibility was not great and it was cold enough I had a hard time concentrating so it didn't go very well. There is some play in the rudder which I was hoping wasn't true. It's not much, but I'll need to inspect this more when I can stand being in the water and see whats going on. For now I'm going to hope that isn't a big problem. I don't recall any play in the rudder in the spring before we launched, so it's worse than it was then, but at the same time, it didn't seem like much. I'll put that on my watch list...

It was a zero wind day, so we just motored off anchor and down the bay towards Hampton. On our way down we crossed paths with a boat on AIS named the Toucan Duet. We are pretty sure its the same boat we used to often see out sailing at home, a rather beautiful looking Tartan 4100 with a blue hull. The boat had been for sale in Kingston for some time (we often ogled over the listing), and presumably it's been sold as it was under a US flag now. But we are pretty sure it's the same boat, as beautiful as ever. Funny to randomly cross paths with it down here.

We had booked three nights at Safe Harbour Blue Water Marina in Hampton after not being able to get a slip at the town marina. Blue Water Marina is primarily for large boats (40' or larger) which isn't something we realized until we got there. Our little boat was kind of comically small in amoungst the mostly double our size boats. It turns out it was the beginning of the Salty Dawg rally so the marina was full of boats that were taking part in that.

The marina itself was great, very helpful and got us setup on an end dock, as we wouldn't have fit very well in the insanely large slips with piling tie offs. Even at the end dock, we only used up half of it. Marina facilities were super nice, and free laundry which is such a blessing as a cruiser.

Nice to be back on land after several days at anchor. Showers were in order, and then we hiked it out for some good chinese food and some groceries. I always find it amusing how constraint can make things seem special. A shower and chinese food probably doesn't sound very special, but boy oh boy, did it ever feel special.

We've got three nights here, time to do some Halloween activities, and then we'll set off into the ICW making our way south again.