This is the day we’ve been planning and waiting for!  Monday, October 8, and after a champagne send-off from family, with lots of waving and well-wishing, we are on our way at 12:30 p.m.  Wish I could say that we sailed off into the sunset, but it was more like cruised out into a steel, gray, drizzly sky.  But that’s ok – the sun tried to come out a couple of times, but, unfortunately, it finally gave up.  We definitely knew it was fall – very chilly and instead of the warning cries of the osprey, we heard the honking of geese overhead.   Our cat, Lucy, did finally figure something was up and hid under the bed, but I was able to convince her to come along, and I thought she had acclimated nicely especially once we anchored for the night.  Yes, finally underway, and it is with a personal sense of  “apprehensive relief”.   We stopped for diesel at Kent Narrows and proceeded through the bridge with no trouble (saw eight and nine feet of water on both sides), but then the weather turned a little worse – light but steady drizzle, and we decide to go to Dividing Creek in the Wye River for the night.  The wind was from the north and this would be a very protected, lovely anchorage.   We settle in, finish off the last of the champagne with a steak dinner…I think this might be ok…and then things start to deteriorate.   I don’t exactly know what happened, and a better writer than I could really run with this story, but here goes…the cat it seems had a bit of an intestinal issue, and it seems that the cat box (which, believe me, is the best cat box that any cat could possibly want) didn’t quite meet her needs.  I guess a polite way to put this would be to say that there was an issue with how to get rid of the previous night’s digested meals, and it seems that the only helpful means of egress was OUR BED.  We were watching football (yeah, I know – we have a TV on the boat), and this odor started approaching.  And I’m thinking, “what on earth”…and we start looking around, and “YIKES!!!!”  Now we have this really nice bedspread – it came with the boat – it has to be dry-cleaned, and now THERE’S POO ON IT!”, and this is only the first day!  Well, Bob, for some bizarre reason, did not throw the cat overboard, nor did he then throw me overboard as I was the one who convinced him  (with much protesting on his part) to get the cat nine years ago, but instead he gets the spray cleaner (handy for circumstances such as this) and manages to clean the entire bed!  Ok – that’s enough of that story – it has a relatively happy ending, although I told the cat I didn’t like her anymore.  However, this is not the end of the evening – oh no – it seems that from time to time there is an allergen on the boat (actually any boat we have ever had) that attacks Bob’s respiratory system – much like hay fever on steroids.  So, poor Bob wound up wheezing (the cat had nothing to do with this) and barely able to breathe the entire night.  So the two of us who were so looking forward to finally a restful night with no more “to do” lists hanging over us, got an absolutely terrible night’s sleep. 

In the morning, which is today, Tuesday, October 9, it is still cold, and overcast, so we decided to have a lay day here in this anchorage.  Finally, not much to report.  So far it has been boringly non-eventful (yeah!!), but it’s only 4:30 p.m.  One other boat here in the anchorage with us (a couple from Colorado and Canada) who keep their boat in Baltimore in the summer and Florida in the winter, so we’ll both be heading south tomorrow.   It would make me happy if the rest of our trip would be non-eventful, but we know that’s not going to happen.  Stay tuned…