After all the refurbishing, we left Deltaville in mid-October heading south. As we got into the Chesapeake, we found ourselves in the middle of a pack of perhaps 100 boats headed south. Most were coming from the Anapolis boat show.

As we passed Norfolk, most boats took the slightly faster and deeper “Virginia Cut” route, while perhaps a dozen of us took the Dismal Swamp route, retracing the route we’d taken a couple of years earlier. This time, as the North Carolina visitors center, there were a dozen of us, instead of just one!

We stopped for a few days at the home of Robert and Elise in Wrightsville Beach NC, then went on to Charleston SC, where we spent a week visiting. Bill’s parents and aunt visited Dory for the first time. We made fairly rapid progress on down to Florida, where we anchored near Dragon Point, a decades old landmark that crumbled a year after our visit.

From there we went on to Stuart, where we visited Sue’s sister and brother in law for Christmas. Our son joined us there, and announced his intention of getting engaged soon!

We backtracked up to St. Augustine from Stuart, and were joined by our son Bill and his girlfriend Angie. What a sweetheart! Here they are on deck, in front of the Spanish fort in St. Augustine.

After their visit, Woody and Claressa Rustin, friends from Saudi who retired when we did, drove from Mississippi to visit.

Following the visits at St. Augustine, we went back south to Vero Beach, where we stayed until it was time to head north. Vero is a great place to stay, as the large number of cruisers are very social.

One reason for the large number of cruising boats here is that Vero Beach is perhaps the last city on the route to the Bahamas or the Keys with a well-protected mooring field, very easy accessibility to local shopping and entertainment, and plenty of room for as many as 100 cruising boats.

Boats waiting for the rare winter “weather windows” to cross the Gulf Stream to the Bahamas often wait at Vero for weeks, and make new friends among the other boaters while they await a period of several days with light winds for their crossing.

Here’s a group of North Carolina folks aboard Dory during one happy hour.