Not Busch Gardens. Like emotional. Our port engine has been fixed! Yay! First time in weeks we’ve had a working engine over there! Horray! We are going to be able to leave the dock and sail!! We opted to have the starboard engine checked, too, because if one side is bad the other probably isn’t far behind, and yup, it needs to be replaced, too. Of course. Glad to get it done where we are and not get stuck in a place with fewer resources, but gah – the part is now backordered and not available until January in the US. One has been located in Belgium so now we sit and wait for that to arrive. We get to sail, oh no we don’t… seems to be our lot in life these days.

It’s cold here – in the 40’s at night is cold in my book – so we went and bought a few more warm clothes for Wren. We also took a stop to the Mariner’s Museum in Newport News. Wren got to do a scavenger hunt, and then we followed that up with a trip to the international food market. Wren and Chris got to try their first lechees! If you recall, we took our car to storage and all of our adventures are now thanks to the rental car – more money out of the cruising kitty we hadn’t anticipated in spending. Boats really are Bring Out Another Thousand.

So guess who finally decided to make an appearance?? The life raft! (I know you know this already because of the preview picture, but here you go again). The wayward son has returned home to its harness. Welcome back, Winslow!! What stories it could tell… again, a big THANK YOU to Helen in the BVIs who lent us hers – which is currently on its way back to her on the amazing Adi’s catamaran Grand Cru! ❤️

The weekend was also fun as we went to visit our friends The Young’s. We went to not one but two breweries, and got to see some renaissance actors dueling! Plus had our friendship cups filled, which was so amazing.