37:01.441N 76:20.484W

October 27 Saturday 21:00

There is a frenzy of activity around in the Marina. Everybody is preparing for “Sandy”; the attention she is getting maybe more than she deserves around here. It might be another story up North where most of you who follow these musings are. I hope that things will go as well for you as they have for us so far. Today we rented a car and went shopping in Home Depot about four miles away from here. We bought two 8 ft long planks to make fender boards in preparation for the expected storm surge and to prevent Traveling Light climbing on top of the dock. We also stopped in West Marine and bought a new fresh water pump that we still need to install. The skipper humored me and agreed to buy a nozzle for his anchor chain washer and let me devise a brush contraption to clean the mud off the chain as the anchor is raised. after all it is my job to clean the anchor chain! I don’t want to bore you with the fun details of the long discussion before we finally decided maybe we should give this novel idea a try. I will certainly let you know how it all turns out. We finished the fender boards and secured the boat before it started raining heavily in the afternoon. Around 6 pm we went out to dinner at an Olive Garden Restaurant  that we had seen close to West Marine in the morning. First time at an “Olive Garden” for both of us we were pleasantly surprised by the quality, quantity and the price of the food. The latter two go a long way in explaining the “wheeled”, oversized armchairs at the tables. There are lot of oversized people in Virginia and Olive Garden is not really helping to fight the epidemic. At the end of the meal we both agreed that we will come back and support this franchise few more times during our remaining eight days in Hampton…