For a week we sleep in Dan and Kathy's house and we are very warmly integrated into their family life. A real experience, also for Mom and Helen and the girls. The house is big enough so that we all have our own bedroom with bathroom. We can use Kathy's car as much as we like, a huge American car where even a BMW X5 is small compared to. They have three children, Mike (16 yrs), Math (14 yrs) and Caroline (11 yrs). The girls play a lot with Caroline. Swimming outside in the hot tub, playing in the garden with hockey- and lacross sticks, playing basketball in the driveway or with the Harry Potter lego upstairs in the playroom. The last couple of weeks we had quite a few packages sent to Dan, including an iPad for Toine and me each. In between jobs we explore the iPad and after a week of trying it out we are totally enthusiastic about it. The user-interface is a joy, especially for 'reading' internet sites, digital newspapers, magazines, comic books and maps. But also e-mailing and writing messages works fine. All-in-one small handy device with a nice clear screen. According to us, the future for managers and families! The girls use it for reading Donald Duck and playing a game of chess. Very easy on the boat. You can also put your photos and films on it to watch yourself or to show others.

In terms of weather, we've chosen the right week to leave the boat for a week. The first two days are still warm and sunny, but the days after that the wind gets a lot stronger, it's much colder and the last two days it rains. We drop a second anchor and when we take a look on the boat in between, we see that the temperature inside is 14 degrees Celsius. We walk around in long trousers and thick cardigans. Brrrr ....

So, back to the beginning of the week. Once we arrive at their house we first get a delicious lunch. In the afternoon we go out on the lake with their speedboat; Mom, Helen, Toine and me in the boat and the girls with Caroline on a big firm cushion with handles behind the boat. For almost two hours we 'speed' across the lake, especially the curves are fast, and the girls love it. They are becoming freer and freer and can even stand up while sailing. That evening we all go and watch Math's 'Lacrosse' match. Lacrosse is not really known in the Netherlands, but it is a very fun team sport that could compete with hockey. Not with a stick chasing a ball, but with the ball in a net on the end of a stick. Throwing the ball to each other with the stick and scoring goals.

Friday (May 7) the six of us take a day trip to Washington D.C. in Kathy's car. We see the White House, Washington Memorial, the Capitol, Lincoln Memorial and we visit the 'Indian' museum. We walk a lot! In the evening we dine in a real French Bistro in 'Georgetown', a very lively district of Washington. Only late we come home again. Saturday (May 8) is marked by the 'party' Dan and Kathy give as a result of our visit. It is quite windy by then, which is a pity, but with cardigans and the sun it is still doable outside. They have invited some friends and neighbours, all about our age and everyone has something to do with water and sailing (in a motor or sailing boat). The neighbour across the street is even coach of the America's Cup and of the British Olympic sailing team. They are all very interested in our experiences and that's great fun. So we have a great evening with very nice conversations. One of their friends has a catering company and he provided the food ... a roasted pig (with the head and legs on). Very tasty!!! Annapolis is a very nice area to live, with nice people, so we experienced that evening. Here we would also like to live!

On Sunday the six of us go for another day trip. This time we go to Mount Vernon, the house of George Washington (the first president of America), south of Washington D.C. It is very beautiful and very eloquent. We get a good picture of the life and leadership of George Washington and the history of the creation of America with the 13 'United States' at the end of the 17th century. Always nice to learn something about the country we are visiting. And it is a coincidence that we are visiting exactly 10 of those first states. In the evening we have a long talk with Dan and Kathy about their family life and the schools in America and the similarities and differences with our family life and schools in The Netherlands.

And then the day arrives that Mom and Helen will leave us. In the morning Kathy gives us a tour over the large Naval Academy in Annapolis. Nice to see such a real American school (college). After lunch the six of us leave for Baltimore Airport to bring Mom and Helen home. Because she is with Helen for another 3 weeks and we will be home soon, it is not so hard to say goodbye. We look back on 2 beautiful and fun weeks!!! After we dropped them off at the airport, the four of us headed to Baltimore. Also a beautiful city with a cozy harbor and a nice Aquarium with a focus on the essence of water and a clean nature for humans and animals. Very special was the 4-D movie about Planet Earth with as 4th dimension wind, rain, snow and even a poke in the back from the chair when a crocodile was biting in the picture.

Tuesday (11 Sept) is a domestic day. It is cold and raining, so a good day to stay inside. We are allowed to use Kathy's washing machine and dryer, so we do 4 big loads of laundry. In the afternoon, we spend a couple of hours visiting a large supermarket and we buy a lot of food to last us until the crossing. In the evening, Dan and Kathy take us to a fantastic restaurant. On the other side of the bay, in a secluded creek on the water, is 'Riverside Crabhouse' with a real local atmosphere. We eat delicious crab from the Chesapeake Bay at large long tables. Cleaning is a lot of breaking and scraping with hands and a hammer, a nice mess ... even the girls love this.

The last day at the Nellius family we get up early and go along to the school of Mike, Math and Caroline. Together with Eline, Marinthe and Kathy I go to the class of Caroline (group 6) and we get one hour to tell about our trip with the help of our website. What great fun to do ... we show many pictures and half the time consists of answering questions. story and translate it for the girls. What sometimes seems a bit normal to us, is now suddenly in the spotlight and we realize even more that we are on a fantastic journey. Toine tells our story together with Dan in the geography class of Mike (highschool softmore, which is 4th grade high school). This is also a fantastic experience with lots of questions and a teacher who had prepared the whole thing very well.
We spend the afternoon setting up the boat (returning all the guest gear and laundry) and making a small photo collage as a farewell gift for Dan and Kathy. To thank them for their enormous hospitality and the very special week we take them out to dinner at the Yacht Club in Annapolis. Unfortunately, it is raining and thundering, otherwise we would have been sitting in the first row at the finish line of the weekly sailing regatta, but it has been cancelled. That should not spoil the fun ... it is very cozy and the food is very good. A nice ending of a special week. Overloaded with gifts from Dan and Kathy (beautiful sweatshirts and t-shirts from their school and sports club for the girls, a beautiful sailing poster of Annapolis for us and the girls can take a lot of Harry Potter lego that is otherwise unused in their closet) we go back to the boat.

Yes, and then it's just the four of us again on the boat. It feels a bit strange. We have only been away for a week, but we have to get used to it. That's probably because we have been so intensively involved in domestic life. That feeling doesn't last long ... the next day being on the road with the Brandaan feels like old times again. We leave very early (6 a.m.) to the north of the Chesapeake Bay, to be able to leave the bay at high tide. It turns out to be a day of motoring, first in the bitter cold (the newly bought sailing suit for Toine and warm leather boots for me come in handy) and then fortunately in shorts and T-shirts in the sun. We sail through the Chesapeake & Delaware Canal towards the Delaware Bay. In the pilot it says that this canal can be very busy with lots of traffic, but we sail it all by ourselves. Around dinner time we make a tide stop at Reedy Island at the beginning of the Delaware Bay. There can be considerable tidal currents in this bay, especially in the north, and it is important to leave at the right tide. In our case that is 23.00 hours in the evening and so in the middle of a pitch-dark night we sail 55 miles out of the bay to Cape May. Unfortunately we only have a head wind (which is not pleasant with an adverse tide, what a sloshy Delaware Bay is) and later on not enough wind so we can't sail. Well, we expect to get quite some sailing hours on the way back to Europe, so it doesn't matter. And now we are in Cape May in a nice harbour. Here we will stay one or two days to wait for the right weather for a trip of 130 miles to New York City.

Kathy, Dan, Mike, Math and Caroline ... again many thanks for the great hospitality this week. It was a great experience for us which is high on our list of other special experiences during our sailingtrip. Thank you very much !!!

And everyone in the Netherlands .... a nice ascension weekend! Unfortunately with cold weather, so I heard from my sister who is camping.