Friday, June 6, 2008 - 5:00 am

We're up early today so that we can make the trip to Delaware to register the boat, drop off our Toyota at the marina in Delaware City and still have time left to run errands and provision the boat for our trip north on the Chesapeake Bay. Maureen is leading the way in the Toyota using "Grace" (the name we have given our Magellan GPS unit) while Gale follows in the rental car. Since we did get such an early start, Gale suggested that our first stop be the Delaware City Marina where we will leave our car. No one was around at 8:00 am, but we checked out what we could and found the facilities to be just fine. Delaware City is a very small town, but the marina is full service and looks like a nice place to spend some time. From here we headed 30 miles south to Dover, the state capitol, to find the DNR Fish and Wildlife Division where we registered the boat. We got a little nervous when the clerk didn't seem very comfortable with us registering the boat in her state, but she got past that and all of the necessary paperwork was completed.

We returned to Blue Heron at the Performance Cruising dock at 11:30 am. Gale stayed to start working on our "To Do" list while Maureen headed to the grocery store to pick up a few items for the weekend. At 3:00 pm, we were back in the car and headed for Fawcett's to do some shopping. Wayne was very helpful here -- he and his wife are cruisers now, but he actually managed this store for five years and had a lot of knowledge about cruising needs. Because we only had a very short time to shop and we intend to buy quite a few more things (many large items) when we return next May, Wayne gave us the special buying break for this shopping trip and told us to save the coupon we received from Performance Cruising until next year since it is only good for 30 days from the date you make your first purchase. Wonderful!

A few more errands to do: find some pattern paper to make patterns for boat rugs, stop at a hardware store for a few items, find an automotive store to pick up a battery tender to keep the batteries charged over the winter and return the rental car. Wiith all of that done, the Enterprise people gave us a ride back to the boat where we arrived a little after 5:00 pm. We worked on putting our provisions away and then it was time for the "Christening Ceremony."