It's time to say "Good-Bye" to Manhattan and Jersey City. Nip and I meet at the boat at noon. He takes the train from home, I take the PATH from NYC. We are gassed, watered, supplied and pumped. The day is over cast and the wind is gusting up to 25 knots from the west. This will make for a rough crossing of New York Harbor, but once we get in the lee of Sandy Hook which is 40 minutes or so away, we should be fine. We pass under the Varrazano-Narrows Bridge and sure enough, it's a bit of a roller coaster. The wind is blowing water up over the bow when we hit a rough one. The spray sneaks in between the T-top and the isenglass showering us with a fine spray. We are safe, but wet. Finally we sneak into the lee of Sandy Hook and we are golden. It's still windy and the sky is still dark and cloudy, but the seas are much calmer only 1 to 2 footers instead of the three to four footers that we had before. (That is a compromise in height. Nip said they were more like three footers; I said they were more like ten footers... I exagerate so I compromise on two to four footers.)We run in the Manesquam Inlet, entering the unofficial Intercoastal Waterway and wind our way up the river, sneak into the canal that connects to Barnegat Bay and are happy to tie up to the Bay Head Yacht Club. Thank you, John Kissel. We had a lovely nap, dinner inside the glass as it was still quite windy and snuggled below for an early evening. We had a long day coming up.
Wednesday, September 30th:
We got up early and headed to the gas docks to fill and run. Nip had stopped off the night before and arranged that we would be there at 7:00AM when they opened. We had a long run down the coast and we were hoping that if we left early enough we might make some progress before the wind picked up. Lucky for us it was going to be out of the west again which meant we could run in the lee of the land. Makes for calmer seas. We arrived at the dock, coffee in hand.... no one. Finally after fifteen minutes or so we untied and pulled away. The man came running out and we went back to the dock. He said, "I thought you were bringing the big boat." Our response, "This is the big boat." I think we have a theme here.
We stayed inside the ICW, which is a series of narrow waterways inside the shorline. We are making great time, but decide to head out to sea. We make an attempt at the inlet at the end of Long Beach Island called Little Egg Inlet. The chart says 19 feet of water, the GPS says 19 feet of water, but Nip notices that we are kicking up sand. No thank you, we'll wait until Atlantic City. So back inside we went and thank God we did. I wouldn't have wanted to miss the beauty of the bird sanctuary. This is a narrow channel that you can cruise at a nice speed. The birds are everywhere and we had no other boaters in sight. Just the marsh grass, the water, the markers and the birds. (Side note: That night in Soundings Magazine, Nip read an article about a 40 foot catamarran that ran aground at Little Egg Inlet and the passengers were airlifted to safety
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We could see Atlantic City from 14 miles away. The land is so flat and then suddenly there are these tall buildings. This is of Harrahs. It's for you, Laurie. The tables miss you! LOL! This channel was very well marked compared to the unmarked previous channels. Out and around the point and there was the Boardwalk in all it's glory. We stayed outside for the rest of the trip, making very good time. Wow, New Jersey has some beautiful beaches! A flock (?) of pelicans flew over us. Pelicans? Had no idea that they summered this far north. We left Bay Head at 7:15 AM and arrived at Cape May at 12:15PM. Five hours is remarkable considering how much of the trip was on the inside. Cape May Harbor, major home of the Coast Guard) is a tricky place. Lots of sand bars everywhere. The marina where we were putting in was at the entrance of the Cape May Canal, a waterway that empties into the Delaware north of the mouth of the river. It saves you a lot of struggle with the current. We called to the marina and they guided us past marker 14 headed due north for marker 16 then take a sharp left and hug the wall then a 90 degree turn to the right at the entrance. But once inside it was quiet and calm. We gassed up, watered up, Nip washed and I reorganized. Two sailboats pulled in next to us. One was a catamarran. This couple had attempted to head up the Delaware to make the C&D Canal. (Chesapeak and Delaware Rivers) The wind was on their nose blowing against the tides and they were banging so much they turned around and came back. He told us that the Friday we had tried to go up the Hudson, he had been out to sea trying to get to Cape May fighting eleven foot waves that broke under the hull. NO THANK YOU! The other sailboat was a big roomy mono-hull. They are heading for the Exumas ultimately. After a discussion with both captains, the decision was that Thursday wouldn't bring the right winds, but Thursday night the wind was to shift and blow out of the south. That would be good to go up the river. You also want to accomplish this on a rising tide. Dead low on Friday is 12:00 noon ..or so. We made the decision to go home and get some things done while we could. We battoned down the hatches and headed for home for a night. We'll return Thursday night and give ourselves until Sunday to make Annapolis with the right tide, current and wind. Friday, October 2nd:
We returned to the boat at Utsch's Marina in Cape May late Thursday night ready to depart with the slack tide around 12:00PM the next day. There was lots to do until then. We replaced some lines, did some sightseeing, grocery shopped and returned the rental car.
That's me on the streets of Cape May and Nip standing at the beach with the lighthouse in the backround. It's a beautiful town and definitely worth spending time there. But we were getting antsy to go. Had we known what was in store for us, we might have hung around for another day. The wind was still blowing but it was coming out of the south which would blow us up Delaware Bay. Although a southerly wind would be on our nose for the trip down the Chesapeake to Annapolis, we didn't feel that the tide would be a great factor as it is more river in the Upper Chesapeake. We would assess when we got there. Of course we left before slack tide so the tide was still dropping. That put wind against tide. It does ruffle the water a bit.
We made it to the C&D Canal at 12:15. Once in the canal we were sheltered from the gusting wind and the water flattened to glass.
We passed Chesapeake City on the Maryland side of the canal. We had thought of staying there for the night and moving to Annapolis the next day. But it was only 12:30 and we knew we only had 48 more miles to go to Annapolis. We were comfortable to move on. It is amazing the difference between the two bays. Obviously the Delaware is far more commercial as it services Philadelphia and Wilmington, two major cities. The upper Chesapeake is fed from the Susquehanna River which starts up in Cooperstown New York and enters the Chesapeake at Havre de Grace. There isn't as much major commercial traffic until you get closer to the rivers that feed Baltimore and Annapolis.... or there wasn't much traffic that day at least. We never encountered any commercial traffic coming through the canal. We had it all to ourselves. Anyway, the Chesapeake had houses along the shore with lots of inlets and little rivers. There were sailboats out and pleasure crafts. There was more to look at. It really is lovely until we passed Swan Pt. About ten miles north of the Bay Bridge,as we came from around a point of land, the wind hit us. It was no longer the 10-15 kt gust we had experienced. This was more like 20-25kts. About 8 miles north of the bridge, the waves increased to 5+ feet which isn't a problem except for the intervals between waves were very short because of the shallowness of the bay. Our clue that we were going to be in trouble should have been when we passed a dinghy floating in the water with it's blue canvas still on it. "Oh Look Nip, someone lost there dinghy." It had blown off someone's boat. And then we were in it. By the time we rode one wave down the next wave was on us before our bow could come up sending water up over our bow and against the windshield and isenglass. I put down the chart and Nip handled the navigation from the GPS. There was no reading of bouys! I even calmly asked Nip if it was time for the life jackets. He just smiled. Please know.... we were fine. It wasn't scary, it was just uncomfortable and really slow going. We could have always turned around and put the seas at our stern and run like little school girls. We started traversing the waves rather than taking than straight on. We were still making headway, but slower. Just then a Hinkley 55 foot Talaria with a fly bridge came up from behind us and passed us. Perfect! Nip tucked right in behind him and the world was a different place. Once under the bridge, it calmed a little more. But it was interesting to see boats of varying sizes all running for the safety of Annapolis. This was not forcast and you could see that we were not the only ones taken by surprise. We pulled into our marina, the Chesapeake Harbor Marina and saw the Hinckley already tied up and getting washed down. We thanked the captain for paving the way for us. One of the passengers said that he had had a few fillings shake loose. The weather report for the next day was supposed to be more of the same with rougher seas. The people on the Hinckley showered packed up and flew off to where ever. They weren't going on. We decided that we would stay in Annapolis and explore. While we washed down the entire boat with fresh water and repacked everything that had gone flying down below, a woman named Kim who worked on some of the boats in the marina doing bright work came by wanting to know where in Maine we were from. She was from Maine as well. When we told her where we were heading, her response? "Are you trailering it from here?" Ah Yes! Another "on THAT boat" moment. The wind howled that night but we were snug and protected in our little slip.
Saturday, October 3rd:
It was a gorgeous day. We had slept late. We walked around the marina and explored down to the beach. The sun was shining. The wind was quiet and the bay was flat calm! Are you kidding me? Even the guy at the marina said, "This wasn't in the forecast."We had already made plans to go into the town and we decided to stick with it. Annapolis is a quaint and historic town. It is the home of the Naval Academy and they were hosting the Navy-Air Force game that day. The place was hopping. We had soft shell crabs at Buddy's Crab House and walked the historic area called "the barracks" which has nothing to do with the military. We found a house where people dressed in the period and talked about life back in the beginning of the town. We walked through the Naval Academy.
But the highlight was sitting at the end of a watered cul de sac watching the boats come in an turn around without hitting anyone or each other. It's called Ego Alley and it was total entertainment. We watched a guy in a 50 foot Chris Craft launch misjudge his turn and sideswipe a 65 foot Viking sport fishing boat that had the misfortune to be tied up right at the end. I am sure he was from out of town and had no idea why he had the good fortune of finding this perfect place to tie up. I am sure when he came back to his boat and saw what was going on right around him, he would have died. It was so much fun. Boats of every size were strutting their stuff and making the 360 degree turn in very tight quarters some more successfully than others. Thus the name of Ego Alley. Unfortuntely "Bruised Ego" Alley for some. The day was spectacular and there were boats everywhere. That night we walked to the beach and sat out on a pier. The moon was full, the wind puffed lightly, the water was like glass and boats were still coming and going. It was breathtaking! So much for the 30kt gusts and the 5+ foot seas.
Sunday, October 4th:
It was another gorgeous day, but windy. It didn't matter; it was time for us to head home. We packed up and headed off sad to be leaving our Rum Drop.
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