Saturday evening – July 1, Cape May, NJ
Well, it is Saturday night and we are done for the night fairly early. It has been a very eventful few days and I having been meaning to write about it but have not had the time. As I write now, we are at anchor in Cape May, NJ. We have been here for about 36 hours, arriving yesterday late morning. Yesterday was something of a sleep deprived haze, but today after a lovely night’s sleep, we awoke strong and positive. I am hoping for another strong start tomorrow as we do a second overnight passage, this time to Sandy Hook, NJ, going from the very bottom of the state to the very top of it. A sailboat cannot really do it just in daylight hours, so we will leave shortly before night so that we arrive during the daylight hours the next day. I swore off doing red eye flights for the office years ago and here I am doing it again for fun. But, I guess this is my choice, not something forced upon me.
So, having rambled on about this precise moment in time, let me back up and comment on what has come before. As those reading this know, Jae and I have owned this oversized boat for years now, always planning to travel on it. Earlier this year, it became apparent that the time had arrived to do so. I am not sure either of us are over the shock of actually doing it, but here we are two days into our 2 month boat trip and nothing disastrous has yet happened. Over the past two months, we have both made lists of what we need and how to plan for this. I teased Jae about her lists, but they were invaluable and I made them as well (but did not share always). They verged on 100 items and sometimes it seemed that as we subtracted, we seemed to always find things to add. Today, there was trip to West Marine to buy about four things and I am sure that won’t be the last one on this trip.
Before we left, we took on a daunting list of improvements to the boat. First, we had ignored the watermaker that came with it. There it sat for 8 years, utterly ignored. We knew it was toast but on the Bay, we did not need it, so we ignored it. We thought technology would improve and we should wait until we did need it and the cost would come down. Someone encouraged that thinking, I don’t remember whom, and it turned out to be largely wrong, but thank goodness we have not had to maintain one all these years.
And then on departure day, Jae noticed our (new) batteries were not as fully charged as they should have been. We called the marine electrician (Patrick Tewes in Annapolis) and he brought his team, diagnosing a bad alternator, which he worked hard to replace before we left. More money . . . . Whose idea was this, anyway?
At last, we were off the dock with our friend Dave Glessing, great company, a very experienced sailor and an overall ace at judging and fixing things, as I will report shortly, in this post. After a fueling stop, we were in the Bay, heading north to the Canal. The wind was strong behind us and we motorsailed with the 145% genoa powering us up the Bay. We ran about 8.5+ knots almost the entire distance, surfing 3-5 foot swells, which is somewhat unusual for the Bay in my experience. It was an exhilarating start.
We had to decide whether to lay over in the north end of the Bay or push on to Cape May. Past the Sassafrass River, there is nowhere for us to stop before Cape May, which lies about 12 hours farther on. Having been delayed several hours by the alternator repair, we had to decide which to do -- we chose to keep going. A good choice! We saw a beautiful sunset, had a nice meal in the cockpit and good conversation. Jae retired first, while Dave and I stood watch and puzzled through all the nighttime lights entering the canal. It is quite a confusing array and I was glad for my recent captain’s training. We saw a pilot boat, a couple of dredges, at least two hip and push tows and more. I texted my instructor to thank him for the course. Dave loves to chat on the VHF so he was a hale fellow well met throughout the night, chatting it up with everyone who would talk to him. I enjoyed listening. In the canal, the current, which we did time well, pushed us to almost 10 knots in very peaceful water. But, coming out, into the river, the water turned rougher because we were now against the tide and the wind. And more lights to decipher.
The Delaware River and Bay are among the more ugly, unredeemed bodies of water that I know. You just soldier through them. We did not see too much traffic on the River, but the water bounced us around and it was hard to sleep. None of us slept much. Early morning, we reached the ocean and turned north to the Cape May inlet. We arrived around 9:30 am or so and once on anchor, Dave cooked a great English breakfast with tomatoes, fried egg, rashers and bangers.
During our trip down, he had an accident opening the refrigerator door (really?) and needed some medical attention, so he and Jae got in the dinghy and went in search of a Doc in the box. I stayed behind and did just about nothing. After they came back, we cleaned up and found a happy hour ashore to help us sleep well.
The next day, we had intended to spend some time ashore, exploring Cape May, but boat chores consumed us, plus we made a date to meet our neighbors Jane and Pat Bannon with their daughters for cocktail hour aboard Sirius. While I ferried Jane and the girls to the boat, Dave jumped in the car with Pat for a quick trip to West Marine for some needed boat parts. (It does not end!). The three of us had a quick beer before joining the ladies aboard for a very merry cocktail hour with 2 dozen oysters that I shucked. The next day, they drove us around Cape May, a town they have been visiting for holidays (summer and Christmas) for many years. It was a lot of fun, even though we did ask to be taken to a hardware and to fill a propane tank. After all, they had a car and we didn’t.
I will stop here. We did depart Cape May that afternoon and confronted gremlins on the boat over the next 24 hours or so. We have survived them, but not without Dave’s terrific help, good cheer, and overall English humor. We look forward to having his wife Donna join us tomorrow. More to follow.