Days Three and Four--Cape May to Chesapeake City

Day three was a day of showering, eating a brunch of sloppy joes and wine at 10 am (planned dinner from the night before), napping, talking to the broker about the broken boom vang and jib block, talking to Simrad about why the AIS system doesn't work and figuring out the radar. It was good to rest and the day seemed to pass quickly.

Day four started with fog.

By the time we were ready to leave and weigh the anchor, the sun was out and the fog was lifting. As we headed out of the Cape May channel the fog thickened considerably so we turned around to go back to the anchorage. As we slowly motored in the channel, Suky blew the air horn to signal our presence to any boats who couldn't see us. We dropped the anchor again and waited an hour for the fog to lift. We weighed the anchor again and headed out of the Cape May channel. The fog thickened as we entered the Delaware Bay and Suky continued to blow the air horn every few minutes. We closely monitored the radar for any ships or other boats in the area.

 

After the fog lifted we were thrilled to see dolphins! Suky turned the boat around so that we could get closer to them. They were all around the boat and there were even many baby dolphins swimming. It was such a wonderful sight.

 

 

The winds picked up enough in the afternoon that we could raise the sails.

We had an excellent sail for almost two hours. The moment we turned the engine off the three of us simultaneously said, "aaah." It was nice to be sailing again. They most challenging part was dodging all of the lobster buoys. We were sailing out of the channel to avoid the ships, but had to contend with numerous strings of buoys.

We dropped the sails after two hours due to oncoming storms. We wanted to be fully prepared if the storms came over us. We put foul weather gear on and tethered ourselves to the cockpit. The weather alerts reported that the storms were producing 50 mph winds and quarter-sized hail. The winds and waves picked up and it was a challenge to keep the boat on course while surfing the waves.

 

We were very fortunate, though, that the storms went on either side of us and we barely got wet. Just as we were about to enter the C and D canal the radar indicated a storm was about to pass over the canal. We decided to delay entering the canal until the storm had passed.

We ended our day at a very peaceful anchorage in Chesapeake City, MD. All in all the day was a challenging success. I am feeling much better about the cruising life today.

 

 

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