Sunday Nov 9

Sunday Nov 9

Today might not be such a fun day. Apparently the Delaware Bay is one that should be done at incoming tide which starts at 2:00 am or 3:00pm. Either way once you commit to travelling it, you need to go 34 miles to the nearest anchorage in bad weather. It’s very shallow. Lots of shoals and wrecks. The tide is 3-4 knots of current. So it sounds like we may be in for a rough two days. Gee, the whole bay is only 40 feet deep...how bad can it be? We just need to be careful and plan the trip carefully. The only uncontrolled element is the @#%^@ fishing boats that rip by at 40-50 mph and cut in front just to make sure we get enough wake to empty the drawers and clear the counter! Of course I don’t mean that they do it just to us. They do it to each other too. I guess “no wake” down here means less than 20 feet or don’t get caught.

It’s a cloudy morning with sunny breaks and the winds are from the south again, but the channel is narrow enough that we wouldn’t want to try sailing anyway. We are starting to adjust to the 12 &12 –12 hours of daylight/ 12 of darkness. We are awake before 6 am and ready for sleeping by 8 or 9. We need to ditch the clock so we stop doing 9-5 work days!

Okay, we sailed or rather motored out the Cape May Canal, and decided that we would go back out on the ocean rather than fight our way through the legions of fishermen, commercial and recreational. It was like driving the 401 in rush hour just to get the 3 miles out in Delaware Bay. Today was the opening of striper season [striped bass] and although you can only catch one, everybody in the state was fishing for them today. Apparently the average size is about20 inches and they taste good, but people were paying tour guide boats to go get one fish!! Buy one!

We got away late because the father of the marina owner came by to ‘inspect’ the boat and talk about oats and one thing led to another and it was a half hour before we got away from the dock after starting the engine.

So we’re are out here and it’s dark! We have 3 good days forecast before the weather changes, and as Joseph says, we’re living on borrowed time here because the Nor’easter will start any time. We will run l night an should be in Norfolk Virginia by around noon. The ocean is calm and flat, no wind unfortunately but we have 50 hours of diesel and I made a pot of chilli this afternoon, so we’re good. We’ll do 2 hours stints with lots of tea and snacks. Will let you know how it goes tomorrow.