Preparing for Voyage: Thursday, September 19th

Oh what a short sleep! We got up at 5am and Chuck raised the anchor at 5:30. ‘Mighty Fine’ chose to sleep in but ‘Mar A Lago’ and ‘Happy Hours II’ motored out of the anchorage to head up the Delaware Bay. The full moon is still out but boy is it dark when you’re trying to distinguish objects in the distance! The winds are about 5 kts out of the NE so there is not much action on the surface of the Bay. We were motoring 8 + kts and at one point peaked 9 kts…..until the motor just stopped….oh no!! At least the 6 freighters that are all around us are anchored at the moment.

Chuck had the throttle opened all the way to try to keep up with the Catalina. ‘ Happy Hours II’ didn’t like that apparently! He tried to restart her, and she started right up. So now he’s running her at 2900 RPM’s. Whew…..that was one scary moment…..right in the middle of the shipping lane!

We just heard on the VHF radio from the Coast Guard that the C&D Canal is temporarily closed due to FOG. So hopefully it will be reopened by the time with get there. I’m sure the sun will burn it off. I also got an email ‘alert’ stating that the Erie Canal is closed between locks 12 -14. Who knows for how long??

Our plans are to get into the canal and then ride the outgoing tide down the canal to Chesapeake City. We’ll have to wait and see. Our life is dictated by wind, tide, waves, and now FOG. Now we have more problems. LOL. Our VHF radio isn’t transmitting on HI and it’s new. What else can happen? We can hear our friends hailing us but our signal isn’t reaching them. It’s a good thing we have a hand held radio. It doesn’t transmit as far but we can use it until Chuck can check the wires out…..and with two other guys, someone always will come up with a good ideal!

Lighthouse

Marker

It’s now noon and what a great day to be on the bay just riding along with the current. Once we got to the narrows of the bay, it turned into the Delaware River. Good, we’re all through seeing freighters and barges. Wrong….oh boy, ‘Nikator’ is so close…wow! He’s the first freighter that we’ve seen since we got into the river.

Look how close!

Shortly after, we decided we must be getting close to the C&D because we can see the Reedy Point Bridge over a spit of land. This is the first bridge we’ll motor under once we get into the canal. At 1:00 PM we motored into the canal. The tide is now going out, so we are traveling 7.5 kts with a headwind. Awesome! Chesapeake City is 13.7 miles down the canal. The C&D seems to be generally wider than the Erie Canal. So far there are no houses…only light poles on both sides. That’s interesting. You can travel this canal at night because of the lights! Continuing along, we pass under 4 fixed bridges and 1 Conrail bridge before we reached our destination. We just heard on the VHF that ‘Mighty Fine’ found a spot on the town’s bulkhead while ‘ Mar A Lago’ was positioning herself to drop their anchor. About an hour later we reached the entrance to Chesapeake City. The best approach for sailboats is too stay close to the bulkhead on the north side of the entrance. They say the current at times can make it difficult to enter but we had no difficulty at all.

Entrance to Chesapeake City

The anchorage basin held 10 boats without being too crowded. At first our anchor didn’t seem to want to hold but finally it grabbed and held….in the mud. Now comes the fun part….lowering the dinghy and tooling around. We went to talk to our friends as well as a guy on a 34’ Tartan. Everyone knows that Tartans are made in OHIO. His name is Archie and this summer he went up to Nova Scotia and is on his way to work the boat show in Annapolis. Nice guy, nice boat!

Once ashore, we met up with our friends and discovered an ice cream stand. I will attest to the fact that the key lime pie ice cream is superb!

Then we walked into town. Everything is very compact and close together to the waterfront. The town is so quaint with buildings dating back to the early 1800’s….right before the canal was hand dug. Cute little shops are housed in many of the old buildings. The six of us, as well as Dillon the dog, went on the deck beside the Chesapeake Inn for happy hour! We all decided we better have a bite to eat…..I had to eat a California roll and a Chesapeake Crab roll for you, Chrissie! Excellent!! Of course your dad had pizza.