22 May, 2021. The big ole Delaware Bay behind us

 

62 SM; 8.0 hours

We were up early, preparing the boat, checking and double checking the weather, one last trash dump.  Secured the shore power and made final preparations.  Serenity at marina.  Weather very favorable on the upper end of the river/bay, probably going to be rough last one third.  With assistance from the marina dock hands we tossed off the lines at 0730, slowly inching out of the narrow and shallow channel until reaching the Delaware river with strong incoming tide and a big tow/barge.

Barge in the sun

By the recommendations of the Marina captain, we departed at a time to fight the end of a flood tide, then ride the ebb for several hours heading south.  The first two hours we in fact pushed against a diminishing flood and then slack.  Along the way we recharged the batteries and ourselves so tonight we will glow.

Maintaining proper security distance

Around 1100, the ebb began and velocity of the current increased rapidly.  Soon we had increased our speed over the ground by two mph.  Fast cruisers now, our time of arrival at the southern end looking so much better.  Along the way there are numerous light houses to mark the shoals approaching the main shipping channel.

Several large commercial cargo vessels hailed us a couple of times to let us know they were behind and catching up quick.  Throughout the day we stayed just port of the main channel

AIS had this ship at 20 MPH and catching us fast

About 18 miles to go the ebb begin to diminish and as slack occurred I increased the RPM to maintain our speed at about 9 MPH.  Two MPH faster than normal.  I wanted to keep the speed up.   There was a westerly breeze forecast to swing more NW and increase to 10-15 that would have stacked up choppy waves as the flood began.  Wind against current not a good thing on big water.  And we were so close I wanted to get off the bay and be done with it.  A GPS planned route taking 8 hours at our normal cruise speed turned into a six hour trip to the entry break water at the Cape May canal.  We rode an amazing tidal current nearly four hours that shortened the trip by two hours.

Another 1.5 hours transiting through the canal, mostly at no-wake zone speeds (seems NJ folks kind of blow off the no wake zones) we approached our planned anchorage.  Cape May anchorage. No really decent anchorages in the Cape May area; we are anchored in front of the USCG station with the weekend boaters and sightseers waking us like crazy.  Should die down at sunset.  

From here the big boats go off-shore in stages until arriving NYC.  We will stay inside and do the challenging NJ ICW as the first 1/3 is very shallow and shoaled up.  The remaining 2/3 is deeper with good anchorages.  Only 117 miles total.  At the end, we too will have to travel off-shore about 38 miles to get to NYC.  But, those are days ahead and this week winds do not favor off-shore travel.

3850 SM traveled; 1705.2 hours Hobbs