While wandering around the marina one day we saw a gentleman cleaning two large fish that he'd caught. Wanting to know more about the fishing, we wandered over and started talking to him and learned a few things that we're hoping to apply once we get farther south and try some fishing of our own. At the end of the conversation, he offered us two fillets from one of the Striped Sea Bass he'd caught - it made a great dinner that night !
We left Cape May at 6:30am on November 12th accompanied by a stream of fishing boats heading through the Cape May Canal. This was the busiest water we have been on yet - the fishing boats were lining up behind us as we were slower than them.
Delaware Bay is famous for getting rough in strong winds. Our crossing started out quite rough and bouncy (see Video looking forward and Video looking backward from the cockpit), but the wind died down and it was quite calm when we neared the top of the Bay. All in all the Delaware was nice to us. Another boat had left two days before us and, from what we heard, they had quite a rough trip on the Bay.
At the top of the Delaware Bay we entered the C&D Canal (Chesapeake and Delaware Canal) which was described in our cruising guide as being very busy, so we expected lots of commercial traffic. During our trip to Chesapeake City at the end of the canal we didn't see a single boat. Once we stopped for the night, we did see two freighters go through... still not that busy!
We spend a nice quiet night at the town dock in Chesapeake City. We arrived late and left early so we didn't go into town, but it seemed to be a quaint sleepy little place.
Utsch's Marina
Striper Dinner (Striped Sea Bass)
Cape May Canal
Cape May
C&D Canal
