Crab Pots, Company and Waves

We stayed in Annapolis for a few days waiting out some bad weather, resting and reprovisioning. Geoff rode his bike for the first time since his injury and he had no problems - a good thing as the grocery store was four miles away. We also met up with Ruth's friend Chris and had a great dinner out in downtown Annapolis.

Saturday we left Annapolis for Solomons Island. It was a cold but uneventful trip on the Chesapeake. When we left the Solomons Island inlet on Sunday, we had the company of six other sailboats! We are finally joining the stragglers that are heading south. The weather was good and we were making good progress, so we ended up making it to Deltaville that evening.

On Monday morning we left for Norfolk/Portsmouth, and we saw our first pelicans flying a low circle around our boat on the way out of the harbour. There was a small craft advisory in effect and it was quite windy. This was the roughest day on the water we had seen yet in terms of waves. At one point we hit 12 knots of speed as we surfed down a wave! This was the first of what will likely be many days of training of the crew to deal with rougher weather - Geru did fine, but Geoff and Ruth were shaken up. The waves felt huge but in reality were probably about 5 feet high. Surfing or running with the waves was bad enough, but when we had to cross them at an angle to get into Norfolk it became somewhat scary. As we said, the crew needs to get used to it...

Entering Norfolk, we passed a portion of the US naval fleet, which is quite impressive when seen from waterlevel. We stayed the night at a familiar marina where we had Geru surveyed last summer before we bought her.

Annapolis Harbour


US Navy in Norfolk


US Navy in Norfolk

Chesapeake Bay Day 1

We left Chesapeake City early Tuesday morning with light rain, which seemed not to be a problem until we got out into the C&D Canal. From the time we left the dock until we got into the channel the rain had picked up and the visibility was reduced. The problem only got worse as we left the canal and entered Chesapeake Bay where we could only see the next buoy ahead of us. We were very happy that we have an electronic chart plotter which tells us our current position based on GPS data no matter what the visibility is like.

Around lunchtime the rain stopped and the visibility returned to something close to normal. I say "close to normal" because the sky was surreal with bands of purple and pink on the hazy horizon while the water was an oily calm. Everything on the water looked like a mirage (even the video camera had a hard time focusing!)

The final stretch into Annapolis was rather stressful as we were motoring with the sun directly in front of us causing lots of glare off the water. We had a hard time seeing the sea of crab pot buoys in the water all around us, which would have created havoc on our propeller had we ran one down. Luckily, we managed to get through without incident. We arrived in Annapolis Landing Marina just as the sun was setting, both of us very exhausted and happy to be at a dock.

C&D Canal


Our laptop chart plotter view


An old ship appeared out of the fog


A large freighter also appeared out of the fog




The Chesapeake Bay Bridge

Stripers and the Delaware

We spent three days in Cape May at Utsch's Marina, where we stocked up with food and did laundry while we waited out some strong winds. Cape May is a pretty seaside town with a surprising number of people there for this time of year. It has many neat Victorian-style homes, a beach promenade and many little gift shops. The marinas were filled with fleets of fishing boats, both charter and private - we were one of the few sailboats.

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

The Atlantic

On Sunday, November 4th, we dropped Al off at the dock of the 79th Street Marina and pointed our bows towards the Atlantic Ocean. We had expected a fair bit of traffic on the water as we passed through the main New York harbour, but, because it was Sunday, there were only a few ferries, freighters and pleasure boats. The only excitement we had leaving the harbour was under the Narrows Bridge where we had a police escort while multiple helicopters flew overhead. Traffic also seemed to be stopped on the bridge; we assume this was all due to the New York Marathon which was on that day, but we're not sure.

As we passed through the Lower Bay towards Sandy Hook we encountered very choppy wavy water and even saw some breakers over a shallow shoal. Surprisingly, as we rounded Sandy Hook and were officially out in the Atlantic, the waves calmed down quite a bit and we had a comfortable trip down the shore to Manasquan Inlet. The shoreline consists of one long beach and only has a few inlets connecting into inland waters. We actually saw some surfers in wetsuits riding the cold Atlantic waves on the beach in Manasquan.

Manasquan is a small quaint town. We stayed there for three days waiting out yet another storm. We were awakened one night by a loud banging noise on deck only to discover in the morning that a sea gull had used our boat as a chopping board to dismantle a crab! There were bits of crab shell all over the deck. Another gull tried to do the same thing another day with a starfish.

We left Manasquan on Wednesday and motored to Atlantic City. We saw the glittering casinos from afar, but we wanted to get farther south so we left early the next morning (while we still had good weather) and made it to Cape May.


New York



Leaving New York behind


Some of the traffic we saw in New York Harbour



Our Police Escort under the Narrows Bridge



Ruth on our first beach at Manasquan Inlet



Atlantic City casinos at night (view from the boat)



It was a cold trip to Cape May!

Photos and Videos

It's been a while since we've posted... some posts are on their way, but in the meantime we have posted some photos over at Flickr and videos at Vimeo.

We are currently in New York City taking in the sights.

Halloween and Movie Stars

We spent six days in New York at the cheapest "hotel" New York had to offer (30$ a night), although it was a bit bouncy due to the boat wakes and current. It did include free showers and laundry if you didn't mind a wet dinghy ride in. It was a two-block walk to Broadway and the subway, which we took downtown several times during our stay.

We had intended to spend three days in New York, however the remnants of hurricane Noel kept us in town (not a bad place to wait out a hurricane). The effects we felt were strong winds and associated bigger waves, but no rain.

On our first day in New York we took a trip to the local West Marine store (on 37th Street) to pick up some of the items we have found we needed for the boat - although it was a fun trip, the store had very little of what we wanted due to the fact that New York is not really a sailing city. What made the trip more interesting was the sighting of Kim Cattrall (Samantha) from "Sex and the City" who was busy shooting a scene for "Sex and the City: The Movie" (Click here for a picture of the scene we saw).

Day two in New York was October 31, Halloween. The harbour master at the marina suggested that we might want to go to the Halloween parade in Greenwich Village. Everything in New York is big and the parade certainly followed this rule - we stood in a huge crowd for two and a half hours watching all manner of costume and floats go by. (see flikr for photos and Vimeo for videos).

After a day of resting and cleaning ourselves and the boat up a bit, we headed over to Liberty Landing by water taxi on day four to check out the marina there. It was the biggest marina any of us had ever seen - over 500 boats! On the way back from downtown we stopped by a grocery store not far from the marina. It was an amazing grocery store - jammed packed. It was a smaller store than a "superstore" in Ottawa and it had no big isles, but it had better selection and more variety than anything we've ever seen. The evening came with strong winds and yet more waves as hurricane Noel passed by New York.

On day five, Al was going to leave early in the morning, but it was still too wavy and windy to get him and his suitcases to shore safely with the dinghy, so we spent the morning hanging out on the boat. In the afternoon we walked quite a way up Broadway (it's a nice neighbourhood around Broadway around 79th - the upper West side).

We left New York on day six (Sunday, November 4th) - Al back to Ottawa, and us South. Thank you, Al, for your invaluable help in getting us this far.




79th Street Marina












Dinghy Ride back to the Boat














Dinghy Dock (and our boat)









Halloween in Greenwich Village













World Trade Center Site (now under major rebuilding)











Shopping with Al









New York Subway

New York New York

When we left Tarrytown on Monday, the river was finally wide enough to raise the sails and check everything out. This exercise generated a list of thing that we needed to replace - new reefing lines, jib sheets and furling line.
We were able to see the Manhattan skyline from Tarrytown and we travelled towards it for the afternoon, passing under the Tappan Zee and George Washington bridges. When we arrived at the 79th Street Marina in New York, we encountered the strong Hudson River currents, which we had heard about. It was impossible to make it into the small harbour as the current was pushing us sideways past the entrance, so we decided to pick up one of the marina's mooring balls out on the river instead.
Our first night in New York was rockin' - and not of the musical style. We were bouncing all over the place from the wakes of the tugs and freighters running up and down the river and the current rushing by the boat. (click here for a video)