Leaving Chesapeake – on to Delaware

We are moving now! On a bright calm morning we left St. Michaels at about 8:30am. The water was perfect, flat and shiny like it was covered with aluminum foil or something. 

We traveled north through the Kent Narrows towards the Chesapeake bridge following One September. At the junction of the Kent Narrows and the Chesapeake, in sight of the bridge Michael and Judy turned south and we turned north.

One September went south and we continued towards
the Chesapeake bridge, north to Delaware

We passed under a bridge that is connected to the big Chesapeake Bridge but separated from it by a small chunk of land.

Approaching Chesapeake Bridge - nice bridge tender

It was really funny because as we left and Michael filled us in on the details of the trip north to Baltimore, he said, “now be aware that the bridge tender is pretty surly”. Kermit called to get the bridge opened at the half hour. The bridge tender was nice as could be, chatting a bit about the beautiful day!! I guess that was good karma!!

Have I mentioned how much I love osprey? I have hundreds of photos. They are so strong. This is my favorite photo so far. These guys were snacking on something - probably a fish.

Ospreys having a snack

On the other side of the bridge the reds and greens switch. Now as we head north the reds are on the left because we are heading towards the ocean not away. We use that little gadget on the dashboard to keep ourselves straight. Otherwise we end up in the shallows.

The weather was so perfect we decided at the last minute to skip Baltimore and continue on. We’ve been to Baltimore several times although not by water. We were itching to get moving so we stayed the course and continued north.

On a poker run

On a poker run

the rich side of the bay - big houses and country clubs

the working side of the bay - a huge trailer park

The Bay became a study in contrasts. One side of the Chesapeake, the port side or west side was clearly well to do. It had a manicured golf course. On the starboard or east side of the Chesapeake was a huge camp ground with hundreds of RVs. Both appeared to be having fun. The west side was well groomed with lots of houses. The east side was wilder with fishermen and cliffs along small inlets. Yachts on the west side. Fishing boats and work boats on the east.

Lighthouse at the entrance to the C&D Canal - the end
of the Chesapeake for us!

The water got narrower until it was like a wide river instead of the big Bay we were used to further south. 

At the top of the Bay we could have veered North West to Philadelphia but we stayed to the east into the C & D canal. Ben Franklin had the idea to connect the Bay and the entrance to the Delaware River with the ocean to cut off a bunch of transit miles for commerce. So they got the new USA to approve digging this canal with a bunch of locks and dams. 

Tow on the c&D Canal

Later the Corps of Engineers fixed it so locks were no longer necessary. So there are no locks today. It is pretty wide, sort of like the Illinois River in width. Lots of pleasure boats and some barges and container ships. It is not unusual to see huge container ships passing although we only saw medium ships.

Delaware pilots

We are in Delaware now. We passed the Delaware pilot house with the pilot boats in dock. We could tell they were pilot boats because they had a big D painted on. When we passed the Maryland and Virginia pilot houses along the Rudee Inlet on the way to Hetchkopf house they had M’s and V’s painted on them. Makes sense that the boats with D are Delaware pilots.

Chesapeake City

 

Chesapeake City

We had two choices about places to stay for the night. Chesapeake City is very pretty built on both sides of the Canal. It is really cute with lots of little shops and good restaurants. If we stayed there, we would have to traverse the entire C&D canal plus the length of Delaware Bay the next day to get to Cape May or we would travel just the 10 mile C&D canal and sty in Delaware City the next day. Decisions, decisions.

Bridge at Chesapeake City - now we are really leaving

Continuing down the canal

the nuclear power plant in Delaware Bay

We were not tired when we got to Chesapeake City so we decided to push on the Delaware City for the night.


There is not much to do in Delaware City but they have Tim the local weather guru. So we went on.

Delaware city marina - nice - like Hoppies

To reach Delaware City you turn hard to the port at the end of the Canal go around a corner and turn to the port again to enter a small river. The marina is along the starboard or west side of the river built along a series of barges or floating docks. It is nice, probably the nicest thing about the town. The facilities are clean and the staff is really nice.

Tim the weather guru in Delaware city

Docking there was quite a trick. The current is really strong, like 3 knots or more headed up river because the river connects the back side of Delaware Bay with the C&D canal. Ideally you want your nose headed into the current. That means we have to turn around. Normally Kermit can turn Good Karma on a dime. He is really good at that. But the dock hands said if you make a mistake you will find yourself heading under a 6 foot bridge in less than 8 seconds – not enough time to react. So they manually turn the boat. This was a fascinating operation.

Put a line on the starboard bow cleat. Hand it to the dock guy. Then hand him the stern port line on the starboard side. Confused yet? The bow line is let out as the stern line is pulled in and the boat turns so the port side is against the dock. Then all the port lines can be tied. We looked like a spider web with so many lines holding us in place against this wild current.

We took the dog off the swim platform, carefully because if he fell in he might find himself in Philadelphia before we could catch him!! I am glad to report no problems.

We arrived at 5:15pm. It was a long day and we were tired. We decided not to get gas because it was $4.55 per gallon. We had half a tank and thought we could make the next 60 miles just fine.

The bathrooms are great!

Tim, the weather guru was waiting to give us a weather briefing for crossing Delaware Bay. How come these weather gurus are in such desolate towns? This town was no bigger or better than Carrabelle where we listened to another weather guru give us advise about crossing the Gulf of Mexico or Hoppies where Fern Hoppie gave us advice about the Mississippi. Totally desolate, old beat up towns with really nice, smart people in them.

Tim seemed to own this marina. I am not sure if he did but he was always around, even at night, his two hunting dogs had the run of the yard at all hours, and the building was nicely cared for with a lovely garden that whispered that someone cared about it.

Tim walked us through the complicated comings and goings of Delaware Bay. Winds blowing against the fetch (water coming in and out of the ocean) causing the water to bunch up – sort of like rubbing a cat backwards so the fur stands up. The waves were tall and close together, probably 3 to maybe 4 foot at the beginning.  Then you add in the current and you can have a big mess. Tim scared us to death with measurements of 6 to 8 foot waves possible under the right (wrong) conditions. But he said it would be a good day to cross the Delaware Bay. If that describes a good day I would hate to see a bad day. To top it off, there is almost no place to duck in for safety once you get started. Either you keep going or turn around. You are committed. After all that scary talk, Tim advised proceeding.

We walked to a local pizza shop (one of 4 possible places to eat in town) to discuss our options. Good pizza and a nice walk. We looked at every possible weather service report of waves, currents and wind. We decided it looked ok, that probably Tim was overly conservative.

Leaving Delaware City at dawn

Tim advised us to leave as early as possible because conditions would get worse all day. The trip is 50 miles which is 5 hours at 10 mph or 2.5 hours at 20mph. Our best option was to leave early and run fast.

We left at 6:20am. Our target was 6am but for some reason Rusty got the idea in his head that he wanted a long walk. He seldom does this anymore but when he wants to walk him absolutely refuses to turn around, like his feet are glued to the ground. So we walked a little further along the boardwalk. I gradually turned him till we walked back.

Off the dock very carefully, respectful of the strong current. Let the nose out first to swing into the little river then the stern so we can clear the boat in front. Off we go.

We can divide the 50 miles into 3 parts. After a very smooth, calm departure, the bay was simply awful. Rather it got bad pretty quickly. Waves slapping, wind flapping, and the current going all over the place. We sped up to 20 mph in the first 30 minutes. Somewhere after the first 15/20 miles it suddenly changed. I mean just like that the water flattened out and there was no current. We are not sure what happened but we think the tide switched to moving out and we no longer fought the tide. All we had then was a little wind causing some waves. This was also about the time we lost sight of most land.

Red market at center of bay

 Now we traveled briskly. We got to the red marker in the center of the bay and angled to the north east, cutting the corner on a course directly for Cape May. Finally the lighthouse was in sight and we relaxed. We pulled into the canal cut between Delaware Bay and Cape May bay at about 11am.

approaching Cape May Inlet

In the canal leading to cape may

Entering Utsch's Marina at Cape May

Good Karma at Utsch's Marina

We had several marina options. Tim at Delaware City made a recommendation we completely forgot. So we picked Utsch’s Marina because it looked like a shorter trip to town. We thought we wanted to stay for a few days because there was supposed to be a storm on Monday and Tuesday.

Gas was $3.89 so we filled up. We left Delaware City with half tanks but entered Cape May with gas gauges reading empty since we traveled most of the trip that day at between 15 and 20 mph just gulping gas. We put in 233 gallons of gas into a 300 gallon tank. That means that when the gauges show empty we still have 50 or 60 gallons of gas left – a good piece of info to have.

Rusty liked it here

This is a big marina

Utsch’s Marina is very nice family run marina. This was Saturday so the weekend boaters were out in full force. The place was lively and loud. The facilities are very nice and very clean. A good library. We got a bag full of info about Cape May. Two dockhands seemed to be assigned to us because they hovered around us to make sure we had everything we needed.

We ate on the boat – leftover pizza and grilled Caesar salad. 

Early to bed. We were tired.

nice bathrooms

Sunday we worked on the computers figuring out what to do in NYC and up the Hudson. We made reservations at Liberty Landing ($4 per foot!) and cleaned the boat. 

The sailboat on the starboard side had OH numbers. Turns out he was from Toledo moving his boat to Chesapeake Bay for the winter. He spent 26 days stuck in the Erie Canal. He told us hair raising stories about water rising over the cement into the streets and boats floating into the streets over the sides of the canal. We are not excited about that portion of the trip. Supposedly the Erie Canal is open but it keeps raining so anything can happen.

We had a late lunch at the Lobster House. I had lobster salad because it was probably the last time I could get it unless we go out to Montauk on Long Island and because Lobster House has their own fleet of fishing boats to bring back lobster, scallops, and fish. It was fresh and tasty. 

The Lobster House is another tourist place. It is absolutely huge, sort of the NJ version of the touristy Amish restaurants along Route 30 in Ohio.

We met some nice folks at Utsch’s. The Ohio sailors next door, of course. Then Kermit met a nice couple who own a dive boat locally, Rusty and his wife. We talked about diving and Cape May. They sound like they have a lot of fun with dine trips. He uses an updated lobster fishing boat, 40’ long, as a dive boat. Seems like a good idea. We will look them up on Facebook.

We rented really awful bikes and went into town. Cape May has a huge collection of Victorian houses and is a famous resort area. We couldn’t figure out the appeal. It was the typical beach tourist trap. Everything overpriced and crowded. We parked the bikes and walked through the touristy Washington Mall, a closed off street filled with t-shirt shops. We had ice cream at Uncle Charley then discovered we missed the best ice cream place that was a street over. The best ice cream place had real homemade ice cream. Kermit would have gotten the homemade peach sorbet and I was itching to try the licorice ice cream. Who could resist? Unfortunately we were full from the plain old ordinary tourist ice cream.

the barrier to the beach

the beach

Cape May is famous for their beaches. People come from all over to visit. The beach is very pretty. Except for one this. You have to pay to walk on the beach! Kermit was livid. He went on and on about how beaches are public and should be maintained for public benefit. When faced with the idea that New Jersey communities charge a user fee to maintain the beach, he said, "that is crazy. Those houses are worth a fortune. Those folks should pay a little more in taxes to keep up the public beaches." Those of you who have heard Kermit's rants for years about how rich people are paying too many taxes and regular folks should start footing the bill will find it humerous that when faced with a user tax on regular folks who are footing the bill, he immediately reversed his arguement because it impacted him. I thought it was very funny!

The couple on the sailboat to the port side was a hoot. Bob and Marilyn came over for cocktails after dinner. They showed us a collage of pictures taken while sailing with four other couples in 1983 when they were all young and quite wild.

Marilynn and Bob from Usual Suspects

Marilyn is originally from Hawaii and said she couldn’t wait to get away. All you can do in Hawaii is go around in circles!! She moved to NYC and married Bob who is a stamp guy, a philatelist. They lived in Darian CT which she pronounced “dari-anne”. I have been mispronouncing it for years. She taught in Norwalk. This town is located by Greenwich CT so it is pretty well to do. Her three sons played lacrosse and hockey and sailed competitively. One son was on his way to a lacrosse scholarship to college when he got into a bad accident and busted his legs up pretty bad so he turned to competitive sailing.

They moved to Charleston SC a while back. The sailing son transferred to College of Charleston on the sailing team. Now he is a professional sailor working on Roy Disney’s sailboat in LA and also surfs a lot with the competitive surfers. The parallels between this family and the Hechtkopf family are kind of spooky. I gave her John Hechtkopf’s name. I bet these two kids know each other. How many competitive surfers can there be? Has to be a small circle.

Next we move up the Atlantic coast to Atlantic City, and then we meet Dick and Deanna Shepherd from Sareanna in Manasquan. Then NYC.