Thursday, September 15, 2005

Up Delaware Bay

Yesterday we made the run from Cape May at the southern tip of NJ, north up Delaware Bay to Delaware City. This is about a 50 mile run with opposing current so we left at first light. Bonus...it was really foggy! Luckily the first hunk of this trip is down a little canal that takes you from Cape May harbor west to Delaware Bay. Pretty easy to just follow the wet part even in the fog. The bay itself is fairly shallow with a very busy channel up the middle. We were passed by probably a dozen huge freighters during our long day. Wind was from dead behind us going from about 10 knots to over 20 with some bigger gusts. Waves built up pretty large later in the day as well. Made for a pretty rocky day. Also there is a significant current running in the bay making our actual speed around 3.5 knots while our knot-meter would read 5.5 or so. As the final spicing to the day, NOAA reported severe thunderstorms which we could see along the Delaware coast but none of them tracked east to us. Long day but everyone said we just need to get Delaware bay over with as there is no really good places to stop along the way. So after about 11 hours and 50 miles we made it to Delaware City which has a nice little marina along a little river.
Tomorrow we will take the Chesapeake & Delaware Canal into Chesapeake Bay and find an anchorage. We are very much looking forward to exploring the Chesapeake.

1 comment:

Andrea said...

Batten down the hatches! Ophelia is coming your way!