Big Seas

The Chesapeake Bay treated us well. We only had one occasion when a storm front approached and within twenty minutes the water had bucked up into short sharp waves. At this point we decided to turn into a small harbour that we had just passed. The waves surged us across the sand bar and into a quiet bay where we immediately ran aground. Running aground in the Chesapeake area just means that you have settled into the soft bottom and with a bit of manoevering we were free and soon safely anchored for the night. The next morning we left early to catch the high tide at the mouth of St Jerome Creek but the fog was thick and made it hard even to find the channel markers in the creek let alone the sand bar. The waves were 1-2 feet but the conditions didn’t seem too bad. John was just adjusting the speed when he noticed that the computer seemed to be playing up. He had just said “the last thing we need is for the computer to die” because we couldn’t see a thing. The little green boat on the screen was pointing at the shore. I restarted the computer and in that time the St Jerome Creek markers had come back into view. John had done a 180 without realizing it. We decided that it would be safer to go back up the creek and leave the Chesapeake for another day.

Subsequent journeys on the Chesapeake Bay were in glassy conditions. We could come back here and sail for a whole season someday, as we barely scratched the surface of the western shore and the eastern side is reputed to be every bit as charming.

The Delaware Bay is the most reverred stretch on the entire Intracoastal Waterway. Winds and tides can easily make for a miserable day as there are few places to shelter once commited to the run. We were fortunate to have a beautiful day as we left Havre de Grace at the top of the Chesapeake, and to have the tide with us as we moved through the C & D Canal. The conditions were still in our favour when we reached the Delaware River so we decided to push on even though it was getting late in the day. We sailed a compass course down the bay and approached the lights of Cape May just after dark. Entering an unfamiliar harbour in the dark is never easy. Soon a Christmas tree of lights was approaching us and honking. A guy was standing amid the blinding lights shouting for us to pass him on his port side. ‘He’ was a barge laying out a mile-long stretch of pipeline in the black water. The kids kept watch as unlit bridgeheads, jetties and signs leapt at us from the darkness on the final four mile run to the port of Cape May. After twelve hours of motoring and a distance of over 90 miles we were delighted to drop anchor and toast our triumph over the Delaware Bay.

In the next few days we traversed a completely different landscape when we did the Intracoastal Waterway between Cape May and Manasquan Inlet just north of Atlantic City. This is a pretty stretch where the waterway winds through a series of rivers, creeks and swampy shallows. The channel is well marked and by traveling on a rising tide we had few problems.

A series of cold fronts has been moving over the east coast so we needed a window of fine weather for the 25 mile run along the outside of the New Jersey coast. It was a grey morning with 1-2 foot waves and a slight swell as we set off. Alice and Lloyd slept for the first couple of hours of what turned out to be a fairly rough trip. The conditions weren’t bad but the sea was certainly lumpy. Nothing could dampen the thrill of sailing into New York, past the Statue of Liberty and the magnificent city-scape of Manhattan.