Cape May, New Jersey to Reedy Island, Delaware – 54 nautical miles
We pulled up anchor and left at first light. The plan for today was to round Cape May and head north into Delaware Bay which leads to the C&D Canal when in turn joints into the start of Chesapeake Bay. This leg has the potential to be awful as the combination of strong tidal currents, shallows, and opposing winds can create huge standing waves. Ben and I talked it through yesterday, looked at the wind and tide forecasts and decided it was a decent enough day to try it. Ben and Kate’s boat travels at a slower speed than ours so they left at 4am and we followed at 7.
There is a large set of shoals just outside Cape Map that we wound through, finding ourselves perilously close to the beach and lighthouse at one point, close enough such that the fisherman who was standing on the beach casting his line could have easily dropped his bait on the deck of our boat. We ran into a patch of standing waves which were manageable and beat us up for a bit but once we got into the bay the waves became larger but more predictable and we were able to make about 5 knots with a 14 knot north-east wind, the headsail up and the motor running.
Ben and Kate, on the other hand, were struggling. They had to face a much stronger tidal current and at one point they had their sails up and motor running and were stationary. Plus the boat was getting rocked by the large waves. We were surprised when we caught up with them at 10am, as we expected they would be much further along by then, but at that point the current had eased and they were moving along well.
The winds and current calmed right down in the afternoon and it was a nice ride. There is a shipping channel cut through the bay which all the commercial traffic uses, and there is a lot of commercial traffic here as this is one of the busiest shipping routes on the coast. We stayed just outside of the channel and were passed by many boats, including a crude oil tanker called Orpheus, who actually stopped and anchored outside the channel at one point. Turns out the million pound anchors hanging off the front of those monstrous ships are not just for show.
At the peak of boredom I remembered the mostly full package of hot dogs in the fridge I’d been meaning to throw out. I bought two packs of these at a grocery store days ago because they were cheap. Well, I got what I paid for. They were the worst hot dogs I’ve ever had. And for me to throw out hot dogs…that tells you something. Our hot dogs in Canada are great – not as fantastic as the ones in Denmark obviously, but still pretty good. But in the US? The great words by one of the nation’s finest laureate poets Dan Aykroyd finally made sense to me. As Roman Craig in The Great Outdoors he said, “You know what they make hot dogs out of Chet? You know? Lips and assholes!” I could taste the lips and assholes in these hot dogs and I didn’t like it one bit.
I asked Ana if she’s like to have a hot dog tossing contest but she was feeling worse than ever and wasn’t up for it so I went up the deck alone with my packet of projectiles. I gave the first one a straight overhand throw and it was immensely satisfying watching it wobble through the air like a tubular football and slap onto the water then sink to the depths, hopefully burying itself in the mud so it wouldn’t poison any of the fish. I gave the next one a hearty helicopter spin. I spun it so hard it started gaining elevation and I thought it was going to go straight up and get sucked into a jet engine (likely a Boeing considering their recent fortunes). But it eventually lost spin and flopped down into the water with a gleeful popping noise. I chucked the next one right at the one of the metal shrouds on the boat (these are the thin braided steel lines that attach the mast to the boat at the sides), and it perfectly bifurcated the wiener, creating two mini-sausage projectiles that spun off into the ocean and made me laugh out loud. I made it down to the last wiener and launched that one straight up into the air, wondering if it might land back on the deck and explode and how funny that would be, but my aim was not true and it landed away from the boat and slowly sunk. I just hoped that some nasty ocean catfish or mud crabs would get at them before any of the beautiful dolphins.
We made it to the anchorage by about 4pm and anchored behind Reedy Island after passing through a super sketchy entrance that looked to have a foot of water, but I trusted the charts and found it had plenty of depth. Kate and Ben arrived an hour or two later and we were so looking forward to having them over for cockpit drinks, but both of us were still sick and the last thing we wanted to do is infect our friends and ruin their lives for a week.
Tomorrow, we plan to conquer the C&D Canal and meet Chesapeake Bay.
Loved your story. I get it with the hot dogs, I'm very peticular about my wieners....lol. Hope you two feel better soon ( Gerry and I both have also been suffering all week with a flu bug ).
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