Click here to see our progress map. Our current location is at the top of the list. The pink stick pin indicates that we have turned around and are now heading south.
We were in Atlantic City for 3 nights due to the weather. We check the weather websites for hours each day, it seems, and things were looking worse and worse. Wednesday (yesterday 9/29) looked like our only possibility to leave for about a week.
We took a deep breath and decided to give it a try. If it was awful we could always turn back. We got up at 5:15 and left the dock in the dark at 6:00. There was enough ambient light to get off the dock and the buoys were mainly lighted so we had no trouble getting out into the channel. But the tide was coming in so we did a lot of pitching (where the pointy end of the boat goes into the waves…up and down…up and down….we hate pitching).
When we got to the end of the channel we turned south and headed down the NJ shoreline, staying about 2 – 3 miles offshore. It was much better than we feared! The waves were probably 3-4 feet but they were just rollers with long periods in between and no whitecaps. So Rickshaw gently went up one side and down the other and it was OK. Then the waves changed to 1-2 feet which was even better. And to top it off, there was practically no wind. Phew!
We got to Cape May in 4 hours because we were going with the current. We went through the Cape May Canal and got into the Delaware Bay and started to fly! We were with the current all the way and saw Rickshaw go as fast as 10.8 knots…a record we think. Anyway, we were able to make the entire 95 nautical mile trip in 11 hours. It took us 12.5 hours on the way north.
We are tucked into a marina on the Chesapeake and Delaware (C&D) Canal and will be here until at least Saturday while we wait for the winds, seas and rain to die down. The C&D Canal connects the northern ends of the Delaware and Chesapeake Bays. Tornado warning in effect through 1:00 pm and gale warning in effect until 6:00 pm today.
We don’t have any new pictures to post at this point. Being near the end of September, it was interesting to see the beaches along the NJ coast nearly deserted, with all the amusement parks shut down. Hardly anyone around.
We are hoping that all our boating friends are also tucked into safe harbors to ride this out. We are also hoping that all our non-boating friends on the east coast are staying warm and dry!!
We plan to continue south into the Chesapeake Bay on Saturday. More later …
