We are working our way north towards Newport. Meanwhile, The Jersey coast is not playing nice. The challenge for this last leg is that we first have to negotiate Delaware Bay before we come up the Jersey shore and each has its challenges.
Lisa says I need to add photos to my blog so people will be interested. Since I have none that are related to Annapolis I will randomly throw in some of my past favorites from our trip south. Here is the first:
Delaware bay is shallow and has a fair amount of current. That means that the wind driven waves, when opposed by current, will stand up straight and tall and close together. It doesn’t take much to make Delaware bay uncomfortable, And we try and avoid uncomfortable.
Delaware bay is about 50 miles long, so 6 hours should be enough time to run its full length. Northbound we can ride a flood current all the way. But southbound that doesn’t work so at least half the trip will be in foul current and as I mentioned, foul current and wind opposing is messy.
Takes a day to get down the bay, then if we stop for the night it means an expensive marina. There is one anchorage in Cape May but it is often crowded and the holding is not great. So for us, if we do stop, it is at a marina. Better to just keep going overnight to Newport or NYC. It is often easier to get a weather window to NYC, since this route keeps you close to shore, but then we have to deal with the East River and Long Island Sound, both of which present their own challenges.
One night at Cape May is not so bad but it is easy to get stuck here waiting on a weather window to go north because the weather pattern that makes Delaware bay decent is not always the same pattern desired for the Jersey coast. So here we sit, watching cold front after cold front roll out to sea.
But getting stuck in Annapolis isn’t too too bad. We are on a $30 mooring way back in Spa Creek. Totally protected and a short dinghy ride into town. Yesterday was dinner at the Boatyard Grill for the world’s best crab cakes. (100% crab, no filler). This morning I took the dinghy to one of many dinghy docks, most every street in town that ends at the water’s edge has a dinghy dock, and walked to the nearest bakery. Fresh croissants are perfect for a rainy morning on Spa Creek.
Short interruption while I complain about Miami and Ft. Lauderdale. Here are two cities with a large boating community that go out of their way to keep cruisers on their boats and out of the city. Miami has virtually no public dinghy docks. Meanwhile the little town of Annapolis has dozens. We spent $100 on dinner last night in Annapolis. This fall we spent four days anchored off in Miami and never got off the boat. Both we and the city missed out. I do understand the problem throughout Florida with derelict boats and the boat bums that live on them. The advantage Annapolis has is, it gets really, really cold here in winter. So the boat bums all go south and problem solved for Annapolis.
Time for another unrelated picture. This is my favorite turtle shot. Underwater action photography is not my specialty and I must have taken a hundred shots of this turtle before I got something half way decent:
You might have noticed that there was a fairly major geographical jump in blog posts from the Exumas to Annapolis, so here is a short summary of our trip north.
We left Great Harbor Cay in the Berry Islands and went straight to Charleston, about 50 hours. Those of you who are keeping up will notice that this was a two-day overnight passage, which is major change to Lisa’s normal routine. We usually keep it to one overnight at a time but two things played into this. One is, Lisa really likes our stabilizers. And two is, she really likes Charleston. And whats not to like?
The trip itself went fine. Early on we had some headwinds and so we stayed east of the Gulf Stream until the winds died down. A little bumpy at first, but smoothed out as we ran north. Had about 24 hours of 3+ knots push. Actually had to slow down to avoid arriving too early to our slip at the Charleston City Marina.
This is a great marina. One long face dock that can hold dozens of boats. Free shuttle service to town. And what a town. Besides being steeped in history, and visually stunning, it has the greatest collection of outstanding restaurants. We ate out four times in five days and each meal was better than the last. Can’t wait to go back, but waistline and wallet have limits.
From Charleston we hopped out again overnight to Morehead City and then ran up the ICW to Pungo creek for a pleasant anchorage and some sleep. From there it was a stop at Coinjock for fuel and prime rib. Next to Norfolk and the Norfolk Yacht and Country Club. What a deal this is. Nice floating docks for $1.50 a foot, plus access to the club’s facilities which included a full health club with indoor pool. We had a great dinner, watched the Kentucky Derby on a huge TV while being served free food, and generally pretended to be members. Highly recommended.
From Norfolk we entered the Chesapeake and stopped at a couple of our favorite remote anchorages before coming in to Annapolis yesterday. So now we are up to date so time for a few more unrelated photos:
These guys are fun to watch. With 8′ wing spans they often leap completely out of the water. Sometimes they swim in formations of up to five.
All for now, we will check in after our final leg back to Newport
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