Ed,
Glad you're close and look forward to seeing you Friday night at the GAM!
Paul Esterle
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This is a cruising report from Atlantic Highlands, NJ south on
the Atlantic to Atlantic City, and then from Atlantic City - Cape May
and
on up the Delaware Bay and through the C&D Canal.
Angel Louise is a 41 foot overloaded catamaran!
We wanted to get to the Annapolis, MD area for the Seven
Seas Cruising Assn event for Friday night and Saturday. This year
instead of offering at the same time as the Annapolis Boat Show
they are doing it a couple weeks early.
Monday we left Atlantic Highlands, NJ at 11:07 in the morning,
after second guessing winds and seas on the Atlantic since
the dawn hours. Leaving we swooped by Flying Pig and both
Skip Gundlach and Lydia came out to wave & wish us bon voyage.
The Google Maps page aerial of the Atlantic Highlands harbor is here:
www.tinyurl.com/atlantichighlands
We found the winds for motor sailing ideal. My email updates
that have the picture will have a picture of the nude beach as we
came down part of the coast just a little more than a thousand feet
offshore. Because of the distance we did not get the anchor down
in Atlantic City until after 11:06 pm.
Our Atlantic City, NJ anchorage (recommended) is here:
http://tinyurl.com/AtlanticCity
We were anchor up at Atlantic City at 6:45 am for a hoped cruise
from there to as close to the Chesapeake as we could get.
We did it; Yesterday we made it the rest of the way to the
Chesapeake from Atlantic City... a long slog for us.
We go through the Cape May Canal, so we stopped for diesel.
We had not taken diesel since Essex on the Connecticut River
so we stopped for diesel at Utches Marina and filled up with 58
gallons of diesel at Cape May... then kept going. At Utches -
for $238 of fuel - the only bathroom you get to use is a portapotty
out back. Everyone says Utches is nice, but maybe the guy selling
diesel was having a bad day. In tying up I fastened a new
ten foot dock line to a stern cleat and I gave him the rest
to fasten on the dock above us to hold the stern in. He tied
only the bitter end to the dock and while I was 3 feet from him he just
dropped the rest into the oil slicked water and said "you can
pull the rest up tighter". He did not feel like being too civil
or friendly despite my tries, but for $4 a gallon I guess folks
don't have to try be friendly... (I guess the trawlers they fill
must be more profitable for them).
We decided to push on into the Delaware Bay in hopes the tide
would catch us and push us. Wrong. Angel Louise is faster
than we were in ENJOUE (our prior boat - an Allmand 35).
We managed to keep ahead for the tide change for about
35 miles up the Delaware River. The Delaware bay is about
my least favorite passage. Its usually full of every insect in the
world, is not clean clear water, and is shallow and can get
bitchy with opposing currents and winds. We can report
that the insect population there remains vibrant!
Running in darkness up the Delaware river after coming up from
the Delaware Bay (against heavy tide and light winds) is not fun
but it lasts too long.
We ended up doing about 3 hours up the Delaware before reaching
the C&D. Then running through the C&D canal from just after
ten PM on in darkness was enough adventure for the night ...
thank God for the moonlight - and our anti-Shake Fujinon binoculars.
Sue stayed outside most of the time trying to decipher stuff and
looking for traffic after we got close to the canal, but I was inside
and except for the screen of a Laptop running ENC chartplotter
duty and the radar - I could not see anything of value with my
eyes outside the boat... (I had offered toswitch with Sue but she
liked the outside duty and offered advice while I tweaked the
autopilot). I have never used my past IFR flying skills so much.
We just had to hope we would not hit a crab pot or piece of debris in
the water. ...
We only had favorable tide for the last 7 miles on the Delaware....
then on the C&D canal we repeated the same thing!
We had three ships that we had to deal with at the Delaware
River, a Maersk container ship just at the nuclear plant 20 minutes
from the canal, and then two others coming toward us from Philadelphia
but all communicated and stayed in the channel while we ran
along the right edge. Just before we got to the canal to
try and run across the wide ship channel, we had one large
tugboat and barge come out of the C&D canal which we
learned of by radio traffic and heard he and the other ships
were concerned with a large dredging ship at the east end
with a lot of pipes and stuff strung out over a distance not far
from the mouth of the canal. But we could not tell whether
he was in our way or not and he refused to answer radio for us,
as the larger ships did, but he talked to the big ships coming
by the end of the canal asking that they not go too fast and
cause him a lot of wake...
We worried we would cross at right angles to the Philadelphia
ship canal and then either come in contact with the Dredges stuff
which are harder to see in the dark, or otherwise have difficulty with
another barge coming out of the canal. Plus by this time we were
getting two knots of current pushing us toward Philadelphia from the
back, perpendicular to the C&D canal.
But we finally got into the canal & were not crushed like a bug.
After we got to the canal and discovered all the worry about
the dredge was not necessary as Mr. Dredge must have been
several hundred yards on the Philadelphia side of the mouth
of the canal.
We then got to worry about the Conrail bridge lift bridge.
The operator announced after we were in the canal (45
minutes before we got there) that he was lowering the bridge
in ten minutes - which would block us. He did not respond to
calls from us and we were so far away we figured we would
keep steaming toward him. He later raised the bridge after
a train passed fifteen minutes later and we kept steaming, but at
14 minutes from the bridge according to my timing on the GPS,
we got another broadcast from the Conrail Bridge that they would
close in ten minutes... so we throttled back and just coasted.
After we heard the train, we had a barge come behind us as
he finally opened the bridge. Later we had another Philadelphia
bound barge and a Car Carrier that was huge come from behind.
The car carrier slowed down to take on a Bay Pilot, and followed
us all the way out to the Bohemia River where we talked to him
and coordinated crossing his bow to the first river in the Chesapeake
to drop anchor around 2 am and finally sleep well.
Bohemia River on the Chesapeake is not real deep. See it here:
http://tinyurl.com/BohemiaRiver
These kinds of challenges and learning to master them are
what makes full time live aboard cruising fun for us. We are
glad to have been inspired and instructed so well by so many
on the live aboard list over the last ten years.
Ed
Ed Kelly (& Sue Kelly)
USSV Angel Louise - a Catalac catamaran, now going down the bay
toward Annapolis
Our Skype Phone (202) 657-6357
Email: EdKelly ("at" symbol) netins.net
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