Moving North At Last

It's difficult leaving the bay. Over the years of sailing, we've developed a friendly familiarity with this patch of water. When we first started sailing, the West River to Thomas Point Lighthouse comprised our comfort zone. But as our experience grew, we ventured further and further. Thus little by little, we can now call most of the Chesapeake our home waters. There's really nothing out there like it. The more pompous offshore sailors call it ‘pond sailing' because the bay is so protected. Really bad weather can and does happen but in the end, the worst the bay can throw at you is a short lived thunderstorm. And still, the sides are soft, mostly sand and mud should you run aground. And there always seems to be an anchorage nearby should you need to duck out of the weather. And hurricanes almost never really threaten at any strength thanks to the geography that put Cape Hatteras so far out to the east.

After our hearing on Tuesday, (don't want to talk about it!) we had a nice sail up to the Magothy, then on to Fairlee before our final stop in the harbor at Chesapeake City. We thought the Fairlee Creek entrance was a good primer to the challenges of dealing with a lot of current and tricky channels. You see at Fairlee, the channel runs parallel to one beach, then as you're just about to hit the other beach, you must quickly turn 90 degrees hard to starboard for the entrance, all the while being swept one way or another by the current surging through the entrance. It's truly heart-stopping, even though we've been there before and knew what to expect. Once inside, there is a fine anchorage and a nice sandy beach.

From Fairlee, we traveled on to Chesapeake City. As we pass under the high level bridge atChesapeake City which for us marks the upper end of the bay, we leave behind much of the familiarity and comfort. But its just too darn hot to stay. Timing the current is the C&D canal is important as published velocities list up to 2.5 knots but often seems to be much higher. Sailboats fighting the current make slow painful process, but we were ecstatic to see our gages reading not the normal 5.5-6 knots but 8-8.5 knots. While many large ships up to 900 feet long often ply the C&D canal, we were relieved to only see one small tugboat/barge for the 14.5 mile trip. Once through the canal, it's also important to time the currents down the Delaware, especially in the upper reaches. So we elected to stop behind Reedy Island and it's associated dike.

The old adage is that sailing is hours of boredom surrounded by moments of panic. Well here's one. We studied the charts and guides for how to approach this anchorage behind Reedy Island. The dike runs north/south, slicing down the Delaware River. Behind the dike is relatively deep water almost from shore to shore. The dike itself is little more than a long rock pile made particularly dangerous as it covers and uncovers in the 5 foot tidal range. The idea is to pass through the dike at a marked cut and then tuck up behind the island in the section of deep water, thus be in the lee of the island and out of the large wakes created by the many large ships. We easily located the cut through the dike and even though the current forced us to crab sideways to reach the cut, we didn't foresee any problem crossing through. After all, the guide says that the minimum depth through the cut is 20 feet. But we watched in horror as the depth sounder reading plummeted to first 10 ft then 5... 4... 3.2 (which is mere inches from running aground for us)! At that point, we were certain that we would hit bottom, then be dragged around by the current onto the rocks. With the current running so hard, we could not slow down or we would most assuredly have found the rocks. So we held our breath and charged through and anchored in the deeper water a few minutes later. But now, could we get back out?

While we lost sleep over that one, we were also uncomfortable with the anchorage. We were in the lee of the island for now, if the wind shifted to the southwest as predicted, we would be exposed to a three mile fetch. On top of that, while the island gave us protection from the wind and waves, the current swung our boat around every 6 hours as the tide turned, regardless of the wind. Boy were we happy to get out the next morning, leaving as the current just started to ebb at 5:30 am. And as it was high tide, we easily cleared through the dike with the depth sounder reading no less than 12 feet under the keel.

The 50 mile trip down the Delaware was for the most part uneventful, despite this body of water having a very bad reputation for steep waves and choppy conditions. The shipping traffic is impressive in its volume but the big boats stick to a narrow channel for the length of the Delaware. We even spotted a few recognizable names on the ships as the first the Dole ship and then the Chiquita Banana ship passed though. A real fruit salad! I guess advertising knows no bounds! We reached Cape May just after two on Sunday and found a decent spot to anchor in the harbor. Later, we met a retired gentleman anchored on a sailboat nearby. Glen said that he has been coming to Cape May for many years and promised to show us around the next day.