We are finally on our way back up North!! Roger and I are joined on Phoenix by fellow sailor Lucia (nickname Peri) for the sail to Vermont. Peri and I have sailed together aboard the Whistling Man Friendship Sloops for the past few years, and she now awaits word from the coast guard for the acceptance/arrival of her captains license!! As she arrived last Thursday (1 week ago) a nasty pressure system parked itself off of the eastern coast, partnered with a cold front that delivered us with strong wind and wet weather through the weekend in Baltimore. We took advantage of the delay and did a ton of last minute provisioning and some organizing aboard Phoenix. We also used the wet weather to do some more scrubbing of the teak, a project that is seemingly never ending.
Finally on Monday at 0815 we left the docks in Baltimore, saying goodbye to my and Phoenix’s home for the past 6 months (oh and Rog!). The wind was brisk and we unfurled the Genoa and Phoenix flew out of the harbor. As we approached the edge of the harbor we were met with some pretty bumpy water. We furled the Genoa and raised the staysail, and motorsailed 8 miles north through lumpy seas. It wasn’t comfortable for any of us, but Roger felt it the most. She has her first bout of seasickness, throwing up a few times before falling asleep. As we turned to stop at a marina north of Baltimore for diesel the waters mellowed out a bit. After filling the fuel tank we continued motoring north into the wind until we arrived at our anchorage for the night. By the time we arrived, which was around 1845, the wind had died down and we had an easy time setting the anchor. We enjoyed a nice dinner and beer as the sun dipped below the horizon. At this point, Rogers seasickness completely disappeared and she was back to climbing the lines.
That night the wind came back up, and because we weren’t in the most protected anchorage we had a pretty rocky night. We awoke early after a fairly poor night sleep eager to get moving. We waited for the current to die a bit and then hauled anchor at 0800 and motored north into the wind again.
Just as we hit the C&D canal the current turned in our favor. The wind was whipping but the canal is so protected that it didn’t have much impact on us. We got through the canal in about 4 hours. As we came out the eastern side of the canal we were greeted by a couple of dolphins in the distance! We were surprised to see them so far up in the Delaware, where it’s technically still river. A couple of miles south from there and we entered the area behind Reedy Island through a cut in the jetty. At mid-high tide much of the jetty was underwater, and the red and green channel markers had been destroyed, so it was definitely a sketchy pass but we followed our charts and as we got closer we’re able to see the remains of the old marker. The anchorage and the cut had tons of reviews on Navionics, so we felt comfortable with it.
We enjoyed a couple of good nights sleep and then relaxed all day Wednesday and Thursday. We killed time reading, playing games and taking naps. With the wind looking relatively strong, and the seas around Cape May looking bumpy through Thursday, I decided to stay at anchor in the Delaware until Friday morning, and then haul anchor at first light and begin our jaunt down to Cape May.
We arrived in Cape May at ~1530 and dropped anchor next to the Coast Guard station here. About an hour after we set our anchor a deep fog rolled in and stayed with us all night and all day Saturday. We had hoped to make our passage from Cape May to NYC on Sunday-Monday, but around 4pm the forecast updated and they are predicting the fog to last until late tomorrow afternoon. Beyond that the wind gets stronger and seas get angrier Monday, plus a shift west then northwest in the following days. To avoid risk of a bumpy upwind sail we will stay on anchor until likely Thursday. That’s a pretty long ways away as far as forecasts go, so we will have to see how well it holds.
For now, we will begin to explore Cape May. Tonight, Peri and I cracked a beer to “vacation time”, declaring that we would make the best of this frustrating delays.