We wil be here for about two weeks, taking care of some personal business, visiting with family and friends, and making a few minor repairs and updates to the boat.  We expect to back in the water and heading up the Hudson River by approximately June 28th.  At that point we will hustle up the Hudson and the Erie ( we’ve been through a few times on prior trips so don’t feel the need to stop this time around).  Then we will hopefully join the pack by the end of the Erie / begining of the Trent Severn in Canada.  Hey all, slow down and smell the roses, we’re on our way!

Saw the usual suspects as we came into the inlet, hurrying every which way, wakes be damned.  Able to get through two bridges without having them open. Came into LaSala Boatyard. And had our good friends, Craig and Denise, along with their new addition, Missy, standing by to meet us and catch lines.  Good to be home for a little while.

Back home.  We entered through Jones Inlet, and saw a large pod of dolphins just outside the inlet.

After a few weather delays which caused us to wait in the C&D to cross the Delaware River, then stop in Cape May, then stop in Atlantic City, then stop for a few days in Mantoloking at Treasure Cove Marina, we crossed over to New York.  When we are underway, we watch the radar and also have an AIS feed on our radio.  In this shot of the radar, you can see the landmass of New Jersey to the left, and something reading at the top of the screen.  We were too far out to have the NY landmass on the screen, but did see a few signatures in front of us. On the AIS, each dot within the circle represents a ship that has an AIS signal being sent out. On the chartplotter, there are shipping seperation zones.

As we approached Jones Inlet, we saw a large group of ships at anchor.  We are presuming that they stopped here to either wait for a pilot or wait for a slot to go into Sandy Hook or New York. Kind of fun pulling up the AIS information on the ships from the radio, and matching it with the ships as we moved through the group.

 

Still stuck in New Jersey, waiting for decent weather to cross over to NY. We went from Cape May to Atlantic City on the outside.  We stayed at Atlantic City at the Aquarium; nice weather but then some crazy thunderstorms raced through.  Nice sunset shortly after that. There were a few days of windy weather forecast, so rather than sit in Atlantic City, we moved north towards Manasquan inlet on the inside ICW.  Sudden gale force winds sprang up, whipping up Barnegat Bay into 5-6 foot waves, right on top of each other, with some gusts measured at 60 mph.  It didn’t blow through too quickly, and it took us forever to get here.  We are at Treasure Cove in Brick, NJ close to the inlet and waiting for decent weather to move over to Long Island.  CrazyLove is also here, and thanks to John and Gaby for catching our lines and helping us in.

 

We were hoping to do a long run from Cape May directly to the south shore of Long Island, (Jones Inlet) which is near our NY home port.  Unfortunately, the weather did not want to cooperate.  We did decide to run outside from Cape May to Atlantic City, as we have been advised that the inside ICW run is difficult, at best.  Three to four footers that are rollers (long wave period) are one thing;  short wave periods and beam waves that make the boat roll and cause the bow to dig in are something else entirely.  So we are waiting in Atlantic City for either a good weather window to make the run directly to NY, or considering an inside run at least up to the Manesquan Inlet, which will shorten our exposure.

Finally out of the C&D Canal.  We next stopped in Cape May, at Utsch’s as we did on the way down.  Not a bad ride, but was a bit of a long day.  We thought that were were seeing more of the dreaded crab pots, but were actually seeing large quantities of dead Horseshoe crabs.  And for the last ten miles we were inundated with a zillion flies, so much so that I had to break out one of my supply of special Belhaven sticky fly traps.  Now I have to go and vacuum the dead bodies. Ah, the joy of living on a boat.  I will not gross you out with photos of dead crabs and flies.  We did see a few of the big boys passing by in the shipping lane.  Also, a nice lighthouse which “someone” insisted was actually a sailboat in the distance. Saw an eagle fly in and land on a pole, but alas, no closeup. Skipper saw what will probably be the last of the dolphins on this leg of the trip.

OK so I am a little restless today.  We are anxious to get home to NY and anxious to continue on with the trip.  We are sitting here in an overly expensive marina (Summit North in the C&D canal; they get five stars for the convenience factor/ location, and a big fat zero for not offering wi-fi and for charging $2 a foot with few amenities).  We are staying an extra day as the weather was supposed to be awful today, thunderstorms, crazy wind, big waves and we are not in the frame of mind to get beat up out in the Delaware crossing over to Cape May.  So of course, it is partly sunny, muggy, not a breath of air let alone wind, and dead flat calm.  I may have to fire up the air conditioner.

In any event, I am trying to catch up on return emails from all who contacted us with offers of help and prayers during the Artie foot debacle. And I just wrote the following to someone:  “Looping reminds me a bit of going to college.  You can have deep, meaningful, intellectual conversations over drinks with people from all backgrounds, that you just met, who then go on to be considered good friends in a matter of hours”.  Ok, profound musings are officially done for the day.

 

 

This is our SPOT transmitter, for those of you who are getting our SPOT updates by phone or email.  I am trying to figure out how to post the transmissions here, so that you can follow along and see where we are.  It should come up on Google Maps with a Lat/Lon, but for some reason I can’t import it into WordPress although I have seen it done on other blogs and websites.  Anyone have any suggestions?

We are in the C & D Canal, heading up towards Cape May, New Jersey. Will will then have to decide if the weather will allow us to make a jump from Cape May directly to the South Shore of Long Island, NY.  The alternative will be to go further north on the New Jersey coast, to Atlantic City – Absecon Inlet before making the jump across to NY.  If the weather really isn’t cooperative, we can also go “inside” on the ICW through New Jersey, up towards Barneget Inlet. The Loopers will be headed directly towards Sandy Hook, bypassing Long Island, and then under the Verrazzano Bridge to reach the Hudson, the Erie Canal, and points north.

After we leave Long Island, we will swing back out of Jones Inlet,  go past Brooklyn and then under the Verrazzano.  We will do a drive-by of NY, as this was our home cruising grounds and we’ve covered it already.  Depending on the tides and currents and time of departure, we may try to make it all the way up to Croton-on-Hudson (near Half Moon Bay marina) on our first stop. At that point we will hopefully be catching up with the pack, many of whom will have stopped in and around NJ and NY for sightseeing.

Well, anyone that knows us, knows that we weren’t participating.  However, it was going on all around us in Rock Hall yesterday.  We also saw fellow Loopers Goosechase and Liquid Assets on the next dock over.

We’ve decided to skip parts of the upper Chesapeake.  No reasonable way to do any walking or sightseeing through St. Michaels or Annapolis or Baltimore, as we have to baby Artie’s foot and keep it dry for awhile.   We ‘ve skipped ahead in Maryland, to Calvert Marina at the Solomons and then up to Rock Hall.  Happy to see and hear from some fellow Loopers here at the back of the pack. Calvert’s was as good a stop as it was on the way down, and we did get to borrow the Mercedes (with 225,000 miles on it) to do a quick reprovision.   Instead of the “free wall” at Rock Hall (see posts from last October, where we spent a LONG WEEK ONE NIGHT), we were able to get a slip behind a local restaurant.  Generally, at restaurant stops there is either no fee for the slip or a nominal fee or some discount off of dinner. Not at Waterman’s Crab House. When you call in ahead of time, they say “take any slip”, no mention of a fee.  Then they charge $1 per foot, plus $10 for power, and there is no discount or application of the slip fee towards the dinner.  I’ll update this on Active Captain.  We ate on the boat.

Artie was finally released this week, a bit earlier than expected, and we spent a day back at the boat clearing our heads and getting reacclimated.  He’ll still have to continue on meds for awhile, and he is still limping a bit,  but at least he can recover underway.  I will miss the folks here at Somer’s Cove, who have taken such good care of us.  Hope to get back here in the future.

We started getting restless, looking at the calendar and the charts, and still hoping to catch up with this year’s Class of Loopers heading north.  We are also still planning on a stop in NY for family visits and to take care of some business.  We were able to head out on Thursday morning.  Here we come!