May 23 - 24 -- St. Michaels to Chesapeake City to Cape May -- 68.9 and 68 Miles

The first day of this holiday weekend John and I got underway at 7:15 after I water taxied Lene and the felines in their carrier to John's car and we raised and secured the dink. And we docked at 8 pm. But we were not actually underway the whole time. We detoured into Annapolis after passing about eighty boat flying spinnakers, racing the other way, headed from Annapolis to St. Michaels. We stopped in Back Bay to fill the fuel tanks, which took an estimated 90 minutes of in and out and waiting on line for the fuel dock with only about 15 of those minutes for the actual fueling.
Our second stop of the day was when we run into the mud trying to enter the harbor on the south side of the C and D Canal, where I had stayed in 2006 on ILENE and last fall on sister ship Pandora. We backed right off the mud and tried to call the marina by phone and VHF. Finally, the person said, "I don't know if you can make it in now, near low tide, but hug the seawall on the left side of the entrance." This was not very reassuring. We had noticed a long high fixed dock with two or three small power boats tied up to it and a busy restaurant on the other side of the canal, less than a quarter of a mile back- Scheafers. Not seeing any sailboats there, I called to ask about depth and they said they had 20 feet minimum at the dock, which our depth meter later confirmed. But they "had to charge us their holiday rate", $2.50 per foot. The restaurant and bar were large and jammed with revelers. We had dinner there and the food was OK.  It seems the place burned down about ten years ago and has recently reopened. It is so easy to get in and out that this will be a place I'll return to, even though they do not have water, electricity or wifi.
Why did it take so long, you might ask. Well the tides were against us all day. We went down the Miles River from St. Michaels against the flood which turned to ebb when we rounded Bloody Point to go north up the Bay. Six hours later this should have changed but then we were confronted by water flowing toward us from the Delaware. Well we have had all-day good tides too, but not today.
John was great help all day, a knowledgeable cautious seaman.

His 28' S2 sloop, "Hearts Content" passed its survey the day before with flying colors. "The best maintained 35 year old S2 I have ever surveyed" said the surveyor. She was John's friend for the last 25 years, but he also has a 22 foot power boat, "Dixie," and he was not using the sloop and has found her a good home. Second happiest bittersweet day in a man's life: when he sells his boat.
Next morning we continued in the canal starting at 7:15 and found favorable tide. Belt and suspenders, do you think:

No, just an optical illusion with the arch further away and the pretty suspension bridge that Lene drove over the day before in the foreground.
Once in Delaware Bay, the tide was an even bigger help and we made over nine knots until noon. Delaware Bay is a wide boring passage except when freighters pass you by. See bow wake.

As the day wore on, the wind came up strongly, with about 35 knots and gusts to 45 showing on our meter, (though I sense that it reads about five knots too fast). So we had only the small jib and were beating down the Bay. The tricky part was rounding Cape May. The outer passage is a long way around some shoals, which would have added about the miles to our trip in rough weather toward the end of the day. The inner passage saves those miles but put ILENE's port side only about .2 miles from the beach with those big winds and the big waves they created trying to push her onto the beach. We had furled the small jib to gain control over safety for this part of the passage. John wanted the more cautious longer passage, as had part of my crew in 2006 when we did this in calmer weather. We have pictures of the beach with its lighthouse taken from this in close route on this blog in June 2012, on a rather calm day and had done the trip in the opposite direction last fall. Today we were too busy for pictures. it was a two person operation. John steered or to be more precise, controlled the autopilot and watched the waves. One of them sent a spray of water up over the boat soaking him completely. My job wasq operate the InavX on Lene's Ipad, while crouched in the companionway, to protect it from the spray and shade it from the sun. I directed, for example: "Turn right ten degrees." It was like instrument flight rules or sailing in thick fog. I directed our course from the electronic chart, around shoals charted as little as nine feet deep, keeping us in water at least 13 feet deep, without looking up to see where we actually were or where we were going. It was scary but we made it.
Once around the Cape, we turned more north toward the two stone seawalls that mark and protect the channel entrance into Cape May Harbor from the Atlantic. It seemed that we would be surfing down waves barreling directly into the harbor so I turned toward the beach for a practice run in that direction and ILENE seemed to handle it well. In the reality, however, the waves were at about a twenty degree angle from the channel and our passage between the seawalls was relatively easy. We anchored near the Coast Guard Station in about ten feet of water off the green side of the channel with sixty feet of snubbed chain. We were one of about six boats there, each far enough from the others and protected from the SW winds by the land mass of the Cape. John was a bit nauseous, though more from nerves than motion sickness, I think.
We were in by 5:30 and after a breather it was time for dinner. I have tried to get John to try foods that, while within his vegetarian practice, were different from his routine. Tonight we shared his food. I sauteed and steamed some veggies, fake chicken strips and onions, mixed them with whole wheat pasta and dressed it with soy sauce and grated cheese. Pretty good, and it better be because the leftovers is tomorrow's dinner too.