Monday May 23: Cape May

After sitting out the rain day on Saturday, we were ready for the next leg of the journey north.

Left early to make the most of the current. It's amazing how much difference it can make when we can ride the current. Traveling at 9.1 mph as opposed to traveling at 6.8 mph translates to a difference of a being able to travel 91 miles in 10 hours instead of just 68 miles in 10 hours.

The plan was to go the 55 miles to Delaware City so we would be poised to travel south on Delaware Bay on Monday if the weather held.

Somehow our plan went out the window and we ended up Sunday night in Cape May - the longest distance we ever traveled in a day: 114 miles, 13 1/2 hours (except of course when we did the Gulf of Mexico crossing of 170 miles and 20 hours).

Anyway, we were off Saturday early. It was a rainy morning.

Quite cool really.But with jeans, fleece, jacket and gloves it was quite nice under the flybridge!

And hot chocolate of course :-)

We reached the C & D (Chesapeake and Delaware) Canal about 12:30 or so. By then the rain had quit as did the small wind that was blowing.

Perfectly calm but we had run out of our current and were now fighting it.

No problem - we were due to be in Delaware City by 1 pm.

And then we came to the end of the canal and the top of the Delaware Bay. And the water was SO calm .....

Should we just go for it? Another 55 miles??

Called the dockmaster at Delaware Marina (they are extremely knowledgeable about traveling the Delaware Bay). He indicated that most of the boats waiting to travel the bay had left within the past hour as the boats were waiting for the tide to change and the wind to die.

Go for it!! Probably should have done the math better but the ride down was great. This is the first of 3 large lighthouses on the bay.

Note the crazy smooth water. And the current carrying us east at an average of 10.3 mph.

Next lighthouse: waves are still very small - if you can even call them waves!

But it was getting more and more overcast. No problem as visibility was still very good so it would be easy to see any freighters coming (which we actually never saw).

Then we started doing the math. Mmmmm..... are we going to be in before dark??

Steve had already called ahead and we knew we had a slip for the night so not really an issue if we came in in the dark.

All was well though. The tide had changed against us for the last 2 hours of the trip (which produced slightly broadside waves for us) but we were in and tied up by 7:45 (sunset wasn't until 8:15 so plenty of time!!).

It was decreed to be a rest day on Monday though - and I really didn't care what the weather was - we were staying put for a day!!

Which actually worked out nicely. We rode our bikes to breakfast - to the Mad Batter.

Pretty neat place. B & B with a restaurant. Lots of places to eat in Cape May. It must be a crazy place in the summer.

Some very interesting homes in Cape May. We went to the museum here several years ago but don't really remember much of the history of the town but recall it was quite interesting. (If you are interested in reading about the city's history, click here.)

Steve later took another bike ride to the shoreline. You can see the Cape May lighthouse in the distance.

He also saw a guy that caught a shark off of the beach!

Good thing it wasn't a great white :-)

Tomorrow: outside to Atlantic City if the weather holds!