May 22, 2019 – We were up early this morning, the band of boaters heading down the Delaware Bay. Some had been here for several days waiting for favorable conditions, while we had arrived just the previous day. Getting off the docks, as closely as they pack boats in together, and into the narrow channel with a 2-knot current, is something that the dock staff here is a lot more experienced with than the average boater who stops here, so they run the departures with a good bit of direction, rather than just let people randomly take off at their own whim.
We were at the tail end, since they still had to turn us around, with lines, whereas everyone else had already been turned. There was quite a convoy of boats, with our group joined by boats coming out of the C&D Canal, having stayed at Chesapeake City or other marinas even further back.
We eventually pulled ahead of the pack, since we needed to run the engines up to higher RPMs in order to keep the turbos healthy, so we ran up on plane for two hours, before dropping back down to ‘trawler speed’.
As we got closer to the Cape May Canal, we could see that there were two ferries at the dock – great, one of them was probably going to leave just as we got there. Sure enough, he started backing out, necessitating that we turned a short loop around the outer marker to make sure that we gave him room to get straightened out. We then headed up the canal, under a very narrow and confusing pair of bridges, and then we were in Cape May Harbor.
Right at an inlet into the Atlantic Ocean, there are a LOT of boats, and it’s an active commercial and recreational fishing area. We saw boats like these coming and going all afternoon (and all night, as it turned out).
Our reservations at the marina were for Thursday, and it was such a nice day, that we anchored out for the night, right off the Coast Guard training base so we could just move over the next day. It is where they do basic entry training for all enlisted USCG members, and we could hear the marching and calisthenics all afternoon, and bugle calls in the evening. A great way to end the day.