Cohansey River, NJ (Delware Bay)

Sunday, June 29, 2008

039-21.120 N
075-21.660 W

Ahoy from the crew of the BlueJacket!

I'm happy to report that we've been doing just great. When I last reported we were in the Solomon Islands of Virginia. Since then we've made it through the Chesapeake and are now about 1/2 of the way down the Delaware bay. The trip from the Solomons to Worton Creek, where we spent Friday night, started out unremarkable as we had very little apparent wind and the sails hung loosely. Just after lunch a series of thunderstorms rolled through behind us and the winds picked up considerably. We were consistently sailing at hull speed (8.2 kts) and above. We were able to sustain 9+ kts for extended periods and were even able to hold 10+ kts for brief periods. We maxed out at 10.7 kts, which is flying. To say that we had an awesome sailing afternoon would be an understatement. We managed to make 78 miles in 10.5 hours, which is an average of 7.4 kts. That's moving!

At around 5 PM we decided to try to anchor in Still Pond, which is outside of Worton Creek and about 20 miles before the end of the Chesapeake. The winds had died and we had reasonable protection from the SW wind and waves. Unfortunately we slowly dragged through the soft mud and with the skies looking like we might get another thunderstorm, we decided not to risk dragging in high winds. The fact that it was hot and humid and there was power and the associated air conditioning had nothing to do with the decision to pull into a marina...I had previously called and there was space for us, so we pulled into The Wharf at Handy's Point..

The Wharf at Handy's Point ended up being a wonderful marina in a beautiful setting. The wooden elevated walkways which take you to marina buildings wind though tall cattails which are full of birds. It was absolutely delightful to walk through them the next morning, but I'm getting ahead of myself. The marina was empty except for a raucous party going on at a boat near us. Bill wandered over while I finished stowing things on BlueJacket. The party consisted of 3couples who had their boats there and were intent upon drowning their work  memories with alcohol. Bill actually ended up rowing a dinghy after one of the women who decided to swim back to her boat and Bill had to pull her into the dinghy after she went under! We didn't stay too long and headed back to BlueJacket..

On Saturday we departed at 6:30 and headed to the Chesapeake and Delaware (C&D) canal which is about 15 miles long. If you've ever seen the Cape Cod canal, it looks very much the same. There's not a lot to see as you're pretty much in a tree lined ditch without many houses for the majority of it. There was lots of boat traffic with many of the larger boats being very inconsiderate and throwing up huge wakes as they passed. Eventually we made it to the Delaware bay where we turned S and motored directly into the wind. Several large thunderstorms formed, but we were able to dodge them.

At about 4:30 we pulled into the Cohansey river in NJ and dropped the anchor. There STRONG current that runs through there and I was unhappy with how it was pushing us to the shore. I went to pull up the anchor and discovered that I had managed to break a part in the windlass (the device which pulls up the anchor chain). Sue normally handles the anchor and had a technique to keep this from happening. This was clearly a fault with the equipment, but since I didn't run the windlass, I didn't realize the extent of the problem. Anyhow, after tearing down the windlass, Bill and I decided to modify the design and completely do away with the parts which had failed and came up with a simpler design. It took 3 hours and we had to drill through 2" of brass and 1" of stainless, but when we were done, we had a system that wouldn't fail again. Oh, I can't forget to mention the flies...We were absolutely swarmed by biting green head flies. It was so bad that while one of us was working on the problem, the other one was standing guard with a fly swatter. We literally killed hundreds of them and were quite happy when night fell and the flies departed.

Right now it's Sunday morning and we're motoring S into the wind. We'll round Cape May in the early afternoon and if the weather holds, we should stop somewhere around Atlantic City.

-- Geoff & Bill

P.S. We rounded Cape May at noon and are making 7-8 kts. Should be in Atlantic City tonight.

Log ID: 1199