2009 Log
9/15 to 9/30/2009
This is the current period of our log for 2009. At the bottom of the page are links to this year's pass weeks; our earlier voyages are in Prior Voyages.
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Updated on 01/28/2011
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9/16/09 - Sunny this morning with a forecast of rain today. High winds and high seas met us on our transit to Dutch Island; Ruthie's FAVORITE glassing place. It was a successful hunt for Ruth as she found many unusual shaped and colored pieces. She also found lots of baby starfish and a colony on the old cement pier with dozens of starfish of all different sizes. (Someone likes her up there as the sun came out as soon as she touched foot on the island) While she was beaching, a man from a small Sunfish sailboat talked to her and then came back to see if there was any way we could help him refloat his boat as the waves washed over it. Good old Barry to the rescue (a forever frustrated Tugboat wannabe) brought over the dinghy and helped him "right" his boat and off he went. High winds all night with a prediction of the same the next couple of days. No problem for us as the boat rocks us to sleep after a long sit-down with our suspense novels. 9/17/09 - Slept in until 9 today. Wow! Read for awhile and pulled the hook to sail to Pt Judith to see Rich and Carol. Bradd and Maeve are going to meet us there. We're invited to dinner tonight for a seafood special. There's suppose to be 10 of us so should be lots of stories and catching up to do. Ruth has been diligently working on trying to sell 25 trucks (a million pounds) of rolls for the last 2-3 weeks. I sure hope someone comes through for her. (our kitty is hungry) 9/18/09 - We had a quiet day. The wind was blowing out of the west at 15 knots so it didn't pay for us to head that direction. Ruth was feeling under the weather, I told her she probably got kennel cough for the darling little puppy she was playing with yesterday. She also learned that the 25 trucks of material had been sold so the kitty has to look for another mouse. 9/19/09 - Up at 7am, heading for Block Island under sail in 15 - 25 knot winds. We made such good time and the seas were pretty flat so Sampatecho II and Another Adventure headed to Cape May, NJ, about 200 miles away. Ruth and I went of 3 hour watches. We do it informally as sometimes one of us wakes up early or the other decides they are not sleepy and take a longer watch. The weather is perfect for sailing, motoring, and motor sailing as we try to stay at 6.5 - 7 knots to make the inflowing tidal current in Delaware Bay. Ruth made a big kettle of chili for supper - mmmmm! Nice and hot and spicy... I think it could boil without the burner being lit. 9/20/09 - The night passed without event. The seas were only about a foot high and winds became light. Both Ruth and I had to make sail changes: adjusting, furling, unfurling as the winds played with us. We really saw very few ships after the two cruise ships just south of Long Island. The temperature was balmy all night... sure makes for a nice ride. At 1 am the sport fishing boats came tearing out to sea making for an unsettled time. They run with their strong search lights sweeping the water ahead of them, totally washing out their navigation lights so you can't determine what they are or where they are going. Fortunately radar tells us where they are going. By dawn we were about 80 miles from Cape May doing 7 knots with motor and headsail. We entered the breakwater about 4pm and motored to Utsch's Marina for fuel and water. After navigating in and out of Utsch's in low tide (read 4.5' of water and 1 foot of mud we returned to the anchorage off the Coast Guard training center. Dinner was on Sampatecho, tilapia and fixings, delicious. After dinner we went back to AA and crashed. 9/21/09 - A beautiful sunny morning... we slept until 9am when Buddy cracked me up with a new greeting "Good morning, good morning, good morning Barry" - never heard that one before. Read an interesting fact yesterday... whales watching is a $2.1 billion dollar industry world-wide. That's more than the annual take of the countries that still whale commercially. The article suggests that they would be money ahead if the applied their resources to watching as opposed to killing. We took our dinghies to town and went for a long walk. It felt good to take a hike through the rows of beautifully maintained Victorian homes and the shopping center they created by turning several blocks in the heart of town into a pedestrian mall. Along the way we met crews from some of the other boats anchored around us. It's always fun to meet new folks and share experiences. We stopped at the Wawa convenience store a couple of blocks from South Jersey Marina to pick up a few grocery items; reminding ourselves to note in the log that this is not a supermarket. While shopping, posters announcing a benefit for the children of the crew of a vessel lost March 24th, 2009 reminded us that this is the home base of a major fishing fleet. Went to bed early as we have a 5:30am wake up to catch the tide flowing up the Delaware. 9/22/09 - Up before the sun to get the coffee perking. Roused Ruth at 6am so we could hoist anchor and head for Delaware Bay. We rounded Cape May by following the shoreline, a trip that always keeps me on edge as the sandy bottom can easily shoal, making last trip's safe passage a trap this year. Again we made it smoothly, never seeing less than 14' of water. Today's entertainment was watching the Coast Guard board power boats for safety inspections as they paraded up the Delaware. We somehow missed their attention... darn! Ruth scrubbed the cockpit while we motored. When she was done AA looked like a new boat! It's been a couple of months since we've been in a slip where we could rinse her. We motored with the tide to and through the C&D canal under cloudy skies. By 4pm we were anchored in the Little Bohemia River. I fired up the grille and cooked a couple of rib eye steaks to go with the potatoes and corn Ruth prepared... excellent! 9/23/09 - We woke to heavy dew and light fog; visibility about 2 miles. Ruth and I had coffee in the cockpit while we waited for Sampatecho's crew to stir. We tried to guess what day it was... we were both wrong. We started down the Chesapeake about 8am, motoring initially then switching to sail as the wind came up. Naturally it was right out of the south, the direction we wanted to go. So we tacked down the bay. Sampatecho was considerably faster than AA (dirty hull?) so we motor sailed about half the time to keep up with them. After a 45 minute wait at the Spa Creek bridge we entered the anchorage and found a small spot tucked behind all the moorings. This place really is heavily moored now leaving little room for anchored vessels. We'll be here until after the boat show Oct 8th - 12th. 9/24/09 - Cloudy, hot humid morning. The temperature got up to 84 during the day. Bradd had access to Chuck's car so we went to West Marine and the supermarket. The liquor store next to West Marine was having a great sale so Ruth convinced me if we spent money we'd save money... okaayyy, what school of economics is that? Miles and Laureen came over for sundowners so we had a chance to catch up with their travels. We've been on different courses since Portland. Miles was looking for someone trustworthy to do the 2000 hour inspection on his diesel. I recommended Brad Abbot and called him; he's in Annapolis on his boat. I turned the phone over to Miles and they agreed to an inspection. 9/25/09 - Rude awakening at 6am this morning. Buddy, Ruth & I all responded to a dull thump on the hull. IA sleepy glance out the window confirmed that we'd dragged down on a dock piling. No wind to speak of and little current... just a light drizzle. Go figure how an anchor that held at 3/4 throttle in reverse Wednesday decides to drag on Friday? The bottom of Spa Creek is like goose grease. 9/26/09 - Today was a domestic day, yes, living on a boat isn't a whole lot different than living on land - there are task that demand to be done. While Ruth slaved at a Laundromat with Maeve, Bradd and I filled propane tanks, visited West Marine and SailRite gathering items for maintenance. Our cockpit remote VHF microphone had failed and we needed to replace it. When we returned to the boat we found coffee and donuts from Miles & Laureen. Surprise! I had two donuts... probably for the first time in 6 years... naughty. This afternoon we cleaned the sides of the hull, kinda like washing the siding on our house. Sure looked a lot better with the rust colored smile off the bow. AA looks great today. The next step will be a coat of wax. I'm writing tonight while Buddy is sitting on my shoulder grooming my hair. She loves to watch while we work on the computer... go figure. When I put my fingers near her she softly mouths them, acknowledging that my presence is okay - kewl. We had a movie night last night; Ruth picked out a DVD and made popcorn. Great way to close the day. 9/27/09 - Rained all night, gave the hull a great rinse. We read for a while then I started the third attempt at the replacement window for Ariel. This time I had the right thickness of strataglass and the right zipper - what a difference! Miles will be able to see ahead of Ariel again. Of course it rained, right when we were ready to put the window back in Ariel. Miles had plan B in place so things were dry when the rain let up and we put the new panel in place. Job done. Bar-b-qued short ribs for dinner with mashed potatoes and corn on the cob... doesn't get much better. After dinner we had a glass of wine in the cockpit listening to the geese and herons call. Nice ending to the day. 9/28/09 - Beautiful Monday morning, all the clouds blown away. I spent a good part of the day cutting the rusted burner out of our Magnum grille as I tried (successfully) to repair it. It seems we get about a year out of a grille. Ruth was online most of the day trying to put together some business. She was pumping a dry well. Late afternoon a front move through. We were protected from the winds but saw some of the biggest raindrops I've ever seen. It was amazing watching wave of these drops move across the water as clouds swept by. Movie night tonight. Russell Crowe featured in "State of Play"... very good. 9/29/09 - A cold front came in with last night's rain. The heater felt good this morning as did the early sun through the cockpit windows. We are a week ahead of the show, spending the time on maintenance issues. First task of the day was to tighten the lower shrouds on the mast. I'd noted that they'd been hanging slack in heavy air sailing. Then Ruth and I started polishing and glazing the hull freeboard. We got about half way down one side when the wind kicked up and we had to stop; the glaze was drying too fast. A project for another day. The wind came up to 15 - 20 knots so we basically were on anchor watch for the afternoon. Holding is not that great here. 9/30/09 - Cloudy, windy and cool this morning. We joined Bradd & Maeve on a short shopping expedition, picking up a heat diffuser for the grille and a few grocery items. The grille rebuild is now complete. |
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Sampatecho II kicks up her heels on the Atlantic
The city gambling built - Atlantic City keeps on growing
Ruth shot this one for the girls
One of the several Cape May whale watching boats
Yet another of the whaling fleet Playing games? Last night a coast guard patrol boat glided along the channel side of the anchorage about 30 minutes before sundown. About 4 vessels were anchored at the edge of the channel; they left them alone. About an hour after sundown the patrol boat returned with blue lights blinking with siren bursts. They apparently decided a black WI boat (Pirate's Witch of Ashland) was infringing on the fairway (the boat was exactly where it was an hour earlier when they passed it). They circled it several times whooping the siren and illuminating the boat with their searchlight to no avail. The folks aboard were either asleep or ignoring them. The Coasties gave up and went home. Hmmm, practicing night boarding?
Pirates Witch from Ashland, WI motors up the Delaware
Tanker offers a push Anchoring in Spa Creek It's an exercise in geometry. You have to be 30 feet from a mooring and 75 feet from a shore structure. So, what's the problem? We swing in a 120' circle with wind and tides(200' including the boat). Try to visualize that area when you are anchoring. We were okay for 2 days, then the wind switched and we got within 50' of a dock pile. We got a warning and a request that we re-anchor. An hour later, after trying 3 spots we found a location 75' from any docks and 30' from any mooring. For the moment we are legal. We could take a mooring, but at $30/night we'd eat up most of what we can earn by working the show. Such is life... there is no free lunch. On the 26th we learned there are however free donuts.
Ruth's Dutch Island star fish
Always something to be done - today it's bright-work
Spa Creek sailor - looks like something from the Lord of Rings
Third time's a charm - finishing the new window for Ariel - talk about a learning curve!
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