tonewjersey

The Great Loop

2004 - 2005

We've made our way to Cape May, New Jersey.

This page contains our most recent postings. The Loop Log accesses the entire narrative via a list of voyage segments, and Loop Gallery contains photos of the trip in a main gallery and a host of sub-galleries accessible through a gallery log page.

Updated 5/23/05.

5/14/05 - Crisfield Maryland was an interesting stop. We got to watch them bring oysters and crabs to market and saw the very basic packing plants. The town was a sharp contrast of old and new buildings, survival and wealth. Sadly the quaint and interesting is being replaced with the new cookie cutter condos. One wonders how the community will fair as a weekend/summer village.

We left mid-morning for the journey across the bay to Solomon Landing at the mouth of the Patuxent River, arriving mid afternoon. Enroute we sailed most of the way, crossing Solomon Lump in 20 knots of wind. I was watching for traffic, visually and with the radar. I couldn't figure the course of one ship so I put a MARPA radar tag on it and watch to see the computer report it's speed and course. (Our radar has a feature, MARPA, that lets you identify a target and track it, learning its course, speed, forecasting the time and distance of passing. very handy.) The ship was sitting still! Another check of the chart revealed it was a wreck sitting in 16 feet of water. Ship and barge traffic became heavier... 4 -5 container ships and a half dozen barges. Fishing boats and cruisers made up most of the traffic.

Solomon Landing proved to be an interesting inlet lined with marinas. We found a place to anchor off a new condo development at the very end of the middle fork, St John's Creek).

5/15/05 - The forecast was for thunderstorms with high wind gusts (do they come any other way?) so we took a down day. We'd noted Freddy, Freddy the evening before so we paid Floyd and Della started with a visit, catching up on their journey since we last saw them at Fort Meyers Beach. Later we visited the Calvert Marine Museum and toured the Drum Point Lighthouse (now a part of the museum). It proved a worthwhile couple of houses as we learned about rays and skates, saw typical fishing boats and learned of the history and ecology of the Chesapeake.

We didn't get the thunderstorms, however a steady downpour from 2 pm until morning kept us from visiting the Tikki Bar that everyone raved about (hey, we've seen the one at the Pioneer).

5/16/05 - Monday we headed out at 7 am enroute to ??. Strong 20 - 25 knot northern winds blowing against an incoming tide made for sharp 4 - 5' standing waves. We motor sailed north, tacking to prevent the boat from pounding off the waves. By noon the tide changed and the wind dropped to 10 knots. The seas smoothed so we motored to Annapolis on the Severn River, arriving around 3pm. We anchored immediately off the Naval Academy, watching the training boats and the cadets. We counted 17 training ships of approximate 55-65 foot length.

5/17/05 - Tuesday's pre-dawn (4:30am) was broken by loudspeakers playing a really snappy tune - time for the cadets to start their day. It was their Sea Trail day. By 7:30 there was a continuous song of boat horns, one long, three shorts, as the training boats backed out of their slips and motored into the bay. Onshore we could see squads running and exercising. It must have been a big day on campus - graduation?

In the morning I visited the headquarters for Jeanneau America, the distributor for our boat. I purchased an additional cabin light for reading. It's the one we have always felt they missed installing. Now it's in and does the job we wanted.

The grade school kids have been taking boat tours of the waterfront. One boat is done up as a pirate ship, calling their tour the pirate experience. Soooo, when they came past I put on my pirate's skull cap and brandished a sword. As they passed I called "be gone you swabbies, be gone". The kids loved it!

We spent the afternoon grocery shopping. Yes, with buses and dinghies it can easily take an afternoon. That evening we watched over 100 boats of various classes racing - mostly under 20' long.

5/18/05 - The morning was for maintenance, cleaning and waxing stainless steel and checking rigging and turning blocks. The best maintenance is preventative. The morning was hazy with light winds. The haze burned off by noon. The pirate tour made a detour to circle us, soooo - we gave them another show. It's great to hear the grade schoolers screaming and cheering. They swung by later and said thank you.

Annapolis is definitely a sailors' Mecca. I've never seen so many boats sailing at all hours of the day. The city has a pump-out boat for the anchorage and mooring field. There are dinghy docks located up each of the inlets. A marine hardware store and a True Value Hardware are located on the waterfront. Very nice!

The races this evening were awesome. Over 100 keelboats raced in about 5 PHRF divisions. The races finished at the yacht club. This meant that all the boats passed within 100 - 200 feet of our bow as they tacked through the mooring field into a small channel. It was the wildest racing I've seen! We shot so many photos that our batteries died. I felt like a fire horse!

5/19/05 - Thursday our parts arrived at Jeanneau about noon. We walked the couple of miles to pick them up, doing the tourist bit as we passed shops and traversed small neighborhoods. The well kept properties leave you with the feeling that you've been transported back to colonial times.

Later I installed the light we'd bought while Ruth readied the boat for an early departure Friday. Our plans were changed when the sound of crashing waves and strobing lights awoke me at midnight. The 10 - 15 knot winds forecast for early morning had arrived... as a full blown NorEasterner with sustained 30 - 35 knot winds, gusts to 47 knots, and driving rain. We'd dragged to the rocks by the Naval Academy. The combination of the anchor off the bow and the dinghy trapped behind the boat kept Another Adventure off the rocks - talk about luck. With Ruth at the wheel we headed back out to re-anchor, alternately keeping one of us up on anchor watch. The anchor held through the night as the boat lurched in the 4' waves.

5/20/05 - Friday revealed a harbor of angry waves and spray under a low canopy of rapidly moving clouds. Our anchor was holding though it was the same configuration that had blown out the night before, a 45# delta with 95' of heavy 3/8" chain. We'd been anchored 3 nights in winds to 15 knots with no problems but a 120 degree switch in angle or tidal sailing had broken the anchor free of the bottom. The boats that had been anchored around us had moved and re-anchored with the exception of the sailor who had flashed his searchlight on us the night before, warning us that we were dragging. He was alone on a 30' sailboat fighting the wind and waves. He re-anchored at least 5 times, only to break free again. The night before he'd noted he had 150' of chain out in 14' of water. The harbormaster sent a boat out to help him - it almost flipped over in the seas and headed back to safety. After a 4 hour struggle he wrapped his chain around a mooring, holding the boat in place while he ran a line to the mooring and cleared his tackle. We tried to figure a way to help but realized that our dinghy wouldn't have handled the wind and seas.

The storm blew itself out that night and we relaxed.

5/21/05 - Sat dawned clear and cool, mid 50's. We hauled anchor and went to the Annapolis City Marina for fuel, water and a pump-out. Traffic was heavy so we stood off the dock until 9am, clearing the dock at 10.

The Saturday races were in full swing as we threaded our way out of the river. Annapolis had races every day we were there with the lone exception of yesterday during the NorEasterner.

We passed under the Bay Bridge motor sailing north. We did a fly by of Baltimore as neither of us wanted to go through the commercial harbor to take a slip in the renovated waterfront. We'd spent too much time in Annapolis and felt that we should be moving north.

We reach the Sassafras River about 4pm. Ruth like the name and I like the water depth and alignment of the inlet, so we motored in and anchored in 12 feet of water. As I fired up the grill and threw on a pork tenderloin 2 more sailboats anchored in our vicinity, the cruising season was starting on the bay.

5/22/05 - Sunday dawned with leaden winter clouds marching overhead. I hauled the anchor about 7:30am, letting Ruth sleep in as I headed toward Elk River and the Chesapeake And Delaware Canal. We were on our way to the Delaware River.

The canal was interesting. It was essentially a large 50' deep ditch that connected the head of Chesapeake Bay to the Delaware River. Much of the land along the canal has been established as a wildlife area though cottages dot areas that were likely early inlets. The canal is lit its entire length for the safety of transiting vessels. We met at least 3 dozen pleasure boats and 3 tugs towing or pushing individual barges, usually tankers.

Delaware bay offered nothing to attract us as we motor sailed south toward Cape May, the tip of New Jersey we'd round before heading north on the Atlantic. We met container ships, tankers, and a number of tanker barges as we headed south. We had to keep a watch behind us as the ships move at 15 knots, about double our speed. The weather cleared and the wind died during the afternoon. Sails stowed we motored into Cape May about 8pm. We are in New Jersey.