ocean blue

Here we are in Chesapeake city. As I sit in the cockpit of our boat, I am surrounded by like minded travelers having just finished the sail up the Delaware Bay and have finally made it to Chesapeake City and the feeling around me is great. There is a buzz in the air as we meet boat after boat doing the same trip as us. Most of the couples and/or families we meet are doing this trip for the first time and some we meet are veterans, but it doesn't matter cause everyone is here and "living the dream".

As we sailed out of New York city and past lady liberty, it finally hit me..."Wow...we're really doing this...and this is the ocean that lay infront of us". A little nervous??? Sure. A little excited??? Definitely.
We waited a day for the right weather and made our way down the Jersey coast via the Atalantic ocean. We headed down the coast with a NW wind and we flew...we had a great first ocean sail. We saw schools of fish everywhere and were desperately trying to catch them from the stern of the boat (Mike has now spent a small fortune of fishing gear and has suddenly become Mr. Fisherman....it's quite funny). Anyway...we entered the inlet to a little fishing town to anchor for the night and found out what entering an inlet off the ocean was like. I don't quite know how to describe what it was like.


We had about 8 foot surf breaking on either side of the jetties and were breaking into the inlet and we had a swell pushing us in and the wind pushing us out...it was ummm...interesting. We made it though, and anchored for the night while about 20 knots of wind gusted all night, but all was well. The next day was pretty much a carbon copy of the next day except....the wind died 3/4 of the way through and we experienced a much calmer ocean, however with big swell (the southeast swell was coming from hurricane Helene, which was still 1200 miles off the Jersey coast, but her force was still bringing in the swell). It was a great day...my husband the fisherman was trying like hell to catch us dinner, but that night we had pasta...with no fish. We finally entered Cape May, just as the sun was setting. Thankfully we had a buddy boat ahead of us (Aunt Emma) that helped us through the darkening inlet. Cape May is the point the separates Delaware Bay and the Atlantic ocean and once here our next feat was to sail up Delaware bay. We took the next day off and enjoyed the lovely town of Cape May.
A huge fishing village that has catered to cruisers travelling via the cape may canal from the atlantic into Delaware bay. We had a great meal in the cape and anchored with some really great people and made the plan with another boat to leave the next day. 5:00am we were pulling up anchor ready to pass through the canal and enter Delaware. We had to leave early because we were told that if you time the tide, current, wind, waves just right...you'll never see your boat go faster. Hmmm...that sounded like fun. Well...travelling through the canal in the dark isn't a good idea, but we had to do it and our young eyes led 3 boats through safely. After that small feat we were introduced to 25 knot winds as we entered the bay...this was going to be an interesting ride. We had an uncomfortable, harry first 2 hours, but we were able to head off the wind a bit a before we knew it Meggie was flying. I don't just mean regular flying...I mean FLYING. At one point when a huge wave was carrying us and the wind was howling, and the current was maxing, I looked at the gps and we were clocking 10.3 knots. For those of you that don't know what that means...it means Meggie was going faster than she ever has and probably ever will. We had a double reefed main, reefed mizzen, and small storm jib up and we were blown away. Needless to say we had a great sail up the bay and entered the c & d canal and made our way to Chesapeake city. This is where I sit and write this in the cockpit of our boat, listening to the band on land play bob marley and enjoying watching the calmness of the Sunday night.
Well folks...there you have it...a very full detailed post of whats been happening. We're so pleased with Meggie right now, we can't really describe it. We gave her a good bath today and got all the crystalized ocean salt off and plan to anchor in Sassafrass river on the eastern shore of Chesapeake bay for the next few days and get some varnish and work done. Then it's off to Annapolis to hopefully find some work at the show.
As always...keep the messages coming as we love to read them.
Until the next adventure.
Kylie and Mike