Spa Creek

Up at 8 AM. I make popovers for breakfast. After, I take the dinghy to the adjacent park and magic marker our faded registration number and put on our new VT sticker. From a distance the numbers look pretty good. A couple days later, Linda finally looks at my lettering close up and is not too thrilled.

I call Defender Marine to see about ordering the windlass I need, assuming they would not have it in stock. Not only do they claim to have it in stock, they give me a much better price than any of my recent quotes. Much better than their online price. I have it shipped to our friends Ken and Donna who live in Hayes Virginia where we will be stopping in a few days. This is going so well, something must be wrong. Defender is much more dependable than West Marine and I hope they don’t break their record.

I defrost the refrigerator due to our little warm up and find the offending smell, some hamburger I thought I had frozen. Around 4Pm we have cheese and crackers since we missed lunch. Diana and Alain and there visiting friend stop by and they join us for Happy Hour. It was a fun visit, their guest was very interesting, she has extensively sailed and currently lives on a sailboat, elsewhere.

After they leave we head to Chick and Ruth’s for dinner. We have only ever gone there for breakfast. We split a crab cake dinner. I liked it, Linda not so much, but we both like the Strawberry/Rhubarb pie with ice cream for desert. After a quick stop at CVS, we head back to the boat for the evening.

Chick & Ruth's

 

 

Spa Creek, Boat Show Day

Spa Creek, Boat Show Day. We have breakfast on the boat and I work on the compressor. I have to removed from it from its shelf so I can get access to the fan. There is lots of coiled copper line, so it can be moved a few feet while still running. I discover that the wire on one of the fan leads had become disconnected. If I had been more observant I could of taken care of that with out moving the compressor and emptying out the port locker. Anyways, refrigerator is back to normal.

We head to the boat show. I am looking for a new windlass and want to talk with folks at Raymarine. I get some good quotes on prices for the replacement windlass that we need, but no one has one in stock. “We can ship it too you in a couple weeks, maybe”. I find a helpful person at Raymarine who gives me a lot of insight to the problems I have been dealing with. I meet Giorgio from Aquamaps. Aquamaps is my main navigation app on our iPads. We have lunch with our friends Bruce and Pam. Run into Diane and Alain. They had anchored in Weems Creek a mile or two north. 

Walking to the boat show

Rainman Water Maker vendor

My Oak Barrel Stout

 

After the boat show we rush back to our boat to put on warmer clothes and then head to Wayne and Betty’s boat for Happy hour. We met another couple, long time friends of Betty and Wayne, they are full time cruisers. We leave before it gets too dark and head to Rams Head for BBQ Shrimp.

Our ride "home" awaits us

Spa Creek

Another rainy day. I spend some more wasted time with Verizon tech folks trying to get our hotspot working. We have a current data rate that would make dial-up look fast. I get nowhere with the idiot tech support people. Where do they get these morons? Fortunately our iPad and iPhone work fine, we just can’t hotspot our PC’s. Late afternoon the rain stops and we dinghy over to Eastport Yacht Club and use their showers, they have reciprocity with most other boat clubs. We then head to the Dockyard for Dinner (Fish Taco’s). Back on the boat we watch another episode of “Outlaws”. Linda notices something smelling in the refrigerator and I see that the temperature is not what it should be. The fan in not running on the condenser. I crank up the thermostat to maximum and will replace the fan in the morning.

Spa Creek

Donuts at Chick & Ruth's

 

Today is Laundry Day. We pack up our dirty laundry and head to our usual laundry mart that we first found 10 years ago. But first we stop at Chick & Ruth’s for breakfast, Linda, I and a big bag of laundry. We split a breakfast and still have to much to eat. 

 

 

 

Linda mentioned we should of checked out the laundromat on the web, but I don’t bother. We walk to the laundromat to discover it recently closed, SOB ! We can’t find another close by. There is one in the other direction from where our boat is anchored, near West Marine where we planned to walk to in the afternoon. So we had back to the boat and then go ashore at Trunxton Park, right next to where we are anchored. They have a boat launch and dinghy dock. As we walk the 1-1/2 miles to the new laundromat, Betty calls and invites us to Happy Hour on their boat, late in the afternoon.

 

Google Street View car goes by our Laundromat. Will have to check in a couple months to see if we are standing there with our dirty laundry

 

 

 

Fabulous Laundromat, busy but lots of machines. I had hoped to get some reading done, but the machines are so fast I don’t get the opportunity. Lots of very friendly folks at this laundromat, lots of Spanish being spoken here. We head to a quick lunch at MacDonalds, then West Marine, Fawscetts Marine and True Value hardware. 

As we are walking back to the dock with our cart loaded with our clean laundry in a large Ikea shopping bag, a fellow sitting in front of his house asks if we know about the free dinner at some local church.  Not sure what he was talking about, but a couple minutes later it dawns on me, we must look rather pathetic, rolling our "worldly" possessions along on our folding cart.

On the way back to the boat Betty calls and says it is fairly rough where they are anchored and said they got pretty wet returning to their boat, so we decide to get together tomorrow. We are very protected in Spa Creek.

We are rather tired from all our walking today, so we have dinner on the boat and watch a few episodes of “Outlaws” on Amazon.

 

Spa Creek

In the morning, on the dock in Worton Creek, I do a factory reset and reinitialize the software on the Raymarine Axiom display. We head over to the gas dock to fuel up. Once we leave the confinements of the creek I have to drive the boat in circles until the compass is correctly reset. As we leave the creek we see “Bright Ayes”, just pulling up their anchor. They were waiting for the current to favor the ride south to Annapolis. Betty and Wayne are active members of the Seven Seas Association and are working one day of the Annapolis boat show. 

On the T-dock at Worton Creek

 

Heading to the fuel dock

Bright Ayes

Well, Abracadabra! The autopilot now works correctly. Still have the occasional dropout of the Autopilot, but I can live with that for now.

We catch the 3:30PM bridge opening to Spa Creek. Not a lot of space to anchor, but we get lucky and a power boat, pulls up their anchor and we pull into their spot. We relax for the rest of the afternoon and take the dinghy in for dinner at the Rams Head, one of our favorite restaurants. We share a dinner of Shrimp and Grits, theirs are the best. We stop by Kilwins Ice cream to see if they have one of Linda’s favorites, Peach Ice Cream. Some years they have it in the fall, but not always. Linda is in luck. We will be back. We dinghy back to the boat in the dark and are in bed at 10:30.

Worton Creek

We get up at 7:15 as the sun is peeking through the early morning mist. We are the last ones to leave the anchorage in the river. 

Sunrise in the mist

Sunrise

The first thing I do is drain the water in our fuel filter trap. We had just fueled up at Atlantic Highlands, New Jersey and they decided included a half cup of water. Had a similar problem last time we got gas for the outboard the last time here.

The next issue is the windlass fails to pull up the anchor. This windlass has been on borrowed time for a couple years. I was going to replace it a couple years ago, but it would of required to remove it with a metal cutting saw. After 20 years with a little salt, the drive shaft and coupling become bonded together, so I babied it along for another couple years. The gear box worm drive has failed. So I have the fun of hand cranking up the chain and stopping every 8 feet to wash of the mud.

Bright Ayes

Once we get back out on the upper Delaware we have a nice sunny day without much wind. Looking at AIS targets on our plotter I notice “Bright Ayes” just off to our port side. I pullout the binoculars and confirm it is them. Betty notices us too and calls us on the VHF radio. Excellent sailors that they are, they left Barnegat at 3:00 AM to perfectly catch the current up the Delaware later in the morning. They follow us into the C&O canal that connects to Delaware to the Chesapeake.

 

C&O Canal Bridge

 

Barrage being pushed by tug in C&O Canal

We head to Worton Creek where we have stopped once before. Rather shallow creek, but we had no problems entering last time. This time we do. A shoal has moved beyond one of the channel markers and the charts show another shoal in what is the actual channel. Anyway we get off the bottom and continue our way to the marina. We get to the Marina at 5PM after closing and have to dock ourselves. Linda gets the passwords and combinations from a British couple who keep their trawler in one of the covered dock sheds.

New Jersey coast and Delaware River

 

10/8 & 10/9 New Jersey coast and the Delaware River

We don’t plan to leave until late morning. It usually takes about 20 hours to get to Cape May. Leaving Sandy Hook around noontime gets us in the next morning around 8:00 AM. This morning there is more more wind out of the north than predicted, although it is suppose to settle down some time later in the morning. Boats leaving early morning are pounding through the waves as they head north to round Sandy Hook to start the trip south. Diana and Alain did not sleep very well beyond the protection of the breakwater from the wind driven waves.

As we pass Barnegat Inlet in the afternoon I thought about texting our friends Wayne and Betty Romburg, "Bright Ayes" that we are going by their home port. I plan to never go into Barnegat, I have heard too many horror stories about boats entering the inlet in the wrong conditions, wind and current opposing, creating surfing conditions. Fine on a surf board, not on a boat. They usually head south on their boat a 47 foot Caliber "Bright Ayes" in the fall.

I did a factory reset, that a Raymarine Technican recommended to solve my autopilot dropout problem. After I did that the autopilot did not work at all. I did not want to take the time to figure it out so decided to hand steer to Cape May. Hand steering is fine in the daylight, but sucks in the dark. I am terrible at steering strictly by compass. Fortunately there were lots of boats heading south overnight, so most of the time we could pickout someone’s running lights to steer to. We had just the head sail out and the engine at idle, sipping fuel and we were doing around 7 knots all night. Unfortunately that got us to Cape May around 4 AM. The other boats around us continued across the Delaware to Cape Henlopen, Delaware to arrive after sunrise and anchor behind the large breakwater.

Sunset of the New Jersey coast

Followed by the moonrise

Nice full moon sail

I decided to go into Cape May to anchor since we are familiar with anchoring there in the daylight.Entering the inlet in the dark, now that the moon was low in the sky was a little disconcerting. The green light on the west breakwater was easy to spot, but the red light on the east breakwater was very hard to distinguish from the numerous other red lights further back in the harbor. I turned the boat around and did a loop to get my bearings and turned on the radar before we entered. We dropped anchor around 5 AM and went to sleep after setting the anchor and turning on the anchor alarm. We were rather chilled, but sliding under our new 12 volt electric blankets was very nice and we were quickly asleep.

Around 8:00am we get a knocking on the hull and I quickly run up to the cockpit. Our nervous Canadian neighbor tells us we are too close to his boat. We could have been further away, but had plenty of space since we all swing in the same direction. Not worth arguing with him, he was here first, so we move a little ways, reset the anchor and go back to bed. We get up at 10 AM and have breakfast. I still can’t get the autopilot to function correctly. We leave around noontime hoping to get a favorable current up the Delaware later in the afternoon. Turned out we had a rough afternoon of motoring. The wind was more on the nose than I though it would be, so we could only motor sail for a couple hours before having to furl the sail. It was not a pleasant afternoon pounding through the waves.

We anchored after dark in the Cohansey River around 7:40 PM. We have anchored here before in daylight, so were familiar enough to come in, in the dark. There were already a couple boats anchored that we could see via AIS before we arrive. Very good holding. Quickly anchored, made dinner and were in bead by 9:00PM