Our One Year Anniversary On the Great Loop 6-25-08

We departed Baltimore on June 24 at 6:07am and as soon as we entered the Bay, we encountered lines and lines of crabpots. Some nice crabman was kind and put flags on some of his pots.

At 12:10pm we passed by the public docks at Chesapeake City, MD and as soon as we were under the bridge we were on the C&D Canal. We had a 3 knot current helping us through the canal! It was still early, so we continued on toward Delaware Bay. There were a couple more marinas on the canal, plus an anchorage that looked promising for an early start for tomorrow. At 1:27pm we entered Delaware Bay, which was breezy (15 knots) with 1’ waves, but we only had a short distance to travel to our anchorage for the night behind Reedy Island near the Delaware side of the Bay. The entrance to the anchorage is between two buoys flanked on each side by a dike. By sunset there were two sailboats and two trawlers settled down for the evening at anchor.

On our one year anniversary on America’s Great Loop (6-25-08), we were up at Odark30 and pulled the anchor up by 5:45am! We had a beautiful sunrise across the bay. We had timed the trip down the bay on a falling tide and cruised with a 2 to 2-1/2 knot current giving us a push. Shortly after leaving the anchorage, we left the ship channel at marker “38” and set a course straight for the Cape May Canal 27.4 nm away. This took us over shallower ground, but away from the ship traffic and was the most direct route. We tore down the bay at 10knots or 11-1/2mph for about half the trip, while cruising our usual 1600rpms….Sweeeeet. The weather cooperated and we had flat seas on the bay and a lovely day to be on the water.

By 11am we had entered the Cape May Canal, which cuts across the tip of Cape May and eliminates the need to travel around the end of New Jersey to reach the town, plus cutting off more time.

We pulled into Utsch’s Marina in Cape May Harbor and fueled up at $4.60/gal for diesel, before heading for our slip assignment. When we went into the office to check in, we were given a Welcome Bag from the marina, which included a bottle of Utsch’s own label red wine, a bag of biscotti, a bar of scented soap, a floating key ring, a map of Cape May, a tide table for the area and two coupons for a complimentary cup of tea or coffee at the marina office. What a nice touch!

Here are some statistics from the past years’ journey:

Total Days: 366

Total Miles: 5875sm, 5109nm

Days Traveling: 130

Locks Transited: 118

Nights at Marinas: 232

Nights at Anchor: 42

Fuel Consumed: 2010 gallons

Main Engine Hours: 793

Average Fuel Economy: 2.9 sm/gal (including 84 generator run hours)

Average Speed: 7.4 sm/hr (6.4kts)

Average Fuel Rate: 2.5gal/hr

The nights at marinas does not include the 3+ months we spent over the winter in Florida. We normally are renting a condo and would have spent more for the condo in one month; than we did for the time the boat was at the dock in Palmetto. We figure we came out ahead on that score!

We are back to being current with the blog…..Yeaaaaaa!!! It has been a long time and hopefully, we’ll be able to post logs daily, when we’re moving. We’ll post more on the resort town of Cape May tomorrow.

Thanks for visiting and thanks to Katie for her help setting up the blog!