The dock lines were untied at 6:10am today and TOM-KAT headed north again on the NJICW. The first picture is a view of our sunrise through the rigging of all the fishing vessels across the dock from us. On a calm day, boats will go outside to head up to Atlantic City, but there are small craft warnings out on the ocean today, so we’ll stay inside. The ICW route will take longer due to waits for bridge openings, many “No Wake” zones, and the meandering path of the ICW.

Most of the bridges we can fit under (we need 15’ with mast and antennas down). We had to have the Stone Harbor bridge open and also the 9^th St Bridge in Ocean City.

Many of the local boaters discouraged us from taking the ICW because of shoaling, especially in the lower half of the state. TOM-KAT draws 3’9” and it’s recommended that if you draw 4’ or more that you take the outside route. We saw many shallow areas today.

This was a pretty egret fishing in the shallows.

More shallow areas with an osprey nest in the background.

Near Ocean City, NJ we saw this pirate ship attacking another vessel. From the shrieks coming from the pirate ship, we’d say that all aboard we’re having a great time!

We left the NJICW to cross Little Egg Harbor Inlet and we saw this sailboat aground. The buoys switch sides here because of the inlets from the ocean and the sailboat picked the wrong side of the green buoy to cruise.

Once we were back on the NJICW we mushed to a stop ourselves! After a few choice words, Bob backed up and very, very slowly moved over to the green buoy. The chart plotter did not show the green buoy 50 yards to the left that we should have honored. The paper chart does show it and now has a note to that effect. Bob revved up the engine and didn’t feel any vibrations, so guess we were lucky!

A little farther down the ICW, we turned off into Ventnor City Basin and dropped the hook. We had traveled 40nm (5149nm-Total) today in 7.8 hours and it was time for lunch and some rest. We have vacation homes in front of us and marshland on our stern. The anchorage is probably a very busy place on the weekends, but it’s very quiet here on Monday afternoon.

This duck family came by the boat looking for food and no wonder…..Mama had at least 22 babies to feed!

Something about this place makes me wish we’d brought our Monopoly game with us.

Thanks For Visiting With Us.

More on Cape May, New Jersey

The bikes did come down on Saturday, June 28 and we rode about 5 miles out Sunset Boulevard to the Cape May Lighthouse. The lighthouse is part of the Cape May Point State Park. The first beach picture shows the State Park beach and Battery 223. The gun battery was used to protect the New Jersey shoreline during WWII. Portions of the structure have collapsed, leaving only the supports for the guns and a maintenance building standing. The Navy abandoned the installation in1962, when a nor’easter breached the sand dunes.

The second beach picture shows a sailboat cruising around Cape May Point toward Delaware Bay.

We saw the picture of this house in the museum at the State Park. It was interesting to see how they cleverly salvaged the top of the house and made it into a very lovely new home, farther away from the ocean.

Even the stores in Cape May are Victorian. This is a woman’s apparel store, aptly titled, “Pretty in Pink”.

The favorite mode of transportation in Cape May is the bicycle, your own or many places offer them for rent, including our marina. Even on the narrow city streets, cars give a wide berth to bicyclists. The second favorite mode of transportation is the horse drawn carriage. The drivers can be a wealth of information regarding the history of Cape May.

The last two photos show the low tide and high tide at our slip today,
Sunday, June 29. That’s about a 5-1/2’ difference.

We’re due for some storms tonight, but we hope to be off tomorrow morning to cruise on up the New Jersey ICW (NJICW).

Our Best to All

The Homes of Cape May, New Jersey

Cape May was one of the first resorts in America and is well known for its colorful Victorian architecture. The city was named a National Historic Landmark District in 1976.

Yesterday we walked into town and marveled at “what we call” The Painted Ladies. Here are just a few.

Bob wonders if the homeowners of this house took the hydrangea blossoms to Lowes to match the house colors. They’re perfect!!

The Firehouse Museum

The Merry Widow Bed & Breakfast

The Haunted House

The Southern Mansion

Just a Cute House

Today we went to Dock Mike’s for breakfast and had planned to ride bikes into town to explore some more, but it was 90 degrees at 10am, so we spent time on the boat with the AC on, planning out the next few months and checking the charts to figure out our timetable for the summer.

About 2:50pm the sky turned dark and we knew we were in for some nasty weather. The XM weather map shows the storm as its right over us. TOM-KAT is the little black triangle (under the red triangle) right in the middle of the action. The storm brought high winds: we saw 22 knots in the marina, but we heard boats on the VHF radio talking (maybe out in the ocean?) that saw 70 knots of wind. The picture of the storm passing through the marina doesn’t show the nickel size hail or the wind blowing the water down the channel, but we could see it and feel it! It was a small storm, so it only lasted for half and hour or so, but in that time, the temperature dropped from 90 to 70 degrees!!

I tried a new recipe for dinner-Chicken Thighs with Apricot Jam, Dijon Mustard and Honey Glaze over rice…..very good.

Maybe the bikes will come down tomorrow.

Thanks for Visiting with Us

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!

Baltimore's Inner Harbor

We arrived in Baltimore’s Inner Harbor on Saturday, June 21. We had anchored out last night just north of Annapolis in Mill Creek, a little tributary off Whitehall Bay. There was lots of boat traffic early, but it died down toward sunset and we spent a very pleasant night on the hook.

The Francis Scott Key Bridge in the first picture makes a beautiful entrance to Baltimore Harbor. On our starboard, we passed the US Naval Hospital Ship “COMFORT”. On our port we passed Fort McHenry. It was here during the Battle of Baltimore (War of 1812) that Francis Scott Key was inspired to write the poem, “The Star Spangled Banner”, which would eventually become the national anthem for the United States. We pulled into our slip at Inner Harbor East Marina within sight of the HarborEast section of Baltimore.

We walked downtown and discovered an Art & Crafts Festival and a large stage set up right in the middle of an intersection with a local group playing. Several artists had made very elaborate chalk drawings on the sidewalk.

Baltimore has done an absolutely marvelous job of urban renewal. They have given new life to many of the old docks and warehouses, when the ship harbor was located right downtown. The Power Plant Building is an old Baltimore Gas & Electric Company building that was a steam powered generating plant. It is now home to many attractions and restaurants including the ESPN Zone, The Hard Rock Café, and Barnes & Nobles to name just a few.

The Seven Foot Knoll Lighthouse is now part of the Baltimore Maritime Museum. The lighthouse is the oldest screw pile lighthouse in Maryland. It was built in 1856 and served the Baltimore Harbor for 133 years. The museum consists of the Lighthouse and four ships that you may tour. They include the Lightship Chesapeake, the Sub Torsk, the USCG Cutter Taney, which is the last surviving ship from Pearl Harbor. The ship was in service for over 50 years. It is the only warship still afloat that saw action during the December 7, 1941 attack on Pearl Harbor. The last ship is the USS Constellation (1854). This ship was a “sloop of war” that served from 1855 to 1933 and is preserved as a National Historic Landmark here in Baltimore Harbor.

We met another Loop boat here at Inner Harbor East called “Grand Fromage”. Glee and Robert left from Ft Lauderdale and will be cruising on the Loop in stages. Right now they are enjoying the Chesapeake Bay area. We all had dinner together on Monday night at Della Notte, a terrific Italian restaurant within walking distance of the marina. We hope to meet up again on the waterways or in Florida next winter!

Tomorrow we’re off for the C&D Canal (Chesapeake & Delaware).

Our Best to Everyone

Week 3 - Solomons, Maryland

A road trip to Annapolis was on the agenda for the start of week 3 in the Solomons. Bob and I have been to this great city many times for October Boat Shows, but this will be Katie’s first time. We opted to take the Annapolis Trolley Tour of town, mainly because the trolley was air-conditioned and it was another very hot day in Maryland, plus we could see more in less time!

Looking down Annapolis’s Main Street.

World War II Scenic Overlook.

Katie and Mom at Scenic Overlook.

After lunch at Pussers on “Ego Alley” (a strip of waterway in downtown that boaters will cruise through to be noticed!), we did a little shopping and then saw the new Indiana Jones movie.

On Tuesday we picked up my glasses with new, non-scratched lenses. Wow, I can see again! We stopped off at the Patuxent Naval Air Museum, which is a free museum and “is the only Navy Museum dedicated to telling the scientific and technological story of the US Naval Aviation research, development, testing and evaluation”. Believe it or not, this is early aircraft radar. Image bolting that to your boat mast. The museum has many aircraft on display in a field next to the museum building. Katie discovered another Tomcat, an F14.

What a surprise when we returned to our slip at Spring Cove to find “Our Time” and Silver Foxes” docked next to TOM-KAT. We also had an email from “Lamb Chop” and they’re docked at Beacon Marina. Time for another get together, this time at the Captain’s Table.

We lowered the dinghy on Wednesday and toured the creeks and bays around the Solomons area. Katie mentioned that she thought the Coast Guard was following us. Sure enough, an inflatable with 3 very cute, young men approached our dinghy and asked when we were last boarded by the Coast Guard….NEVER! They were very pleasant and courteous. They inspected our life jackets to make sure they were all Coast Guard approved, and then they checked the dinghy’s registration and Bob’s picture ID. Thankfully, we had everything on board and we passed with flying colors. I snapped a photo of the coasties as they approached another boat right after us. We teased Katie that the guys only stopped our dinghy because she was sitting in the bow! Another dinghy was in the same area with a dog in the bow and 2 adults and they didn’t inspect that dinghy!!

Later in the day we toured the Calvert Museum, which is just a short walk from the marina. The museum is home to live exhibits of river otters, rays and skates, plus exhibits on the history of the Patuxent River and the prehistoric undersea world in the area. Katie with prehistoric dinosaur leg. Katie scared by recreated extinct Giant White Shark. Katie attempting to lift the Drum Point Lighthouse

On Thursday, we left the Solomons and Spring Cove Marina and cruised up the Patuxent River to St Leonard’s Creek and anchored just NE of Vera’s White Sands Beach Club. Katie drove for a while and did a fine job.

The dinghy came down again and we cruised to a small creek off St Leonard’s to see if we could find Ian & Melissa’s house from the water. Behind all those trees, we think is their house, along with pets, Beefcake and Max!

We motored toward Vera’s to meet Ian and Melissa for dinner and took this photo of Vera’s house. Vera has been an institution on the Bay for many years. Vera (age 90+) passed away a few years ago, but the new owners have given the place a new lease on life, with an upgraded marina, a beach bar and a remodeled restaurant. Vera had decorated the restaurant with South Seas treasures from her many international voyages and many of those decorations still remain. Katie with an early painting of the renowned Vera.

The last photo is of TOM-KAT resting peacefully at anchor in the creek.

Total Mileage: 4910nm

Thanks for Visiting with Us,

Sue and Bob