Well it rained most of the day yesterday and was quite cool. They are predicting a cool, cloudy start to today. We are on our way to meet Humbug, Carol Anne and Off Leash before we travel to Cape May and up to New York City.
The winds were pretty light to start the day as we left Rock Hall. We needed to back track about 3 miles to avoid the shoals at the entrance. After we turned North there was a little more traffic. We had almost 40 miles before we entered the Chesapeake-Delaware Canal (C-D Canal). The tide was coming in and it gave us a nice boost. About the lowest we saw was 9.8 mph with the high being about 12 mph. The tide cut more than an hour off the trip.
As we moved further north on the Chesapeake the wind started to pick up from the north. This set up some chop on the Bay as the wind was against the current (incoming tide). The Chop was getting worse but we finally got into the Elk River and behind Turkey Point, so there was no place for waves to build.
As we were moving up the Elk River I could see a sailboat and a large trawler in the binoculars. They were quite a distance on front of us.
The C-D Canal was originally dug in the 1800’s and was expanded in size twice. It presently is 450′ wide and 45′ deep in the center. A freighter leaving Philadelphia will save 300 miles not having to go out to the Atlantic and back up the Chesapeake to get to Baltimore. Chesapeake City is located on the Canal and there is one other Marina a little further east, Summit. Not a lot of other development along the Canal. The Canal is 16 miles long and 4 road bridges and 1 railroad bridge cross the waterway.
We did pass the sailboat I had seen near the end of the C-D Canal but we pulled into Delaware City Marina right behind the large Canadian Trawler. We visited Delaware City Marina last year and the marina personnel were great. Very efficient in the docking procedures because there is lots of current in the canal that the marina is located on.
We took a walk into town and the market, and I am using that word loosely, was nothing to write home about. The market was a glorified convenience store. It was just missing the gas pumps out front.
The Delaware Bay can be a very tricky body of water. The marina holds a discussion session at 17:15 each day because the NOAA projections are updated at 5:00 and 17:00 each day. We reviewed their projection for wind, tide and current. The results of our review was that while we would check again in the morning that the conditions would not be good on the Bay tomorrow and it would be prudent to wait. We have about 20 nautical miles on the Delaware River to travel and then approx. 28 nautical miles on the Delaware Bay to travel to get to the Cape May Canal.
We had a good time with docktails on the back of Champ III with Humbug, Carol Anne and Fruitcakes. Off leash had gone ahead to Cape May this morning. Fruitcakes are Loopers that started their Loop about 5 weeks ago from just north of Myrtle Beach. A good time was had by all.