5/24/18: OH! I forgot to show you my souvenir from yesterday… it’s a new flag for Island Girl, from Pusser’s Pirate Society. Arrrr me matey- it must be Happy Arrrr!
Today is Captain’s birthday! And what was on the agenda? He got to drive his boat 75 miles. That’s a longer day than we usually do, but the weather was supposed to be great, so we figured we’d get some miles behind us. We hadn’t selected any “have to see” stops in the northern Chesapeake for this trip. If we had lots of time, it is beautiful and has lots of great anchorages. Maybe next summer.
It was a nice sunny warm day, and leaving Annapolis was pretty calm. The mouth of the Severn river was void of the 10,000 boats that were here when we came in two days ago. 😉. Good bye Annapolis! Best wishes to the 2018 USNA graduates! We got out of there before security crack down for President Trump coming into town.
We turned north up the Chesapeake Bay, and the water wasn’t bad. As we approached the huge Chesapeake Bay Bridge, the water got rougher, the current stronger. It always seems to do weird stuff at bridges. It stayed kind of rough for about an hour, and then gradually settled down to the kind of water conditions you would expect with the nice 5-10mph winds forecasted.
I’ve told you before that I can’t use the stove or oven while we’re underway, unless I start the generator. But the micro blaster works. So, I went down to the galley for a few minutes and made Kenny a birthday treat. – Rice Krispie Treats! It’s known as “gramma food” in our family, but today it is Papa K food. 😁
It was a beautiful day on the upper Chesapeake! We had current flowing against us for about 5 hours… how long can the tide be going out, anyway?! We had timed our day so that we would arrive at the west end of the C&D (Chesapeake & Delaware) Canal near slack tide, so that it would be flowing east with us. I had read that the current can be strong here, and you want to go with it. Sure enough, we gained a few mph! The canal is about 20 miles long. It is the busiest in the nation and the third busiest in the world. About 40% of the shipping in and out of Baltimore comes through this canal.
It was pretty much like boating in the ICW, but wide – a 450’ wide canal. Thank goodness, we did not meet any commercial traffic in the canal today.
Part way through the canal, we left Maryland behind, and entered Delaware! State number 7. There wasn’t a Welcome to Delaware sign, but Navionics let us know.
We found our way to the Delaware City Marina. It is in a narrow skinny creek channel, with just long, long face docks.
The creek can have pretty strong current, and the dock master knows how to deal with it. It only goes slack for a few minutes. The current was just starting to run at us as we came into the creek. They had us pull up to the dock with the starboard side to the dock. But – they like to have everybody pointed OUT, which means turning the boat around to get the port side on the dock. So – they took ahold of the line from the port stern, and let go of the starboard ropes. The current pulled the bow out into the creek, and as it got further out, the faster it turned. The dock guy just held onto the stern rope. Pretty soon, I could toss the port bow line to the dock, and Ta-Da! There we were – port side to the dock, bow facing out for quick escape. We followed our friend Herb on Phantom into the marina. There was already Kara Mia and Rejoice here, and then Wine Speed came in after us. Our local Harbor Host Foster came to the docks to meet everyone, too! We walked into town and found that it isn’t a very big town, but they do have a few cute shops and restaurants.
The most famous restaurant is on Clinton Street, called Lewinskys…… Lewinskys on Clinton. Not everybody gets it. Ask someone who was an adult while Bill Clinton was President to explain it. They had a lot of variety on their menu, and most of the gang ended up here for dinner.
We went to Crabby Dick’s, down the street, and sat outside for Kenny’s birthday dinner. They had lots of seafood and a menu full of puns and adult enuendos (a sister property to Lewinsky’s). The food was good! We had crab balls, corn balls, cream of crab soup, shrimp… all good.
We enjoyed our dinner, sitting looking out on Delaware Bay. Wow – we’re in Delaware! That just seems so weird! (And I’ve just had to take on the motto – “boat hair, don’t care” attitude.)
When we were done, we stopped in at Lewinskys to hang out with the rest of the gang for a bit. Everybody but us is leaving in the morning to run down Delaware Bay to Cape May, New Jersey. We are staying here a second night. We are renting a car tomorrow to go tootle around, go to Costco and stock up on some stuff, and see what we can see for the day.
When we get to Cape May, I have a feeling we’ll be there for several days, waiting for good weather. When we leave there, we have to go out into the Atlantic Ocean for the trip up to New York. It’s over 100 miles, so we need at least two good days of weather to make the trip, with an overnight stop in Atlantic City or Manasquan along the way. It wasn’t a way fancy birthday for the Captain, but it was sunny, relaxing, boating, with a few good beverages in the evening and some new friends to chat with. There are worse places to be. Happy Birthday to my most favoritest person in the whole wide world. 💞😊