Monday May 31, 2021. Temp: 72/48, Humidity: 42/94%, Top Wind: NW12mph, Precip-none, Miles Traveled: 58 ************************
Today we finally got to leave Annapolis! The weather hawk that I’ve been says – it’s time to go! Based on the currents in the upper Chesapeake, we postponed our departure until about 9:00, so that we would have current in our favor instead of fighting it. My goal was really to get to our destination around slack tide, yet I wasn’t totally successful with that. But all is good, and we are rocking out to live reggae music this evening, with the band close enough to hit them with a marshmallow. 😆. However, internet and cellular service are not good and I cannot get pictures to load, so I’ll have to write this tomorrow sometime.
This was departure from Annapolis. The yellow arrow is pointing to where we’ve been sitting. All the waves and wakes from ‘out here’ roll in ’right there‘.
Sunday May 30, 2021. Temp: 55/50, Humidity: 80/96%, Top Wind: N15mph, Precip-some rain, Miles Traveled: 1.5 walk around town ************************
One thing I will not miss about this marina slip in Annapolis is the rocking! I think if you set a marble on the table, it would never stop moving. We only had a bit of rain today, nothing like yesterday. But it’s been chilly all day. Our friends Jane & Steve who have been on the mooring ball finally came in to the marina today to plug in. Their batteries were getting tired, and they were cold. Jane said this was the best $99 she’d spent in a long time – to be warm! This chilly weather is for the hearty, that’s for sure.
Saturday May 29, 2021. Temp: high 59 at 1:00am/low 51, Humidity: 87/100%, Top Wind: Gusts over 40! mph, Precip-YES! lotsa rain, Miles Traveled: none ************************
The Small Craft Advisory has been extended another 24 hours until 6:00 Sunday evening. Today was crazy with wind, rain, and brrr cold. We have some friends who are on a mooring ball in the bay here, and other friends that are anchored in another bay. And they pretty much can’t move until Monday after this storm passes. I am SOOOO glad we are tied up to a dock that has power so that we have HEAT!
This is what has been going on today! This is a report from an app called Sailflow. It shows the wind reports from the Annapolis Buoy. The blue is the sustained average, and the red is the gusts. The wind has gusted over 40mph several times today. Dang! I’m glad we’re pretty sheltered from the wind in our little dock spot!!
OK – so now it’s time for you to step into my weather navigator brain with me. If you dare. 🤯 As I told you, I’ve been keeping my eye to the sky… or I should say, to the forecast, for when we can make a break for it. Our real goal is to get to New York Harbor by no later than June 8. We are flying out of Albany on June 15 to see family in Washington State, so we want to get up the Hudson River before then if possible. The big challenge is that we need to travel 135 miles north along the New Jersey coast in the Atlantic Ocean. We want to take advantage of the first opportunity that comes along, because we might only get one day out of ten that is good. It’s been looking like Tueday and Wednesday, June 1 and 2 will be our best possible days in the forseeable forecast. Every forecast update seems to confirm that, so far.
Sitting here in Annapolis, we need a few things to line up for us, because the New Jersey coastline is three days away from here. 1) We need good weather here on the Chesapeake Bay to move north to the C&D Canal, which for us means winds less than 15mph. 2) We need the right conditions to travel down the Delaware Bay to Cape May, which means we want an ebb tide and winds less than 15 mph in a direction that has no east component. That is because the bay current runs strong, so you want to go out with the tide as much as possible for the 50 or so miles. It runs in a southeastern direction, therefore you don’t want any wind blowing in your face and opposing the current. That just makes for a nasty ride. 3) We need at least one, preferrably two good days out on the Atlantic Ocean New Jersey coastline, which means waves height less than 2 feet. Afterall, it is 130 miles from Cape May to Sandy Hook, and conditions can change. We want the best possible conditions, with no eastern component to the wind, so that the chances of things getting rough are less. Northwest winds are the preferred, since that is blowing across land and off-shore. We’d like two days so that we can break up the journey, but if we have to do it in one, we can. It will just be a reeeeallllly loooonnnng day.
So, what is the forecast telling me right now? Wednesday is our day to be out on the Atlantic. There is a GALE warning through Sunday, with seas 7-10 feet! YIKES! But, by Tuesday the westerly winds will be calming everything down, and seas will be 2 feet or less. Wednesday brings south winds (which will be behind us as we cruise north) and seas of 2 feet or less. We can’t get to the coast by Tuesday, so the earliest day we can do it is Wednesday, and it currently looks great. Thursday is offering seas around 3 feet, and getting rougher again. So at this point, we want to do our Atlantic run in one day on Wednesday.
Backing up from there, we need to travel Delaware Bay on Tuesday, which will be about 70-ish miles. How does that look? Actually…. those Tuesday conditions are favorable for that journey. The wind will be from the West, which is good! We can get a good piece of the ebb tide at least at the top of the bay where it is narrow and where the current is strongest. So far, so good. This gives you an idea of the pieces of the journey.
So all of this means that we need to leave Annapolis on Monday and travel about 60 miles up to Chesapeake City. We’re going to stop there for fuel and spend the night. We’ve been to Delaware City before, which is right at the top of Delaware Bay. They are really full right now, so we’ll stop before that and make day 2 a little longer. Right now, the conditions for Chesapeake Bay look like wind 5-10 with gusts to 20, and waves of 2 feet. That’s rougher than I like, but to do our big Wednesday trip, we’ll need to go. Maybe by tomorrow the wind will start wearing itself out and it won’t really be that gusty on Monday. At least the wind will have finally moved away from being this nasty Nor’easter to being more northwesterly as it clocks around to the west.
Here’s some of our rain from today……
And our view…
I’m thinking we might want to stay somewhere in the Atlantic Highlands area on Wednesday after our big trip. Anybody have any suggestions? We stayed at Great Kills Yacht Club in 2018, but they are currently full. This darn weather has had people sitting still too long!
Thursday May 27, 2021. Temp: 80/69, Humidity: 56/93%, Top Wind: SE13 mph, Precip-none, Miles Traveled: 30
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What a beautiful day! Just look at the sky from this morning! We had a little bit of rain over night, so I went upstairs and opened the captain’s window. It’s so nice to have the lift-up snap method rather than rolling the window! It was pretty humid and warm this morning, but we weren’t going on a big giant voyage today, so we didn’t rush. Several boats were out before us, and we finally pulled our lines at around 9:00. Thank you for a fun time, St Michaels! Sorry we didn’t see more of you.
Tuesday May 25, 2021. Temp: 71/57, Humidity: 66/95%, Top Wind: SE15 mph, Precip-none, Miles Traveled: 47
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Today was going to be about a five-six hour day, and we wanted to get to St. Michaels by 1:00… so we were up and atum and left the dock around 7:00. It was a tad chilly out, so we had to break out the fuzzies, and motor along with the windows closed. 🥶
Saturday May 22, 2021. Temp: 79/54, Humidity: 37/86%, Top Wind: w7 mph, Precip-none, Miles Traveled: maybe 4 on bikes
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Today was a really nice day. Sunshine, perfect temperature, not too humid. Ahhh! We slept in after a very quiet and peaceful night. Check out that calm water! So this is how Island Girl is in her slip. We have just a short finger pier that reaches far enough out that we can step out from the side where we usually get off. Oh! And let me tell you, that I nailed it on the lasso of the forward pilings to tie the bow to. 😁 I have 35’ lines up there, so I just need to get them around the piling and back to the boat to tie off. I use a technique that I learned on Loop #1 from my sweet friend Sherry on SeaJamm. Gather up a couple of loops of line in each hand, and just push/throw the rope straight out from my chest over the top of the piling. It works great! (Just make sure you are standing on, or have the bitter end tied down.). It works way better for me than trying to actually throw a lasso circle of line around the pole, which never works well for me. I can’t get the right umph or angle or something.
Friday May 21, 2021. Temp: 79/54, Humidity: 37/86%, Top Wind: w7 mph, Precip-none, Miles Traveled: 44
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We were up around 6:30, aiming for a 7:00 departure for our five hour tour today. I always get up first, and was up in the galley getting ready to make some coffee. Kenny looked at his phone for the latest weather outlook and calls up to me- “looks like the windows will probably be fogged in”. OK – I guess I should go check that before I do much of anything, so that they have time to clear. Sure enough, even though the front windows are facing east and in the sun already, the dew is so dense that the water is practically running down the windows. So I opened up all the windows and wiped them down inside and out, then just let them be open while I went back downstairs to finish getting ready to go. Lo and behold, the Captain had already made the ☕️ coffee. Nice! But then, I guess I was upstairs for quite a while. 🙂
Thursday May 20, 2021. Temp: 89/63, Humidity: 27/81%, Top Wind: SE20! mph, Precip-none, Miles Traveled: 7 on bikes
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What a nice relaxing beautiful morning! I wandered up to the pool for a picture, and it looks like we’re in the tropics with all their pretty landscaping. And yes – they even have a palm tree here in Maryland! Kenny checks the local weather every morning when he gets up to see what kind of clothes he should put on. The days all blend together and sometimes we just forget where we are and whats going on! He told me there was a small craft advisory this afternoon from 3-10pm. Really?? Weird! I had not noticed, although I knew we weren’t moving today, so I didn’t really look at the wind part of the forecast. Huh! Who knew?!
Wednesday May 19, 2021. Temp: 83/48, Humidity: 37/73%, Top Wind: w7 mph, Precip-none, Miles Traveled: 74! 😳
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This was going to be a long travel day, so we set the obnoxious waker-upper for 6:00. But hey – sunrise is 5:52, so it’s really not THAT early, right? 😴🥱. We rolled out of bed, made our coffee, unplugged power… and OH! I need to swab the windows, and then do it again. And again. There was some persistent dew! We haven’t had that problem for awhile. We pulled away from the dock at about 6:30 and meandered our way out the five mile channel. I didn’t get a good picture of the marina as we pulled away, since it was directly east and the sun was blazing in my eyeballs to say GOOOOOOD MORNING!!! 😎☀️. But I did capture this nice home with some amazing reflection on the water.
