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
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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!
