July 7th Friday.
Into the C & D canal (Chesapeake & Delaware) we go, its a canal, nothing like the narrow ones in the UK, huge. As we progressed passed Chesapeake City the police boat called us up and a CBP officer came on board to inspect our papers. The boat he was on tied up to us and continued towing us along the canal while we had a long talk with the officer. I did mention if we turned off out engine he could take us into the Delaware river and into Cape May so we could save a lot of fuel. He was quite amused. He gave us a weather update and said the river was pretty calm which meant we could continue to Cape May instead of staying at the end of the Canal in an anchorage, which we had planned to do.
We did have a little scare for a while, it was misty and in the distance we could see a very strange shape ahead of us. Don thought it was a microburst weather system which could be a disaster should it hit us.
Panic over it turned out to be a cooling tower for a power station.
So much for Dons’ weather observations?
We did almost 9 hours that day and we were pretty tired when we dropped anchor by the coast guard station in Cape May. Very little swinging room here and it was pretty busy with speeding boats making us roll until night time.
July 8th Saturday.
Well it was a pretty stressful day, the water depth and idiots weaving around us on fast boats, small boats dropped anchors in the middle of the channel so they could fish.
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| Idiots |
When they came towards us on both sides you can’t turn towards the swell they make as you are in danger of hitting something else, or running aground. So we just had to put up with being rolled about. The other very annoying things were the green head flies that bite you through clothes.
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| A large fishing fleet here |
So, now we had run out of navigational water but we managed to turn around and reach a fuel dock to fill up and asked if we could stay the night.
Well, that proved difficult as they said we couldn’t stay on the fuel dock they would lose business. However, if we went on the side of the marina we could tie up overnight there free of charge. It sounded great but as we went in we grounded hard in the mud bottom.
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| That was as close as we could get at that state of tide |
As much as 4 guys tried, they couldn’t pull us in with the lines we thew to them so, when the tide rose we managed to pull ourselves in and had a safe and quiet night.
July 9th Sunday.
High tide around 9:39 but we did pull out at 08:20 making the spot where we had grounded at before and will have a better clearance below us. Now we are heading to Atlantic city, there are some very low bridges along the way that need to be opened and they open at certain times, others open on demand, eventually. There were very shallow places on the way even at high tide.
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| One of the low bridges, a little like being in Venice lol |
While we were waiting for one of the bridge opening we saw a small day boat run hard aground at speed. He would be there for the duration of the tide turnaround.
It’s not a trip we enjoyed that much with the depths changing all the time. A very stressful time.
Atlantic City
We had reserved a slip in Kammermans Marina, its small and way cheaper than the huge ones on the other side of the bay. We docked by 14:00.
N39°22,565 W074°37,630
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| This was one of the big bold and brash buildings before we went into Atlantic City, the marina we went into is the other side of this |
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| This was taken at 05:30 in the morning from our slip too early for any boat traffic, my body clock is working overtime. |
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| A less busy end of the boardwalk. |
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| The shopping Mall |
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| Me lol, I love my hat |
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These are all over the board walk, believe me tradition I can do without at those prices around
4 to 5 US $ a minute
Atlantic City, has a huge boardwalk, its where The Boardwalk Empire TV series was filmed, well it was based on that. Oh boy it’s a little sleazy, but fun, a mixture of both very expensive hotels and run down places. Very much a poor mans’ version of Las Vegas. It was a long walk to the boardwalk but good exercise, we ate in a few places there. The bad part is there is not one grocery store anywhere close by.
We did take a Margarita at Margaritaville the chain started by Jimmy Buffet, we followed Jimmy Buffet through the Caribbean island and we always just missed him, he wasn’t here either lol.
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| Cheers ! |
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| The old Warner Theatre |
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Don and his new mate
So this blog is big enough and I will make the next one when I can.
BFN
Glenys and Don
M/Y Pearl
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