Halloween: dressed as sailors

10/31/06-11/2/06

Let’s stop now… no now… no now

October 30^th ended with a bang as we dinned with our college friend Emily at a Turkish restaurant. It would prove to be our last firm ground encounter for 60 hours, well almost. As it turns out, our GPS chart plotter isn’t as accurate as we would hope. As we left Sheepshead bay we strayed from the channel only slightly in so called 18 ft of water we felt the boat skip along the bottom. Luckily we only skimmed what lay beneath us and were able to float away from the experience knowing that we can not rely on the GPS to the extent we do. The rest of the day was spent beating south along the New Jersey shore. The wind was not intense but we kept our sails reefed. Unfortunately, having our jib reefed severely hinders our ability to point into the wind. And thus the day concluded having made little headway down the coast of NJ.

The night proved calm and our watches were uneventful (seas 2-3, wind 15 knots) until a spotlight blinded us. We noticed there was a freighter heading our direction as evident by his port navigation light. It seemed as if the freighter would pass easily across our bow until we received a radio hail on Ch16 demanding we stay clear. Not fully trusting our depth perception we decided to tack back just to be certain we would not cross his path. During the process of tacking a blinding spotlight shattered our night vision. Clearly the freighter was still concerned about the little blip on his radar. We completed the tack sure that we were no where near the path of the freighter only this time when night returned we saw the starboard navigation light indicating that while we were blinded he decided to change course as well just to make sure we were gobbled by his bow. Frustrated and confused we clumsily tacked again. Our night vision returned long before our nerves.

Early on November 1^st the wind shifted and we were able to fallow a much more direct route. This left us at Atlantic City around noon. Then the wind died. And this wasn’t your normal wind. This wind had the ability to take our engines raw water pump with it. Although this wasn’t our first experience with water pump issues, we were lucky that in the first instance the issue resolved itself the next time we started the engine. In the heroic moment of the week brad took apart the water pump and used jedi mind tricks to bring the water pump back to life. You can see footage of his mind tricks in the video blog. Notice the use of the hammer… I mean mind. I’ll throw some new pictures up too.

With the engine up and running again, we proceeded to motor-sailed to Cape May. By this time it was already 8 at night and the prospect of anchoring in the dark in a foreign port combined with the weather advisories for the fallowing day enticed us to continue on up the Delaware Bay and anchor at the mouth of the canal that connects the Delaware Bay to the Chesapeake. When we reached the C and D canal we hit the tide just right so we said what the hell lets go through the canal and anchor on the other side. When we got to the other side it was still only 11am and Annapolis looked to be slightly more than a days trip away so what the hell lets continue another 26 miles and make it to Annapolis tomorrow. The end result of this thought process was 280 miles traveled in 60 hours.

Odometer: 539