Underway, finally. Annapolis or bust!!!

It’s 01:30 on Thursday morning and we are about 20nm from entering the mouth of the Delaware Bay to begin our run up to the C&D canal.   The seas are almost unbelievably calm and we are powering along very peacefully.    It is very dark as even the moon isn’t out and with the calm waters, the phosphorescence in the water disturbed by our passing is remarkable.   There isn’t anything around except a few ships off in the distance and the shore lines of Cape May off to starboard.   We were able to sail for about 5 hours earlier in the evening but the wind went away.

We left Deep River early afternoon on Wednesday and powered down to the mouth of the CT River and into Long Island Sound. From there we were able to sail to Montauk. The tide was with us and we had a good breeze. Once we rounded Montauk point we were hard on the wind and, as predicted, over the next few hours it shifted from the west to the north and died. While we were able to sail for a few hours now and again, the wind died again with less than 5kts. It’s remarkable just how calm it is out here with virtually no swell and even less ship traffic.

Aboard with me are two fellow Corinthians, Barry and Barry, cousins. I guess that Barry is a popular name in their family. To keep them straight, I am supposed to call one Barry and the other Cousin Barry.  So, who is who? Barry or Barry? Will the real Barry Please stand up.

Anyway, it’s pretty easy to remember their names. Nice guys, Barry.

The last few days preparing for my departure were frantic and to add even more pressure to the situation, Pandora still had some vibration in the drive train, even after working on the alignment and having the Max Prop serviced. The only real option left was to pull her out of the water again and have the shaft straightened as I detailed in my last post. Unfortunately, after all that, and considerable more expense, there is still a bit of a vibration. I guess I’ll see the Max Prop guys at the Annapolis Boat Show and see what they think. I expect that they will think it’s something other than their prop. What’s a skipper to think?

The guys at the yard feel that everything is in good working order and that the problem is the prop. Hmm… I am pretty confident in saying that I will NEVER purchase a Max Prop again.  Come to think of it, I have never purchased one.  It came on Pandora.  However, given the money I have spent having the prop reconditioned, twice, I feel like I have purchased most of one by now.  Having said that, perhaps it’s a good time to just abandon the prop and get something else. With regards to timing, I surely don’t want to cough up the money to haul the boat and put a new prop on just yet. I guess I will have to live with this for now seeing as how I had Pandora hauled two days ago.  I hope that Pandora can… The mechanic thinks so. Fingers crossed.

Much of the trip has been under power and I am always amazed to see how long the engine can run without any problems.   With a few hours here and there for sailing, the engine has been running for over 24 hours.  Amazing.

We have been lucky with our speed as we will enter the busy shipping lanes of Delaware Bay as it begins getting light and as the current starts to flood up the river.  That’s good as the current really rips, at 2 plus knots, on the ebb, not something that I want to buck.

We haven’t been going hungry for long on this trip.  Fresh biscuits for breakfast this morning. “Barry” didn’t have much trouble gagging them down. That’s good.

We also had a visitor much of the day today, a tiny bird.  In fact, he has stayed the night somewhere up forward I think.  Well, at least he was there at sunset. Actually, two small birds landed on the boat multiple times today and one of them camped out for a while with us right in the cockpit, believe it or not.  It’s hard to believe that the little guys could get along so far from shore, some 40 miles when they first joined us. I would guess that they found themselves further from shore than they realized and got tired.  This is not the first time that small birds have landed aboard when I was making passages.

For much of the time, one of them hung out on up forward and a few times he even came into the cockpit, out of the wind and rested. To see this little guy some three feet from us on the cockpit combing cleaning his feathers was amazing. Funny how safe he seemed to feel in spite of the unfamiliar environment.  I guess if you are tired enough… It will be interesting to see if he’s still with us when it gets light.  With sails coming down and going back up, I expect that we shook up his world pretty well.

Our stopping point for today will be Chesapeake City, one of my favorite destinations in these parts.

Oh, I almost forgot, I heard from our friends Maureen and Bill aboard Kaluna Mo0, with whom we spent weeks buddy boating around the Bahamas last winter, today as they too were moving down the NJ coast.  I had heard them check in on the morning SSB net Thursday and then later talked to them on the VHF radio. We had hoped to connect with them in Chesapeake City tonight but they expect to stop in Cape May and will be a day behind us.

Not much more to say right now except that nothing major has gone “bust” yet.   That’s good.  Fingers crossed for continued good luck on our voyage. The “spot” will continue to post our position every four hours as is our custom.