Four days, Four locations – Leaving the Chesapeake Bay and entering the Atlantic Ocean!
July 5, we traveled from Baltimore, north and east to the East River which leads to the Delaware Bay, which leads to the Atlantic Ocean. We have traveled these waters before, so felt no need to linger at any one place.
First up, Chesapeake City, Maryland. We stopped at a marina/restaurant along the river. It was so hot and humid! As we were finishing securing the boat, a nice younger couple came by and commented on our Looper flag. We love to talk about the Loop, so I just said that we were on our way to the air conditioned bar, and would they like to come have a drink with us?! They did, and we had a fun 2 hour conversation! They plan to buy a boat and do the Loop in 2 years, so they had lots of questions.
We decided to just have dinner on the boat and relax for the evening.
Next, Cape May, New Jersey (July 6)! Since it is quite a distance, we got an early start at 8:00 next morning. We had heavy fog until about 8:45, but, since we were in a channel and could see what we needed to see, we just carefully left. Twelve miles until we entered the Delaware Bay, and visibility was great. Uneventful trip down the bay to Cape May. It is a lovely tourist town, with lots of beautifully maintained Victorian homes. Once again, though, we were anxious to keep moving, so we just walked to a restaurant that was close by for a quick dinner. Then, back to our home on the water for relaxing and early bedtime.
Atlantic City, NJ was next. Not our favorite place – we don’t gamble and their restaurants were very expensive! We went to the bar by the marina, had a simple dinner and a drink – back to the boat for the night.
Next stop was inside Manasquan Inlet, at a single dock called “Captain Bill’s Dock”. Other marinas in the area were charging $5 per foot!! Cap. Bill only charged $2….but, you do get what you pay for! No electricity, no facilities, and a pretty rough dock. It was fixed, so with the tides being around 4 feet, there were a couple of times we had a bit of trouble getting on and off the boat! Plus, it is mostly a gas dock,and all the sports fishermen came in there to fill up their tanks...and, believe me, those guys don’t watch their wakes! Yikes. But, we were happy to pay “only” $2. We are spoiled in Michigan. All our state-run marinas charge less than $2 per foot and are well equipped, clean, well run. Oh well, continuing on.
We made a very upsetting discovery while at Cap. Bill’s place. Our wonderful, newly installed dinghy butler has been working great. So enjoyable to be able to so easily use our dinghy. The motor, to raise and lower the dinghy, was installed on the transom of the boat. Problem #1 – it is a real pain to get on and off the boat if we have to go under those cables. Problem #2, and this is a huge one, the weight of the boat and dinghy butler had started to damage the transom. We cannot let that continue. So, the only solution, for now, is to put the dinghy back up on top of the boat until we can get the issue resolved. Sooo frustrating! We’ve decided we can leave matters where they are for this season, and get the issue with the dinghy butler fixed over the winter (more boat bucks!!).
First thing the next morning before leaving, we had to move the dinghy back to its original perch. Without going into details, that involved quite a few steps and some time. But, we got it done and were ready to continue on.
These days of travel are interesting, in that we are simply going out from shore about 3 miles and paralleling the shore as we go north! We could see the beaches, some amusement parks, LOTS of shore vacation homes. Our next stop is on Staten Island, in the New York Harbor! After we get through the harbor, which is HUGE, we will be traveling on the Hudson River for a few days.
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