Day 3, Year 8: Arrival in Chesapeake City, Maryland
Date: Tuesday, November 6, 2012-Election Day
Weather: Clear Overnight, Overcast Then Partly Sunny Late Day; Temp in 40’s
Wind: Windy–NNE 18-20 knots during the night; NE 17-18 all day
Latitude: 39 31.819 N
Longitude: 075 48,900 W
Location: Schaefer’s Marina, C&D Canal, Chesapeake City, MD
After a night and day of bucking winds and seas in the Delaware Bay, we are
securely side-tied to a dock in the Chesapeake and Delaware Canal. In
season, this is a marina with a restaurant, but right now it is deserted
except for us and the gentleman who promptly came to collect marina fees.
We have no water or electricity, but still we are paying $1.00 a foot for
the protection. Since the winds here are predicted to be 25 to 30 with
gusts to 40 tomorrow, we’ll take it. We will probably be here until Friday.
I guess we’ll just have to see how things look on Thursday morning and
decide then whether or not to continue on into the Chesapeake or wait until
Friday for fairer weather. The forecast is for windy weather through
Thursday, with dipping temps and possible snow. We have our generator
running on the back deck and have our heater plugged into that. It is 67
degrees in here and 43 outside, but I’m not convinced that the little heater
will be able to keep up once the temperature outside dips and the winds
start to blow. But we won’t freeze. It just might not be as comfortable as
we would like. Not only do we not have electricity and water here, there is
no public radio reception. And on election night, that is close to
disastrous. We do have phone service, so we will use it to connect to the
internet and listen to the returns via live streaming on WCAI, our Cape and
Islands public radio station. We tried live video streaming, but our
connection is not strong enough for that.
I’ll back up a bit and talk about our arrival in the Delaware Bay last night
and our subsequent trip up the bay. From Atlantic City to Cape May there
are so many flashing red lights that it looks a bit like an airport runway.
Around 11 pm, the moon rose and gave us even more light for our entry into
the bay. We turned to enter just before 2 am and immediately found
ourselves bashing into headwinds and seas. It was a sloppy night as
Windbird bucked her way up the Delaware Bay. It was like riding a bucking
bronco and the ride continued until about 9 am this morning when the winds
finally turned from the North to the Northeast. Windbird had been dipping
her bow into the waves and coming up with water that poured over the deck,
sometimes with enough force to actually lift the back of the dinghy (tied on
deck).. Thankfully when the winds shifted to the NE, all calmed down. We
had a little hitchhiker, maybe a yellow warbler, who tried in vain to get
into the cockpit and finally settled on the mainsail sheet on the back deck.
Even she knew things were fine once the wind shifted and she flew away. We
were dry inside the cockpit enclosure despite the amount of water being
thrown over the deck, and we were warm with our many layers of clothing.
Let’s see-two long-sleeved shirts, a polar fleece vest, a heavy wool
sweater, a polar fleece jacket with a hood, a wind breaker, and finally a
foul-weather jacket. With jeans and heavy wool socks, the layers worked to
keep us warm. When the wind is howling and there is no sunshine, even
inside the cockpit enclosure, it feels cold. On top of all those layers, we
then wrap ourselves in polar fleece blankets. We didn’t get a photo of all
this, but I’m sure we’ll get another chance as it is supposed to stay ‘cool’
as we head south down the Chesapeake.
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| 121106 Day 3 Passage South–Passage to Chesapeake City |
