Daily Archives: September 28, 2012

Our last night at anchor off Atlantic City was celebrated with Margaritas and 25 kts. of wind whipping through the anchorage.

We woke up at dawn to find half of the boats in the anchorage gone. We must have been below when the pig floated by! We’d already decided to sail to Lewes Delaware at the bottom of the bay, so we took no offence.

Marce handles a Delaware Bay take down, in another beautiful anchorage near Roosevelt Inlet, far off the beach, but behind their breakwater.

Well, it happened again. We were anchored well off the beach not near anything so when we heard “Hey how’s it going?” close at hand we jumped. Turns out, instead of a swimmer, a kayaker paddled all the way from the beach to say hi.

This side trip put a serious kibosh on our plans to get a great anchor spot at the Annapolis Boat Show, but we had business in Delaware. As I’ve said we anchored a good mile from the inlet in Lewes and have I mentioned the Honda outboard is somewhat unreliable? A lot of improbable things had to line-up for this errand to work. First we had to make it over a mile into the inlet, then we had to talk the University of Delaware Marine Center into letting us tie our dinghy to their dock. The cab had to show up on time, the cranky lady at the marine register place had to show up, the cabbie had to not take another fare while we negotiated with the cranky lady, and the Honda had to start up and get us back to Escape Velocity for a very long day getting all the way up the Delaware Bay.

The Honda stalled at least a half dozen times. The cab was late. The cranky lady was…well cranky, but we made it

Yes Escapees we’ve finally managed to register Escape Velocity.

That’s life on the water

This is the fourth time we’ve sailed the Delaware Bay and I can say definitively that I don’t need to do this again. Yes, it’s quiet and peaceful, but it’s also buggy and boring.

We’re always surprised when we’re well offshore or at least out of sight of land and suddenly get beset with all manner of flying things, mostly biting flies. Today’s variety are what my mom used to call sand flies, little yellow numbers that swarm around my head and bite my ankles. Jack is on the warpath with the fly swatter but it doesn’t seem to do any good. Reinforcements keep the numbers up and we’re fighting a losing battle.

Also a losing battle is our progress up the bay. The current wasn’t going to be with us until mid-afternoon but we didn’t want to wait that long so we’ve been motorsailing against 1.5 knots of current which should turn in our favor soon.

The only ships we’ve seen so far in the Bay have been anchored. I don’t know whether that says something about the economy or about the undesirable buggy-ness of the area but the only dodging we have to do is around the many shoals.