The weather finally looked good for going to Cape May, a distance of about 135 miles. There were now six boats ready to leave Sandy Hook. We planned to cast off about noon on Sunday and had set up an informal calling schedule to keep track of our respective progress. Sunday morning, we took on water and got the boat ready for our first overnight passage on the open Atlantic. We were anxious as there were still swells coming in from Hurricane Fabian which made stopping at Atlantic City unwise and we had to navigate past fishing trawlers and past fish areas during the night. Also this voyage was our first look at the Atlantic where the next stop to the left was Europe.

We left under sunny skies and the promise of light and variable winds, with a clear night and nearly full moon. We did have the sunny skies and a fabulous clear night with a full moon, but the winds were 15 knots on the nose. Weather forecasters are at least consistent between the two countries. As we did not want to dally, we motor-sailed down the New Jersey coast. Motor sailing is where we leave the mainsail up to give us a boost and keep us from rolling too much and use the "iron jenny" to push us forward. We actually had a great trip. I remember watching swells from Fabian, reflected off the moonlight, gently moving under the boat on their way to shore. Atlantic City was incredible from 4 miles off (and a lot cheaper than going closer). The buildings were all lit up in different colours and we could even make out Trump Towers. Later in the morning, the wind shifted and we could actually sail. We decided to head for Breakwater Bay at Cape Henlopen instead of going to Cape May for two reasons. We were unsure of the entrance to Cape May with the swells still rolling in and we were concerned with going out the Cape May canal, as the bridge height is 55 feet in the center at high tide. Guess what. Our mast sticks 54 feet above the waterline. So we arrived at Breakwater Bay at about 8:00 in the morning, set anchor and tried to sleep. As it turned out, two other boats went to Breakwater Bay, two went to Cape May and one continued up the Delaware Bay.

The weather window disappeared and the winds increased from the Northeast throughout the day. Breakwater Bay was named for its most prominent feature - yes, you are right, a large manmade breakwater, which gave us protection from the Northeast. Well the winds kept on coming, running between 20 and 35 knots from Monday until Wednesday. We were confined to our boat, as it was too windy to get the dinghy off the deck. We were able to keep our batteries charged by running our wind generator only a few hours a day. And we saw our first dolphin that decided to swim past our bow.

Delaware Bay can be a rough bay as it is very shallow, has strong tidal currents running along its length (about 55 miles) and has few places to go in case of bad weather. The trick is to catch either a light or following wind and time your departure to ride the tide up the bay. We kept in radio contact with the other boats in the anchorage as well as the two boats at Cape May and independently decided to catch the Thursday 5:30am slack tide for our trip up the Bay. The winds and seas, as forecast, dropped on Wednesday night. We actually left at 6:30am as our anchor had become somewhat attached to the bottom.

The trip up the bay, while somewhat rough, was doable. The winds started to pick up again by mid-morning but we reached the narrowing part of the bay before things got nasty. A 2-knot current pushing you along certainly helps. We ran with the current all the way up to the C&D Canal, which connects the Delaware and Chesapeake Bays. When we reached the canal, the current reversed and we ran with the current, again with a 1 -2 knot boost, down the canal reaching Chesapeake City about 15:00. Perfect timing. We were lucky we took that window as the weather deteriorated over the next few days with 25 to 35 knot winds until the weekend.

Our gang of 5 boats was all now safely anchored in a basin off the C&D Canal at Chesapeake City. By Saturday the rains had let up enough to allow all us to explore the land. To that point, we had been on our boat for 6 days so it was nice to stretch our legs. This city was quite small, delightful, and more of a bed and breakfast community with no provisioning close at hand. We were able to check e-mail and the progress of Hurricane Isabel at the local library once we found the library entrance (it actually has a restroom sign by the entrance).

It was now time to take Isabel seriously, more in the next installment.