SVJoli: Down the Jersey Shore to Delaware Bay and through the C&D Canal, 9/24/19

After coming through New York City with our son A.J. and his friend Mike, we stayed a couple days in Sandy Hook Bay, anchored off Atlantic Highlands. Atlantic Highlands was a nice town with a grocery store and Ace Hardware within walking distance. There were a large number of boats anchored near us for a stop-over on their fall trip south, including Lynn & Russell on Blue Highway. We had met them through mutual friends Burt and Prue while we were in Northeast Harbor in Mount Desert Island, Maine. We had a happy hour with them and the consensus was that Tuesday morning, 9/24/19 was the date to head out.

9/24/19 Our anchor was up by 7:00 and we were on our way on a nice, sunny morning with 10 knots of breeze out of the west. As we rounded the point, we saw lots of fisherman fishing off the beach on both the bay and the ocean side. The New Jersey coast was very pretty with beautiful beaches and homes along much of the coast. We had a great reach, zooming along with full main and jib. By early afternoon we were approaching Atlantic City and the wind continued to build although it was a little fluky. There were also good-sized swells; maybe from the storm further out on the ocean.

We reached the mouth of the Delaware Bay at nightfall and the wind was on the nose and fluky. We decided that Breakwater Harbor, at the south side of the mouth of Delaware Bay, would be a good overnight anchorage. We had a slow, painful sail into the bay as the wind and current were both against us. It seemed especially slow after the blast down the coast doing 10 knots almost the whole way. We anchored at about midnight, trying to avoid the ferry route that was not clearly marked on the chart. The next morning, as we were having breakfast, the ferry passed by VERY CLOSE to our transom so we decided to anchor a short distance away. We got the anchor up, moved about a mile away, took our morning cockpit showers and cleaned up the boat. We planned on heading up the Delaware Bay at around noon so that the current would be with us all the way through the Chesapeake and Delaware Canal.

We had a motor boat ride up the bay all afternoon as the wind was very light. We saw the first pelican of the trip and we were with many other sailboats that we had seen at Sandy Hook. We headed into the C&D Canal after passing by Salem & Hope Creek Nuclear Power Station, just at sunset. Shortly after passing under the first bridge in the canal, a RORO (Roll On, Roll Off) ship came around the corner, headed right for us and coming right down the middle of the canal. The RORO's are large ships and they seem HUGE as you pass close by, especially when it is starting to get dark out.

We anchored just off the channel in Ford Landing on the Bohemia River, in the dark, after about 65 nm and 9 hours. The next morning, we saw what a beautiful spot we had anchored in. We were on our way early to get to Baltimore, where we would stay at HarborView Marina for 10 days. The northern Chesapeake was beautiful and we wished we had more time to stay.