We’re Really Doing This

A few things need to get tidied up. First thing first is to get our son to drop us off at Herrington Harbour North. It’s a 4-hour drive from home so we decided to take a family trip and even bring the dog, Astro. Astro is not allowed in/on the boat – sorry pups!

That night it was blazing hot and humid in Maryland. Without air conditioning and very little airflow, we all were exhausted and sweaty. The next morning, our son had to hightail it back to New Jersey to meet up with some friends.

One of the last items to get completed was the installation of our sprayhood extension. This will be nice in the cooler months. Thanks to Christine at Canvas Connection, this was excellent work, done on time as requested and with very little notice. (We’ll come back to this sprayhood extension in a future blog.)

One more thing had to happen before we could launch. Wouldn’t you know it. We had a nest in our mainsail, and a couple of baby birds had taken up residence in it. Watch the video (link below) to see more of this.

Then came the moment we’d been waiting for since mid-May, the hoist picked us up and dropped us into the water. We were’t too far away from the water, and the whole process took less than 30 minutes. Toby from HHN has very steady hands remote controlling the 50 ton lift.

This was the moment of truth for all the hard work that Ray and myself (mostly Ray) did to make the boat watertight, safe and sailable. That was our goal; we weren’t too worried about aesthetics (other than a good hull buffing and waxing). We just knew that this thing had to be able to withstand an ocean passage and not strand us along the way.

After we were manually pulled out of the launch dock, we paused for about an hour or two to test all thruhulls, look for water leaks, power up batteries from the shore, and just give everything a once over. All of the sudden, we were saying last good-byes to our son who was driving the car back home and we were starting the engine to begin our journey.

And so we embark on a 256.4 nm journey, one which many sailors and mariners make every day. For us it will be a new experience; yes, we are about to do this. We plan to sail from Deale, MD to Betterton, MD where Glen from Cloudy Bay suggested we anchor on our 1st night. The next day will be nonstop from Betterton, MD after we pull up anchor until we put the boat on the mooring at Atlantic Highlanbds, NJ. On the way to Betterton, we passed the Chesapeake Bay Bridge and were all amazed at 1) how much water exists North of the bridge and 2) the beautiful homes along the East and West shores.

We woke up the next morning to a gorgeous sunrise, and we headed directly to the start of the C&D Canal. We did not stop in Chesapeake City, but as we past it we were trying to decide where and how we would have stayed there overnight given how small the anchorage looks. Nonetheless, we motored and motored until we got to the Delaware, and then we motored more. The wind started to kick up, so we pulled out the sails and watched the sparse landmarks pass us by slowly. In one case, we saw dozens of horshoe crabs floating vertically.

We that was the daytime. Soon we were rounding Cape May and began the next chapter of the journey up the NJ coast. That began with an elegant sunset and some light winds from the South. We maintained a sail angle 120 degrees and headed about 20 nm offshore. The seas were between 4-6 feet with swells and chop with the occasional breaker above 6 feet.

We discovered that our 24v batteries were not charging which means that almost all of the boat’s electrical systems were drawing off more electricity than the engine regulator was producing. We had to conserve battery levels with a 10% drop every 8 hours or so. This meant that the autopilot had to be shut off, and we hand steered the boat fot the next 20+ hours straight. When the sun went down, there was no moonlight right away, and the instruments were almost dark. They needed to be adjusted but everyone was napping, and I was driving the boat alone. I could not see the vital information that I use when steering such as wind angle, and this partly contributed to a substantial and accidental jibe of the main. This caused some damage which we did not see until much later in the trip.

It was surprising but in retrospect understandable that the coastline of NJ is is well lit with dwellings and other commercial buildings. After daylight broke it didn’t take long to reach Sandy Hook.

Pulling into the harbor, we did not capture good photos of the event, but we were greeted to a small group of whales that were enjoying the New York Harbor entrance.

Finally, we parked the boat at the Atlantic Highlands Yacht Club dock for a while until we unloaded the gear we brought aboard a new days ago.

So that’s it. We did it! About 33-35 hours of sailing, motoring and motor-sailing to get over 256 nm of distance under the keel.