On our 2nd day of the relocation / transport trip, my shift started around 3:00 am. My alarm went off and I went up to the cockpit and had a safety review with Ray. We agreed no one leaves the cockpit while the other is down below and asleep for any reason and we wear a life jacket whenever in the cockpit alone and under heavy seas. We discussed a route plan for the next several hours to get around Cape May followed by a simple “good night” and then he tucked away in the cabin for his rest.
The sea state was 1-3 foot waves with light winds and we were still motoring towards our Cape May waypoint. We don’t have our AIS installed yet which is what I am missing about this moment. There seem to be several ships in the area, and I have no clue of their intentions. I can barely make our their lights amidst the backdrop of lights from Cape May, further ahead developments in Delaware, and marker buoys.
At the moment I am contemplating why I didn’t get the AIS installed, a huge spotlight shined on me from what looked like about a 1/2 mile away. I instantly moved over to the helm where the autopilot was still marching away diligently. Then I get a call on the radio, “sailboat entering Cape May this is tug boat so-and-so with tow barge…what is the plan?” I respond calmly and explain our intended path, and then he provides some guidance which I immediately put into action. All of this commotion momentarily wakes up Ray, and we tuck in tight to the reds as instructed.
Once we passed the tug-and-tow, I was glad that that Captain reached out to me, because I would not have wanted to get in between the tug and tow.
Once we rounded the Cape at about 5:00 am, lights in the sky caught my eye. I couldn’t believe how bright they were above Cape May. It happened to be Venus, Jupiter, Mars and Saturn!
We traveled up the Delaware Bay with a nice sunrise followed by a lot of commercial traffic.
Although we had about 10-12 knots of wind on our nose in the morning, we got to the entrance of the C&D canal by 11:30 am and the wind died down. It was pretty boring motor sailing, so I started to untangle all of our lazy jack lines that were tidied up for Winter storage on the mast. We had a speed boat fly past us in the canal, and that was the only exciting thing that happened since 5:00 am. There was really was only a handful of pleasure boats that we encountered on the canal. The current seemed to be pulling us through the canal and about 1/2-way down the Chesapeake towards the Bay Bridge. We reached Betterton by 3:00 pm.
As we made our initial approach the the Bay Bridge at around 4:00 pm, we were in a race against a cruise ship going about 14 knots. The current was finally starting to push against us (we had current with us the entire trip) and we were barely keeping 6 knots. The ship was Enchantment of the Seas – a Bahamian registered ship – and it was headed to Kings Wharf, Bermuda. He beat us to the bridge, and then we encountered a lot of anchored and empty container ships in the Bay. Once we got behind the cruise ship at nearly 7:00 pm we had this horrible smell come across the boat, and it was clear this was the exhaust from that ship – you can see it fill the air in front of us and behind us.
On the final leg, we approached Chesapeake Harbour Marina at dusk and landed safely at our assigned temporary dock.
We traveled 290 nm in just over 37.5 hours with an average 7.8 knots of speed. We didn’t have a single issue on the trip that we had to contend with. We dropped the boat in the water on Wednesday, provisioned on Thursday and did some touch up projects, then took off Friday and landed on Saturday. This was a very successful launch, shakedown and transport all combined into one continuous activity.
Here are some final pictures of Skyward in the marina the next morning after a night of rest. We are now ready for a season on the Chesapeake Bay.
The Loxodograph 