Friday, July 27, 2007

Our First Canal Transit

Cape May, New Jersey
38 57.1N 74 52.9W

A long day today, we left at 7am and motored through the Chesapeake & Delaware Canal, it's 20 miles long and about 200 metres wide but luckily we only had to pass one large ship, this was particularly good luck as once we got into the canal we had 3 knots of current with us making turning round not an option and it promptly became foggy!

After the canal transit we swapped the scenic joys of Chesapeake Bay for the New Jersey shore of Delaware Bay, power stations and swamps, more Lowry than Constable this time.

Delaware Bay is annoying, it has strong currents, and is shallow everywhere other than the shipping lane and that is surprise surprise full of ships bound for Philadelphia. Then when you arrive at Cape May you have to go about 5 miles out to sea to avoid sand banks and then back again before you can anchor. We finally dropped anchor as it was going dark at 9pm in an ugly channel with strong currents and a Coast Guard training centre who woke the recruits at dawn to the sound of bugles, and ran round chanting US Military style!
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