Today was a day where we aged much more than we expected.
It started off with a beautiful sunrise at Havre de Grace marina, west of the C&D canal.
Very peacefull and the water like a mirror. We entered into the Chesapeake & Delaware Canal (C&D canal) and followed the narrow piece of water East. Just before we arrived at our fuel stop at Summit North Marina we heard a loud bang and the boat was tilting to the side. Jolanda started shouting like a fridge fall on her and buried her alive. We checked if we are still able to maneuver and engines are still running. We stopped at the next place to check everything out and took on fuel. It sounded like we scraped the bottom of the C&D canal (which is 40ft deep) with our keel. Luckily our bilge did not accumulate any water, so we did not have a leak. It was a big shock, as we thought this is the end of our dream. This bottom has just being repaired for the last 4 months. This picture just shows the place before it happened.
Luckily no one got hurt and the boat was still functional, after the fuel stop we continued our way. Our boat advisor Phil (remember the one who did the checkout) gave us good advice on the way. The rest of today’s trip was very enjoyable due to the gorgeous weather down the Delaware river and to final destination Cape May. All of us were very relived to end the day in a nice marina with a great dinner.
From Cape May to Jersey City it is “just” 100NM left but the forecast for tomorrow looks very bad so we decided to stay in Cape May. For both of us it means “working from home” and our Captain Rebecca will leave us tomorrow.
As you can imagine this trip is more than we expected to experience, but we learned a lot. We still have no central heating, the generator is not working and we hope that the incident today will not be so costly. I can’t tell you how relieved I was when we reached the marina tonight (Rebecca really did a great job in getting us in a tight slip) and of course I treasure the support of my beautiful sunshine I call my wife.
It was a hard day.
BTW I think Luna at upstate NY with our friends had a more relaxing day.
Great pics! So…you’re stuck in Cape May. Personally, it’s our favorite place to be stuck. When you’re done working, make a journey into town. Cape May goes Christmas crazy, so seeing it in the evening is even better!
If you get into town:
*Washington Street pedestrian mall. Lots of cute shops and restaurants. Fins is a reasonable seafood spot with beautiful fish tanks within. Fun bar.
*Beach Ave, promenade along the ocean, some good restaurants there as well, along with the Historic Congress Hall. Good Greek food at the casual George’s, and his brothers place, YB a few doors down. For fancier, and amazing, fare, Peter Shields down the road towards the marina.
*the Virginia Hotel, Ebbit room within (again higher end), but their bar is fun and nice, and you can eat there as well. Their deviled eggs are amazing. At Christmas, they have life sized Santa’s crawling all over the facade.
*Wander….Cape May downtown is a National Historic Landmark filled with beautifully restored Victorian homes. It’s about a mile and a half into town. Utsch’s has bikes, and Art’s taxi is reasonable. Don’t count on Uber, there are only 2, and very difficult to get.
Let us know if you have questions! We ❤️ Cape May, and would retire there if we could afford it!
N