2011-09-29 - to Cape May, NJ



The 'rage' coming into Cape May Inlet

 We left the dock 7am, heading for Cape May.  It was still a bit choppy out there, but we all did great.  Connor got his bed out again in the cockpit and snoozed for half of it.  We didn’t do school in the past few days.  The bouncing makes it very difficult to be inside.  We’ll have to hit it hard again once we get to the Chesapeake.  During the passage, we could see lightening in the distance.  We didn’t get hit with that but we did get about 3 hard rain squalls.  We were thankful for the radar as it could tell us what shape this rain system was and when we would get out of it.  They were all short lived (<5 min).   The highlight today was when we saw a WHALE!  I was at the helm and all of a sudden I saw a puff of water coming from the waters about 100 feet in front of the boat.  I thought I was seeing things but called Kerry and Connor out.  Kerry was out first and then the whale came up out of the surface and we could see the dorsal fin.  By the time Connor came out, the whale had moved away.  We kept searching and then saw another blow and then the tail come out of the water.  Very cool.  As we entered the Cape May Inlet we experienced a ‘rage’.  This occurs, I believe, when you have opposing wind and current.   The water was leaving the inlet and the wind was blowing against it.  This creates very large and chunky waves.  We just had to keep riding them and moving forward.   Our speed would go down to 0-2 knots as we rode the wave up and then speed up to 7 knots as we were coming down the wave.  Hi5 (and Kerry) handled this well.    We pulled in to gas dock and the currents inside there were crazy.  The man there said that the extreme tides were caused by the ‘Perigee’.   I had not heard that term before, but it has something to do with the moon phases.  We anchored east of the Coast Guard station and breathed another sigh of relief.  Throughout the day more and more sailboats were coming in.  We are finally seeing more boats heading south which is great.  These last few days are probably the biggest outside jumps that we need to do.  Tomorrow we head up the Cape May canal to the Delaware Bay and then through the C+D Canal (Chesapeake/Delaware Canal).  Then, we will slow it down a bit and try to enjoy the journey.