Well, this is when things really got interesting...
We finished loading up our stuff with the help of my mother and Nicole's parents. Left the dock on the high tide around 11 AM Cape May bound. We were jumping outside as the conditions were pretty good. 6-8 ft following seas and a broad reach on the sails. 30 miles. No big deal. We set the sails and were surfing along at about 7 knots. Wouldn't know for sure because our GPS was still in the box. No big deal.
Still 8-10 miles from Cape May inlet we realize that the sun is definitely going to have set about one hour and 15 minutes before we get there...big deal. Very big deal. Nicole and I decide to tie up to a crab pot for a couple of hours, get some rest, look at the charts, and figure out what to do. We tie up and several things happen very quickly. The motion of the boat changes and we go from bobbing along to slamming around. Everything, and I mean everything, starts cascading off our shelves and berths onto the floor. Nicole gets seasick, she did not know this would happen. We stay there for 3 hours till we realize that we need to move because we're dragging the crab pot...1/2 a mile offshore since the Jersey coast curves towards the west.
We fire up the engine, set a small headsail, and start heading south. Since we're too sketched out to navigate the inlet at night (later I would curse myself for not trusting my gut and knowing that I know inlets well since I regularly spearfish inside Barnegat Inlet on the north end of Long Beach Island and that we should have no problem navigating the wide, deep, well marked inlet), I study the charts and tuck us 100 yards off the beach on the south side of the southern inlet jetty. We went from bucking and rocking in 6-8 seas to pancake flat since the swell direction wasn't allowing waves to get in there and the wind was offshore. We set the hook in 10 ft of water and put out a scope of 10:1 being nervous. I had to tie extra rode onto our danforth since it only came with 70 ft of it and we were in 10 ft of water.
I slept in 2 hr snatches, woke up before sunrise and motored into the inlet cursing myself the entire time for not trusting my knowledge over the guidebook which said that the inlet was dangerous and it was best to come up the canal from the backside. The boat was so level through the inlet from lack of chop or surge that you could have balanced a pencil on it's eraser in the boat (well, not quite that flat, but you get the idea). We tied up at a marina, got some stuff done, and crashed on the cabin berths out of exhaustian.
That night might've made the harrowing trip worth it. My father and aunt met us down in Cape May and we went to dinner at The Lobster House. Being literally right across from our slip helped as after 2 bottles of wine and enough fresh seafood to feed a small army, we had one of the best food comas of our life.
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| Looks awesome right? Fishing rod off the radar tower, sunny skies, and not a care in the world. Kinda... |
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| The coolest part was setting the sails, shutting down the engine, and gliding along with only the sound of the hull gliding effortlessly through the water. Behold, the power of the wind. |
Still 8-10 miles from Cape May inlet we realize that the sun is definitely going to have set about one hour and 15 minutes before we get there...big deal. Very big deal. Nicole and I decide to tie up to a crab pot for a couple of hours, get some rest, look at the charts, and figure out what to do. We tie up and several things happen very quickly. The motion of the boat changes and we go from bobbing along to slamming around. Everything, and I mean everything, starts cascading off our shelves and berths onto the floor. Nicole gets seasick, she did not know this would happen. We stay there for 3 hours till we realize that we need to move because we're dragging the crab pot...1/2 a mile offshore since the Jersey coast curves towards the west.
We fire up the engine, set a small headsail, and start heading south. Since we're too sketched out to navigate the inlet at night (later I would curse myself for not trusting my gut and knowing that I know inlets well since I regularly spearfish inside Barnegat Inlet on the north end of Long Beach Island and that we should have no problem navigating the wide, deep, well marked inlet), I study the charts and tuck us 100 yards off the beach on the south side of the southern inlet jetty. We went from bucking and rocking in 6-8 seas to pancake flat since the swell direction wasn't allowing waves to get in there and the wind was offshore. We set the hook in 10 ft of water and put out a scope of 10:1 being nervous. I had to tie extra rode onto our danforth since it only came with 70 ft of it and we were in 10 ft of water.
I slept in 2 hr snatches, woke up before sunrise and motored into the inlet cursing myself the entire time for not trusting my knowledge over the guidebook which said that the inlet was dangerous and it was best to come up the canal from the backside. The boat was so level through the inlet from lack of chop or surge that you could have balanced a pencil on it's eraser in the boat (well, not quite that flat, but you get the idea). We tied up at a marina, got some stuff done, and crashed on the cabin berths out of exhaustian.
That night might've made the harrowing trip worth it. My father and aunt met us down in Cape May and we went to dinner at The Lobster House. Being literally right across from our slip helped as after 2 bottles of wine and enough fresh seafood to feed a small army, we had one of the best food comas of our life.
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| The view from our slip... |
That boat cover looks great. And it also fits well on the boat. Look like it is part of the boat already, just like the convertable car. Nice.
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