November 12(ish).
After spending a few days in Cape May Harbor working on the boat, we get a decent, or so we thought, weather window for heading up the Delaware Bay to the Chesapeake and Delaware canal. The night before, our boss and friend, Steve Dipietro, calls us up. He seems a bit excited and he's got 100 questions. After calming him down enough to understand him, we talk and I hang up the phone. Nicole asks what's up and I reply that Steve will be meeting us on the dock at 5:30 AM for our passage to Chesapeake City.
Some background will help paint the picture here. Steve has a wife, a daughter in her first year of college, and a son in high school. He owns 4 restaurants that are exceptionally busy throughout the summer along with a catering business. In the winter he closes these and sails around on his 35 ft Beneteau in the BVIs. Not a bad life. The extradinary thing about Steve meeting us on the dock is that by the time we pick him up he will not have been in the country for more than 12 hours. He'd been visiting his daughter who was doing a semester abroad in Greece where he chartered two boats with a second family and they'd spent 10 days sailing around the islands there. He landed at 7 PM and was meeting us 10.5 hrs later for a rough passage. Crazy awesome.
We pick Steve up at the marina dock and head out the canal before the sun's up. He's got breakfast sandwiches and coffee for us. I had the GPS and a new float switch wired. We think the boat is ready to go. Steve's in a great mood and immediately laughs when he sees our cabin. "Aren't you going to put everything away before we make way?" We thought it was. We were new to this.
After crashing up the Delaware in 4 ft, steep waves we not only lost everything off the shelves again, much to Steve's laughter, but we even lost our anchor out of it's mounts. Our danforth was originally setup to hang from the bow rail. Nicole heard something slamming against the hull and as soon as I looked up and noticed the anchor GONE, I ran up to find it bashing against the hull. Thank god I was smart enough to tie the anchor rode off.
1/2 way through the day while still crashing into it Steve says, "Hey I'm not a purist or anything. If you guys want to fire up the engine and head for the calmer shore we could probably be out of this mess in less than an hour and it'll be a lot calmer." WHAT?!?! WHY DIDN'T YOU SAY SO SOONER!!! The rest of the afternoon was spent lazily motoring up to the canal with the autopilot engaged, a line out the back, and planning drinks for the evening. Awesome day.
--Jay and Nicole
After spending a few days in Cape May Harbor working on the boat, we get a decent, or so we thought, weather window for heading up the Delaware Bay to the Chesapeake and Delaware canal. The night before, our boss and friend, Steve Dipietro, calls us up. He seems a bit excited and he's got 100 questions. After calming him down enough to understand him, we talk and I hang up the phone. Nicole asks what's up and I reply that Steve will be meeting us on the dock at 5:30 AM for our passage to Chesapeake City.
Some background will help paint the picture here. Steve has a wife, a daughter in her first year of college, and a son in high school. He owns 4 restaurants that are exceptionally busy throughout the summer along with a catering business. In the winter he closes these and sails around on his 35 ft Beneteau in the BVIs. Not a bad life. The extradinary thing about Steve meeting us on the dock is that by the time we pick him up he will not have been in the country for more than 12 hours. He'd been visiting his daughter who was doing a semester abroad in Greece where he chartered two boats with a second family and they'd spent 10 days sailing around the islands there. He landed at 7 PM and was meeting us 10.5 hrs later for a rough passage. Crazy awesome.
We pick Steve up at the marina dock and head out the canal before the sun's up. He's got breakfast sandwiches and coffee for us. I had the GPS and a new float switch wired. We think the boat is ready to go. Steve's in a great mood and immediately laughs when he sees our cabin. "Aren't you going to put everything away before we make way?" We thought it was. We were new to this.
After crashing up the Delaware in 4 ft, steep waves we not only lost everything off the shelves again, much to Steve's laughter, but we even lost our anchor out of it's mounts. Our danforth was originally setup to hang from the bow rail. Nicole heard something slamming against the hull and as soon as I looked up and noticed the anchor GONE, I ran up to find it bashing against the hull. Thank god I was smart enough to tie the anchor rode off.
 |
| After a long day, we glided into the C&D canal. Steve's on the bow snapping photos, Nicole's playing nintendo with the autopilot, and I'm enjoying the quiet of the foredeck. |
1/2 way through the day while still crashing into it Steve says, "Hey I'm not a purist or anything. If you guys want to fire up the engine and head for the calmer shore we could probably be out of this mess in less than an hour and it'll be a lot calmer." WHAT?!?! WHY DIDN'T YOU SAY SO SOONER!!! The rest of the afternoon was spent lazily motoring up to the canal with the autopilot engaged, a line out the back, and planning drinks for the evening. Awesome day.
--Jay and Nicole
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