Cape May, NJ

After Zendo was towed from Philadelphia back to Delaware City, Charlie, the local mechanic came onboard to troubleshoot the fuel injector pump issue.  We were relatively happy to discover that the problem was that it hadn’t been properly installed. The instruction manual stated clearly that the drive shaft  on the pump should be tightened (torqued) not once, not twice, but three times.  The guys had neglected to tighten it the third time and the pump was loosened during our travels in Philly and it failed to function properly. After several hours of work, the issue was resolved. 

During the lulls in working on the project we managed to fit in a little more local sightseeing visiting the nearby villages of Port Penn and lovely little Odessa.  We’ve learned that Delaware has a lot of these tiny historic towns.

We decided to do one more sea trial back up to Philly to make sure things were working well.  Jonny and Archie left for Philly the next day and Lynn drove Ryan’s car back. He had again graciously loaned it to us while we were in Delaware City.

Happily all went well with Zendo and Lynn enjoyed a lovely lunch with Ryan.  Lots more historical details are always seen strolling through Philly!

But because Stephanie wasn’t feeling well, we didn’t stay the weekend and instead turned around and returned to Delaware City the next day. Fortunately, Zendo performed well.  And we were also pleased that Tim, who owns the marina and of whom we are very fond, didn’t charge us for the half day of labor it took to properly reinstall the pump.

So finally on Monday, July 26, we resumed our 2021 cruise and departed Delaware City at 6 a.m. bound for Cape May, NJ.

It was an overcast day and the seas were quite calm.  Each of us was able to spend a little time napping to make up for our early wake-up call.

We belatedly remembered to give Archie some pet CBD chewies to prevent him from becoming seasick on the open seas. He did pretty well until we were halfway there when he got sick on our bed and peed on the saloon rug! Poor baby! Poor us!

It became even more overcast as we continued on our seven hour journey and we arrived in Cape May by 1:00.  By this time, it had become very hot and we set our anchor across from the Coast Guard Station which was conducting loud training exercises throughout our stay.

We tried to cool off by dangling out legs in the very chilly waters which helped just a little!  Whenever we are in Cape May we love to visit the Lobster Pot Restaurant’s seafood market, so the three of us dinghied over to it. We passed a couple of boats that had been with us at the Delaware City Marina. The couple on one of them, Rincon Fiesta, wanted suggestions on places to visit on the Hudson and Long Island Sound. They were docked at nearby Utsch’s Marina and as we passed them they invited us onboard to pick our brains. So after stocking up on goodies from the seafood market we visited with Jim and Silvia for awhile.

When we returned to Zendo we had a delicious shrimp scampi dinner with orzo and asparagus.  It was an early night because we were going to have an even longer cruise continuing up the Jersey shore the next day.