We finally began our 2025 cruise leaving Delaware City bound for Cape May on Wednesday, June 18. Our trip was delayed because we had several little repairs to make and we wanted to spend some time in Philadelphia with Stephanie and Ryan. Our voyage this year will be much shorter because of the big news in our lives - our first grandchild (a girl) is due in early October! For that reason we have decided to move to Philadelphia this summer. We found a row house to rent just two blocks from Stephanie and Ryan and we’ll be moving in August. Our Miami condo is on the market but we’ll see if we sell it or rent it out since the real estate market is so soft right now.
Our immediate cruising plan is to go up to Mystic, CT for an MTOA Rendezvous in mid-July. We’d like to spend a few days in Manhattan on the way since we often bypass it in our rush to get to more distant destinations. Of course, visiting friends and family in CT is always on our agenda.
Back to the first leg of our journey - we departed from Delaware City Marina (where Zendo is housed for the winter) at 6 a.m. bound for Cape May, NJ. We left early to take advantage of the currents and favorable winds on Delaware Bay.
The day was very overcast, foggy and cool and the sun didn’t start to break through until around 2 p.m. Jonny suggested we bypass Cape May and go all the way to Brigantine, NJ which would add another 5 hours to our journey. The reason to do this was that the Atlantic Ocean was quite calm and we could make the passage between Cape May and Atlantic City more easily today while the next day the seas were predicted to be quite rougher. The wind was expected to kick up for the next few days and if we could make it to Brigantine we would be better positioned to take the inside ICW route up through NJ. So we cruised past Cape May for another 4 hours!
At 4 p.m (10 hours into our journey), we were making our way up the Jersey coast about three miles off-shore when Jonny finally let me take the helm to give him a rest. Not five minutes went by before a really loud alarm went off - the raw water alarm. Jonny jumped into action to see what the problem was. Unfortunately, the tool he uses to check the water temperature had a non-functioning battery. Since none of the gauges were showing an increase in water temperature which would indicate a big problem, we just continued on our way without incident. You can be sure that the next purchase will be that special battery!
Although the waves and wind were pretty calm, being on the open ocean can sometimes make one feel a little queasy. Archie stayed glued to me the whole voyage and it wasn’t one of those easy days when I could read or knit, so we just hunkered down and made the best of it.
It was a very long day and around 6 p.m. the weather app was indicating an approaching thunderstorm. Fortunately, we were just passing Atlantic City with our mooring at Brigantine not far beyond.
A friend of ours has a mooring ball there that he graciously lets us use. As we approached the mooring field a big trimaran was tied up to it. Jonny called Glenn to make sure we had the right one. Apparently an interloper had grabbed it but Glen directed us to another one that wasn’t being used. In fact, we were the only two boats in the mooring field that night. Thankfully, the thunderstorm passed us by and we just had a little rain as we tied up at 6:20. It was a long 12 hour day!
But it still wasn’t over as Jonny had to take Archie to relieve himself. I made dinner while he was gone and we finally could relax with apps and a nice hot dinner. It’s no surprise that we were exhausted and went to bed early in our nicely tucked away anchorage.
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