Delaware Bay And The New Jersey Coast

We stayed overnight at the Chesapeake Inn and Marina in Chesapeake City on the C&D canal which connects the Chesapeake Bay with Delaware Bay. This was to position ourselves to travel down the Delaware Bay. The current on the Delaware Bay changes direction progressively moving up the bay such that there is a 2 1/2 hour difference with the change at the mouth of the bay and at the point where in C&D canal intersects. This was to our advantage last fall when we traveled up the bay giving us favorable current all the way up the bay and through the C&D canal. Of course this works the opposite going the other direction where it is only possible to get about 3 1/2 hours of favorable current and the rest of the time it is against you. We left Chesapeake City at 10:30 am to reach the Delaware Bay at the optimum point for the trip down the bay. We decided to skip a stop in Cape May and just round the corner and head up the coast of New Jersey. Last fall when we were just starting out we never would have considered this option. We just cleared the shoals around Cape May when the sun dipped below the horizon. The moon was soon up, very red at first but later a real advantage as we could see the waves, which was really nice. We pretty much had the open waters to ourselves through the night. We saw the lights of a couple tugs with their tows but none closer than two miles away. The only excitement was caused by a very large commercial fishing boat returning to port. I locked it in on radar a couple miles away and as he approached the radar sounded the alarm that he would be too close as he crossed our bow. I changed course in plenty of time to pass behind him. We were both able to sleep well on our off shifts. This is a big improvement over our previous overnight trips and a sign we are getting more comfortable with night travel. We arrived at Atlantic Highlands behind Sandy Hook at 3:45 pm the next day. We had covered 185 miles (per GPS) in 29.3 hours. As it turned out our knot meter which records the boat speed through the water read 183 miles so the overall impact of the current was negligible. We like Atlantic Highlands as the town is very convenient. We decided to stay for a day to rest up before moving on. We did laundry, bought a few groceries and went to a movie (Mamma Mia). We both liked the movie and the air conditioning very much.