The Cape May station is a recruit training depot, so I get to see and hear a lot of familiar things. It's impossible to really compare, but it seems a little tame compared to my days in MCRD, San Diego, 31 years ago -- different service, different time. I'm only a few hundred yards offshore, so I get to watch formations and hear what sounds like PT. I also enjoy reveille and taps. Always enjoyed that aboard ship as well.
Perhaps I should get some recordings and play them throughout the day, e.g., "Reveille, reveille, reveille, all hands heave out and trice up. Sweepers! Sweepers! Man your brooms...." I also liked being in foreign ports where we'd play both national anthems when raising the flag in the morning -- promptly at 0800. Either that, or bring a wave on board as a mate, and have her do it.
Trip watch:
We weighed anchor and got underway at 0845 Saturday morning. I'd planned to sail along with the two Canadian boats, but they had a falling out just after we cleared the breakwater and turned into the wind to raise sail. I was a few hundred yards back, and didn't realize anything had happened, but after I caught up with them at the anchorage here at Cape May, John came over and filled me in.
Apparently, his main got stuck about half way up, so he went forward to clear it -- no big deal, I have the same problem from time to time. However, while he was freeing it, Len's boat bumped into him. John was in the lead, so he had the right of way. I'm not sure what Len was doing, but he should never have gotten that close. John was livid and took off. By the time I rounded Sandy Hook, he'd motor-sailed far ahead, and disappeared over the horizon within a couple hours.
I didn't know what was going on at the time, but there wasn't much wind, so I was only doing a little over 3 knots. I spoke to Len on the radio, and found out he was motor-sailing. I figured they'd planned to motor-sail all along, and since I don't do that, I wouldn't be able to keep up unless the wind picked up to at least 10-15knts. I still didn't know there'd been a problem, but told Len he should probably catch up to John -- Len didn't have any charts -- because I wasn't going to use my engine. Had I known they were no longer on speaking terms, I would have told him to stick with me.
Anyway, he motored off, and as I said, I didn't see either of them again until I anchored. However, the wind did pick up a little later, and we did better than 5 knots, sometimes better than 6, for the rest of the day, and throughout the night. I guess those few miles they picked up motor-sailing were just too important to them.
The sail was pretty uneventful except for a few times when mega-yachts passed close by at 20+ knots and gave us big wakes. I didn't want to go too far out, makes the trip longer, so we stayed about 5 miles off until it got dark, when we slowly let it increase to about 10-15. I think we were a little over 10 offshore, and 15 from Cape May at sunrise.
We passed Atlantic City around midnight, and could have made Cape May earlier if I stayed in a little closer, but I was getting really tired, and having trouble staying awake, so I hove to a couple times, and steered a bit more easterly to get some sea-room. Unfortunately, I couldn't get her to really heave to, so we ended up fore reaching at 1-2 knots while I took a break and made coffee. The wind was about 15 knots most of the night, but as I approached and dawn broke, it died off fairly quickly.
Once the sun came up, everything was fine. It had gotten really cold during the night, mid-40's I think, but by noon, I'd stripped down to shorts again. We steered straight for Cape May, but as soon as we got within a couple miles, around 1000, the wind died completely.
I could have motored in and anchored in less than an hour, but prefer to sail. We were still making way, 1-2 knots, so we just hung out, cleaned up from the night before, had some coffee, and enjoyed the sunshine.
I hooked up the wind vane as the winds abated a little after dawn. The winds were light enough to play with it and get it adjusted, and after a few minutes, she was working perfectly. Even after the winds died down, she kept us orientated to what little wind was left. It steers much better than I do.
The wind finally shifted around 1400, and I could see there was a breeze a few hundred yards south of us. I tacked and tried to reset the wind vane, but she didn't work well at all on a port tack -- needs some more adjustment -- so I pulled it up and hand steered the rest of the day.
We weren't making enough way to have steerage, so I pulled out an oar and began to paddle. That gave us enough to get over the hump, and we found the wind within about 30 minutes. It slowly picked up, and kept increasing as we got closer to shore.
In fact, for a while there, it was stronger than the day before, and we was peaking close to 6 knots, pointing as high as we could. I'd wanted to round the cape, but after an hour, realized I'd never make it before dark, so I tried to come about and sail back up to the harbor entrance which was now less than a mile west of us.
Unfortunately, my roller furling jammed, so I pointed into the wind, lowered the main, and was going to try to lower the genoa too, but she was flogging so badly against the spreaders, I was afraid she might get torn apart. So I figured it was time to start the engine, and I pointed her away from the wind and ran with it. This gave us a much lower apparent wind, 5-10knts, and allowed me time to lower the genoa and secure it on the foredeck -- the netting really came in handy.
Then we turned and motored into the harbor and anchored on the south shore near the coast guard station. I noticed the Canadians were already there, and got an obscenity laced history of the preceding day's incident from each of them in turn, mainly from John.
No one got hurt, so it shouldn't be that big of a deal, however, I did have trouble convincing Len later that he was really at fault -- the vessel being overtaken, John's, always has the right of way, especially if he's under sail. In any case, I'll give both of them a wide berth from now on. In fact, I pretty much give everyone a wide berth.
Float watch:
I have a few things I need to do before getting underway again, but after the nice trip down, we'll probably do another overnighter outside down to Norfolk later this week or early next week. We've got a bit of wind right now, which shouldn't be a problem, but I'm not in any hurry, so we'll wait it out. This is also a nice place to fix things and finish up a few projects.
In particular, I need to stow things better, adjust the wind vane, and install the tuner and antenna -- had to pull down the dipole because I was afraid it would chafe my sails. Unless I can figure out a better way to hang it, I'll have to leave it down unless we're at anchor or in light winds.
I also need to pull my foot pump and fix it. It pumps okay, but since I attached both it and the electric pump to the same feed line, the negative pressure created by the electric pump caused the check value to fail. So any time I pump any water, I have to pump it all the way up. It's just sorta annoying, and hopefully easy to fix without having to buy anything. I never use the other pump, but did run it to test the wiring I fixed the other day.
Zoe watch:
Well, she didn't enjoy the trip that much, but likes it here. Part of the work I want to do before we leave is making things a little better for her on the next leg. I've got some ideas, but want to run them by her first -- it's important for her to feel good about whatever we do.
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