August 1st, 2021

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Breakfast in Maryland, lunch in Delaware and dinner in New Jersey- Sunday August 1st.

Sunday, August 1st, 2021

I untied the mooring ball in Annapolis yesterday in the early morning. I had hoped to make it into Chesapeake City in the C&D Canal, but the current was going the wrong way by 4 p.m. and I anchored off the traffic lane for the night. Then I had to wait until 11.30 a.m. this morning to catch the favorable tide and exited into the Delaware Bay by 2 p.m. with the incoming tide. There are few places to anchor for the night on the Delaware Bay on either the New Jersey or Maryland side.  But I found just one spot on the Jersey side at Alloway Creek, right under the steam cloud of the Nuclear-power plant. But it is a nice quiet spot.

Last night, after the weekend-warriors had stabled their hot rod rocket ships, it was a blissful night at anchor. There ought to be a boating license requirement for these ignorant, selfish power boaters, to pass a test on a sailboat while I overtake in their power boat at full bore within spitting distance of any sailboat. In a canal I get to hobby horse not once on their wake but it bounces back from the banks for another session.

I was ready to get on the VHF to compliment a power boater who slowed down when he was ready to pass me, just before Chesapeake City, in the canal, but then he did not pass me at all, but when I looked back there was a police boat behind me and a whole flock of obedient power boaters. But when the water cop turned into the little harbor of Chesapeake City, they broke loose again. The “No Wake” signs are, apparently, just for sail boats.

I expect to male it into the Cape May Canal, a short cut to the Atlantic through the south eastern tip of New Jersey, by tomorrow evening, it is 41 knot-ical miles. The ebb starts at 8 a.m. from where I am now but does not last long and most will be against the flood. The wind is forecasted to be very favorable, downwind. This trip accounts already for nearly half the hours on this engine, since I installed it in 2018.

I am listening to the public radio Sunday program “Pipe Dreams”. Siebold de Jong is playing a Bach Cantate on the organ of the Martini Church in Groningen (the second tallest basilica in the Netherlands).  The church is mentioned by our mother in my book “The Mastmakers’ Daughters”. Her father was also a Siebold (de Vries) and her brother plus a string of cousins and nephews. My twin spells his as Siebolt.