Boat Trip: Little River, SC to Plattsburgh, NY – DAYS 19-21 : Cape May, NJ (again)

Friday morning we got up very early and checked the weather reports….. they didn’t look good. We decided to call the local marina when it opened, and see if they had a transient slip available where we could shelter for the weekend. Unfortunately, by the time the marina opened at 8:30, the winds had already picked up to the point where we were not comfortable pulling anchor and negotiating our way into a boat slip. So….. we decided to stay at anchor for the duration of the storm. It’s a little less secure than a marina, and doesn’t have the convenience of being able to hop off to go to the store or do laundry, but we are not alone here. There are at least 7 sailboats and 2 other trawlers anchored nearby, doing the same thing. Now, however, Sidekick Sue wishes we didn’t park in view of the submerged sailboat which she sees every time she looks out the window. At least it is a good point of reference to verify that we aren’t drifting. By the afternoon, we were under a “small craft advisory”, followed by a gale warning.

We are only going to write this one blog post for the weekend, because there is really nothing of interest going on. Here is what we did on Friday, which we expect to repeat on Saturday and Sunday:

1.) Monitoring our position at anchor:

Both Captain Mark and Sidekick Sue are constantly checking our position at anchor by watching our path on the Navionics app. So far, we are staying within our circumference around the anchor, so it appears that our anchor is holding well. Captain Mark has let out extra anchor line as the tide has gone up to keep the anchor line at the lowest reasonable angle from the harbor floor.

Of course, we also make visual checks out the windows at regular intervals to verify the electronics and to make sure another boat isn’t coming dangerously close to us. Captain Mark warms up the engine intermittently to make sure it will start quickly if we need to make an emergency move. At night, it is a little harder to get our bearings, but Captain Mark gets up regularly to look for the lights on shore and the anchor lights of the other vessels. Sidekick Sue constantly checks her phone app all night. We are not having very restful nights, but we suspect it’s the same for everyone out here.

2.) Captain Mark is doing his best to fight boredom. He has never been a “sitting around” kind of guy, so the inability to do anything active is tough for him. He is spending his time researching, monitoring the tides, monitoring the wind speed and direction, and reading books about boating and looping. It is not a good time for boat maintenance, not only because the boat is rocking quite a bit, but because he wouldn’t want to accidently do anything that might disable the engine or any of our navigation equipment, just in case we have to move quickly.

3.) Sidekick Sue, on the other hand, loves having free time, and has lots of quiet activities to distract herself from the weather outside. She is intermittently firing up the generator to work on sewing projects (aforementioned bunting for wedding reception, 2nd screened door cover, and curtain alterations). We need to run the generator on occasion anyway to charge the batteries and heat the hot water, so it is dual purpose. When the generator is not running, she reads (mostly fiction), practices her first crochet stitches and does jigsaw puzzles.

That pretty much sums up Friday, and we expect Saturday and Sunday will be the same, unless the weather forecast changes significantly. Early plans are to move to the nearby marina on Monday to take care of: groceries, fuel, pump-out, “real” showers, post office, and laundry, before heading up through the New Jersey Intracoastal Waterway (we are right at the beginning of it now). We didn’t expect to spend nearly a week hanging out in Cape May, but since we’ve spent so much time here, we’d like to at least see the town. If anything significant or exciting happens, we will update this post, but for now, we are in a holding pattern until Sunday, with no new adventures or pictures….. just wind and rain.

Update: Saturday around noon, we turned on the generator to heat up lunch. It was difficult to start, and it kept shutting itself off. Without it we can’t cook. It is also used to heat our water and charge our batteries, but we could get around that by running the engine. Captain Mark set about troubleshooting and discovered the radiator was empty (must be leaking), so we refilled it for now, but have another problem for another day. Generator is running well…. for now.