On to Delaware
Friday, June 4, 2021
We are in the Reedy Island anchorage. Some of you know this charming spot at the top of the Delaware Bay, directly across from the nuclear power plant. What could make it better you ask? Well, in my opinion, listening to the rumble of thunder adds that extra element of “je ne sais quoit”. We had hoped this storm was going to miss us but the sky continues to darken and the thunder gets louder. It might be time to move to a seat further away from the mast. Otherwise, how will I concentrate on writing the blog post?
Our departure from the Sassafras anchorage seemed to unsettle every fuzzy head that wasn’t already dead. We found ourselves in a giant cloud of these flying beasts. Mike was soon deploying the fly swatter and then the bug spray. As we were actually underway, it wasn’t that easy to control the drift of the insecticide. I might have been covered in more of it than the fuzzy heads. Once again the boat is a mess with insect corpses and droppings. Here’s hoping that these bugs are restricted to the Chesapeake Bay and we won’t encounter another swarm of them tonight! I feel badly for Mike who worked hard to clean the aft area of the deck, only to find it a mess again this morning.
The transit of the C-D canal went more or less according to plan. On the approach to the canal, we were overtaken by a steady parade of motor vessels. This made for a somewhat rock and roll passage. On the positive side, it confirmed that the current would be turning in our favor. The only unsettling development was a strange noise that seemed to get louder as we went along. Based on our experiences in the Cape Cod Canal in 2017, Mike was checking the prop shaft. Our assumption is that the noise was cicadas in the trees along the canal. It’s a strange sound and quite a bit louder than you might expect! There was a cicada on the deck for a while. Mike was planning a photo session but it flew off! They don’t make photo models like they used to....
p.s. There is a very narrow “gate” in a derelict breakwater to get into this anchorage. It’s a pair of red and green markers about 100 feet apart. We felt confident because we were here in October last year and still have the track on our chart-plotter. However, we were a little stunned to briefly see depths of 5.5 feet as we approached this entrance. Neither of us felt anything but we should have been scraping the bottom. It was in fact low tide and we’ll be leaving on a high tide tomorrow so it shouldn’t be any problem getting out.
Gloria
39 30.638 N, 75 34.383 W
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