NY to Annapolis, MD

We finally left Port Washington, NY on Saturday, Oct 12th at 7:30am. Slack Tide at Hell’s Gate was at 10am so we started making our way through the East River.

It was a gorgeous day and a pleasant ride through the city. There were a few other sailboats who had also left Port Washington traveling down the river as well.

Exiting the mouth of the Hudson was a bit rough, with 6-8 ft waves on the nose that were tossing us all about. Once we got off the NJ coast though, the swells calmed down for a much more comfortable ride. We motored down the coast of NJ all day and through the night. We did have the main and the mizzen up the whole time, and I pulled the Yankee out around 10pm so we motor sailed through the night, pulling back the engine throttle to allow the sails to do some work.

The original plan had been to stop at Cape May, NJ in the morning. We arrived outside Cape May while it was still dark and decided to just keep chugging along.

With 1 knots of wind we tried to sail into Delaware Bay, but the wind was on our nose, and the swell was big again, so we dropped the sails and motored straight into the swells and wind instead. We buried the bow a number of times as we crossed into Delaware Bay, but the further up we got, the calmer both the seas and the wind became.

We ended up going all the way up to the C&D canal to Summit North marina for the night. We were due for showers, laundry and a fuel filter change.

The next morning we got ourselves and our clothes clean, and changes the fuel filter for the 1st time. We then filled up on fuel and water and left the dock aroun 2:30pm.

As it was already late in the day we didn’t want to go far, so we headed for the Sassafrass River about 6 miles South of the end of the canal. Here we anchored fo the first time on this trip, in a beautiful spot!

We left the next morning around 8am for a short trip down to Baltimore. We really wanted to sail, and we tried, but there just wasn’t enough wind so after a couple hours of bobbing around we finally turned the motor back on so we could make Baltimore before dark.

We anchored right in Baltimore harbor, between two massive Marinas, and we were the only boat in the small anchorage. Baltimore gave us quite a show that evening!

We spent the next 3 days at this anchorage, rising out some heavy winds from the Nor’Easter that ravaged the East Coast. It was also time to change our oil for the first time.

Of course this ended up being more of a project than we anticipated, as we had no oil filters on board.

We tried to buy replacements at the local West Marine, Ben rowed to shore in the rain to get them even, but they just didn’t look right. Of course we figured this out only after pumping out the old oil and removing the old filter. All this the evening of the heaviest predicted winds of course!

We didn’t want to weather the storm without a workable engine, so after a failed attempt to locate an appropriate filter somewhere in Baltimore, we opted to put the old filter and old oil back into the engine, just in case we needed it overnight. At the same time I ordered 4 replacement filters on Amazon promised foe next day delivery to a local Amazon Locker.

We rode through the storm just fine, the anchor held tight, and the engine was not needed. Of course the filters got delayed and didn’t end up arriving until Friday afternoon, which waylaid our plans to leave Friday morning.

It did give us an extra day to explore Baltimore though, and we had a great time returning to a local park and checking out a pagoda we had read about.

We got the oil changed for real Friday, and got ready to leave Saturday. Since we were only jumping down to Annapolis on Saturday we weren’t in a rush to get out fist thing in the morning.

We ended up motoring most of the way to Annapolis, but did get in about 45 minutes of good sailing as we approached the harbor. We an hired in a pretty tight spot, next to a catamaran we had seen at the Goslings in Maine this summer. They have 3 kids aboard and toldus about some other boat kids playing at a local park. We went over to the local park and the kids got to play with other kids again! They had a blast. One of the boats we met is even headed to Beaufort, SC, so we will certainly see them again.

Now we are ridding out the next storm aboard Jelanea. It has been raining all day and is pretty chilly, so we are hunkered down aboard for the day.