Mattitucked in.

We are underway eastbound in Long Island Sound, bound for the Connecticut side and the Connecticut River. We got a late start from Mattituck, New York this afternoon waiting for enough tide to comfortably transit out the channel and inlet.

Vector looming in the compact anchorage in Mattituck.

Tuesday after I posted we headed ashore and landed at Danford's marina, in our usual dinghy spot. I went to check in at the office and get the gate code, expecting a complimentary tie-up for eating at their restaurant, which is what we were told on our last visit, where we used the dock for a full week and the new dockmaster waived the fee when we told him we'd been in and out of the restaurant a few times. Evidently between then and now the marina sold off the restaurant and no longer provides dock & dine, but at least our $10 dinghy fee was good for a full 24 hours.

We walked into the restaurant and, sure enough, it was completely different. Somehow I had not noticed when I made the reservation that the name had changed from the Ferryman's Grill, a fairly casual joint, to the Black Pearl Seafood and Chophouse, which is a white tablecloth joint with stratospheric, steakhouse-style prices. However the entire staff, apart from the manager, is still kids on summer break, not the 40-something veterans you'd find at a real steakhouse.

Both our brains initially registered this motorcycle helmet in Port Jeff as a ball fender and we did a double-take.

Louise's burger, ordered medium-well, came almost raw, and my chicken Cesar was overdressed and limp. The server knew nothing about the menu. At least they comped us for the burger and also a dessert once the manager got a glimpse of the under-cooked burger, but we'll not likely be back. There are plenty of better choices in this town, and the dinghy fee is the same no matter what.

Miniature version of the P. T. Barnum at the ferry dock, I assume a parade float. The real ferry in the background is her sister ship Grand Republic, backing out.

Monday morning I was up early to have coffee, tender ashore, tie up, and catch the 7:50 bus up the hill to the Staples, a procedure I ironed out last visit as we waited in Port Jeff for our yard visit. I was expecting two items from Amazon, but I already knew one was delayed and would miss us. It was a long morning to pick up ten bucks worth of Wago connectors. Any regrets I might have had about not waiting around another half day for the other item, a clamp for lifting the engine, were put to bed when it was later delayed yet another day, and as of this writing it's still not there.

With a half hour before my return bus I looped through Shop-Rite looking for beer, and picked up a few bagels at a place right next to the bus stop. I was back at Vector by 9:15 and we immediately decked the tender and weighed anchor to catch what little was left of the ebb on the sound. The sound was again calm and we had a nice cruise.

I caught this suburban deer as we passed on the bus. Sorry, best framing I could get from the moving bus. I thought it was a statue when I first spotted it.

We arrived to Mattituck Inlet at a tide of +3', which made it very comfortable to be exploring a new inlet known to be challenging. We had a Corps of Engineers survey from November of last year, which made it all pretty easy. The navigable channel is very narrow in a few spots, and at low tide we would have mere inches under the keel, but we had no issues and now we have a breadcrumb trail.

We were pleased to find the anchorage completely empty on arrival, save for a small runabout on a permanent mooring encroaching on the designated anchorage, which is clearly delineated by four spar buoys. We picked a spot right in the middle where we had good swing room for our 6' draft (map); by nightfall three more boats were sharing the anchorage.

We snapped this photo of the Erin Miller in Port Jeff for our friend, Erin Miller. The boats behind her and alongside her were both with us on the hard at Derecktor Shipyard.

I splashed the tender and went ashore to have a look around. I had been told the dinghy dock was free, but there is a brand new sign this season with pricing and QR codes to pay. The fee is for "one weekend," whatever that may mean in the context of arriving on a Monday. That's still a bargain, considering anchoring is free but the marina not even a hundred yards away is (gulp) $8.95 per foot, with a two-night minimum. That's a whopping $465 a night for Vector, and they don't even make the beds. Trash, bathrooms with showers, and a water spigot are provided at the park with the dock.

New fees for the dinghy dock. They were putting larger floats in place while we were there.

Love Lane, the main street downtown, comprises a little over one block of shops and restaurants. I found a nice, surprisingly well-stocked hardware store, a very nice high-end bodega, a couple of restaurants, and an LIRR station. The Village of Mattituck is in the Town of Southhold (as I have written before, NY political boundaries are byzantine), and it feels a lot like the other villages in Southold where we have spent quite a bit of time.

A little further along are a brew pub, which does not seem to be open much, and a high-end Italian place. I did not walk the next half mile to the big shopping plaza out on Main Road, which sports a supermarket, drug stores, and a couple more restaurants.

Quaint downtown Mattituck.

In the afternoon we got a video call from our friend Tim, who crossed the Atlantic last month on his sailboat s/v Paquita and is right now cruising Spain. He spent a lot of time pumping up how nice it is and that we need to go ourselves, lamenting we are not there together. I've been providing some remote support and troubleshooting for his electrical system over there, and so of course the call ended with me looking up circuit breaker specs. In the evening we returned ashore together for dinner at Love Lane Kitchen right in the middle of town, which was pretty good.

At 1:20am we were awakened by the weather alert going off, and we staggered upstairs to see if we needed to prepare. The radar showed a severe thunderstorm headed right for us, and so we pulled down all the outside covers and put out another 20' of anchor chain. Of course that made it miss us altogether and all we got overnight was a sprinkle.

Lombardi's Love Lane Market. It smelled really good in here.

Our friends Dorsey and Bruce have been hanging out in Block Island, and every morning we've been checking the forecast to see if we could make it across to join them, maybe staying through the 4th. Tuesday was no different, but this was really our final attempt. When the weather turned out, once again, to be uncooperative (and getting worse) we had to wave off the whole affair and decide we'd be stuck on the Long Island Sound side of The Race until after the holiday weekend.

With that there was no reason to rush out of Mattituck, and given how hard it was to get there, we decided to just spend another night. We then turned our attention, while we were in a town with a Walgreens, to filling a prescription that, due to a controlled substance, must be filled every 30 days, and which we last filled in Hampton, Virginia. I'm glad we took the day off, because this ended up being a two-hour ordeal.

These buoys put to rest any concerns about anchoring in what looks like a turning basin on the chart.

Half of that time was spent fighting with the phone tree and being hung up on by the local branch three separate times. We finally decided it best to just walk into the store and speak to the pharmacist in person, and so I took off solo and make the mile trek down to the shopping plaza. While the store in Virginia had told me on the phone that it was just a matter of the pharmacist in NY calling them to effect the transfer, I learned that NY law does not permit pharmacy-to-pharmacy transfers and the doctor would have to send a new script. And the med probably could not be here until after the holiday anyway.

As long as I was down there I went in to the Mattituck Market grocery store, which turned out to be very nice, to see if they had any beer I liked and to replenish the strategic cream cheese supply, which had been exhausted by the morning bagel deployment. On my way back home I stopped into yet another high-end mini-market, Center Cuts Two, which includes a nice butcher department — North Fork people apparently are real foodies.

These breakers give us more flexibility in using the smaller cord. The minuscule breaker enclosure had no room to make the neutral and ground connections so I had to add a J-box below it.

With parts in hand I spent the afternoon finishing up my electrical project in the engine room. This is to improve our ability to use 30-amp or 15-amp shore power when 50-amp is unavailable. We have a marina stay coming up this month where this will come in handy.

With the Italian place dark on Tuesdays, we decided to try the restaurant at the fancy expensive resort marina, Windamere. The restaurant web site said they had free dock-and-dine Monday through Thursday, but this was apparently news to the marina staff. They honored it, because it was on the web site, but by this morning they had taken it off. Dinner was fine, if overpriced, which seems to be the norm around here.

We're going to miss this kind of absolute calm. A view of the anchorage toward the park, from our flybridge.

This morning we finally had to come to grips with the fact that we had no concrete plan for the holiday weekend. It's a bad idea to be driving aimlessly or hunting for anchorages on a holiday, especially this one where they close off parts of waterways for fireworks. We spent the morning ruminating about heading to Peconic Bay and maybe Greenport or Sag Harbor, but we expect both to be crowded and we've been there a lot.

After spending some time with the chart looking at where we can get that would be protected, interesting, and still keep us behind the protection of Montauk Point today, we decided to cross over to the Connecticut side and poke into the Connecticut River at Saybrook. We've managed to miss it on every previous pass, so it will be something new. And who knows, maybe we'll take the river all the way to the head of navigation at Hartford.

Weather whiplash.

We are underway eastbound in Long Island Sound, headed for Port Jefferson. It's nearly flat calm out here, excellent travel conditions. We got a fairly early start to catch the last of the fair tide, but as I start typing just a little after 11am we are pushing against it. We should have the anchor down in the early afternoon.

Sunrise over Great Kills Harbor, Staten Island, NYC.

Monday was a very long day. Seas picked up a little as we approached New York, but it was just a light chop. We had a nice dinner underway before intersecting the Sandy Hook Channel, and were surprised to find ourselves threading through the menhaden fleet, whom we had left behind in Reedville, Virginia just a week earlier, at anchor off the ocean side of Sandy Hook.

One of Ocean Harvesters' big menhaden boats, a long way from Omega Protein's Reedville plant.

We dropped the hook in a familiar spot just of the Coast Guard station (map) around 7:15. It was a very warm evening and we ran the pilothouse air conditioner the rest of the evening, starting the gen just before bedtime to cool down the rest of the boat and charge the batteries back up for the night. Seawater temperature kept us comfortable overnight in the stateroom.

The air conditioning was back on before 8am on Tuesday as a heat dome descended upon the entire region. The tide was absolutely wrong to try to make our way past Manhattan, and we ruminated over morning coffee about where to go to wait things out. We could not stay where we were, as the ferry wakes are miserable. It's only tolerable overnight, when the ferries are not running.

We're anchored in 25' but the beach is just a few boatlengths away.

With temperatures headed for the century mark, a dock with power would be ideal. But we are in the part of the country where a marina slip is north of $350 per night, if there is even a slip in our size range to be had. By contrast, it costs us maybe $2 per hour to run the generator, so even running it 24/7, which was not likely to be necessary, is less than a tenth of the marina rates. We decided to just head across Raritan Bay to the protection of Great Kills harbor, on Staten Island, for the day.

Here, we reasoned, we would have wave protection all around, but still get enough of whatever sea breeze there was to keep things a little less brutal than they were forecast to be inland. We had the hook down in one of the few open spots (map) before noon. We spent the rest of the day inside with the air conditioning running.

Battery Weed, Fort Wadsworth, defending The Narrows as we pass under the Verrazzano.

On the way to the harbor I had reached out to Kim and Michael aboard The Perch, who were docked in the harbor. I was hoping to connect over a beer, but by the time we got settled in, all agreed it was just too hot to even try. With the mercury over 100, Louise was not sure we could even go out for dinner unless it involved no walking at all.

A little before dinner time I called the Atlantis Marina and asked if we could tie the tender up for dinner at the Marina Cafe, which is right on their property. I made a dinner reservation for 6, after the worst heat of the day would be past, and we had a brutal five minutes in the dinghy to get ashore. The restaurant was blissfully cool and the food was good. Despite the very casual-sounding name, this is a white tablecloth place, with prices to match as well as what I like to call the waterfront surcharge. They also have an outdoor tiki bar right next to the dock, which is more casual. I felt for the staff, working in the heat.

We passed this research vessel completely motionless in the river, despite the current. She is using dynamic positioning to hold her position.

Wednesday was another brutally hot day, but first thing in the morning, while it was still in the low 90s, I tendered over to The Perch and spent a pleasant hour with Michael, Kim, and their pets Whistle the dog and Margo the bird. Whistle spent a good part of the hour in my lap. After I got home we again spent the entire day inside with the boat closed up and the air conditioning on. I cranked out what indoor projects I could.

By dinner time we were on the down side of the heat wave, and with the temperature hovering right around 90 we tendered ashore for the half-mile walk to Goodfellas, which we remembered as being good from our last visit. I was seated where I could see the enormous stack of fresh, uncut loaves of Italian bread, and as we paid the check I asked if they were for sale. Yes, as it happens, for $3 apiece, and we went home with one. This after eating more or less a whole loaf with dinner.

Downtown Manhattan as we leave the Buttermilk Channel.

By Thursday morning the tide had shifted to be in our favor with an early start, and so we weighed anchor at 0600 and headed for The Narrows. The ride got progressively choppier the closer we got, and rounding the eastern end of the island we found ourselves in 25 knots of wind on the nose. Against the incoming tide that made for a "rage" most of the way through the harbor. At one point on the East River our anemometer topped out at 43 mph, or 37 knots. Subtracting our forward speed that's still 30 knots, just below gale force.

We whizzed through Hell Gate at 11 knots, and were on track to have a push almost the whole way to Port Washington. But it ran out somewhere around the Whitestone bridge, and we soon found ourselves pushing against nearly a knot, even thought the tables said it was still behind us. This is the effect of those same high winds piling all the water up into the western end of Long Island Sound, with some of that water looking to escape down the east river.

I had to snap this because that is, I kid you not, the "Tooth Ferry."

We had the anchor down in our usual spot in Manhasset Bay (map) before lunch. By this time the temperatures had dropped into the 60s, a full 30° cooler than it had been just the day before. We were glad to be out of the oppressive heat, where we were running the AC all day and the generator about one hour of every four to keep the batteries charged. I warmed up by working in the engine room on an electrical project that has been on my list for a while, and whose parts were in my last Amazon shipment.

At dinner time we put on full fall regalia and tendered ashore for casual Italian at old standby Amalfi, followed by a provisioning stop at the Stop & Shop in the same plaza. In the evening we were treated to an unexpected but distant fireworks show over the sound at City Island, apparently in celebration of the last day of school in New York City.

I love this glass chandelier at Bosphorous.

Now that we are in the protected waters of Long Island sound and are well on track to make our commitments in a month, we can be on a more relaxed pace. So when it looked like conditions on the sound would not be great Friday, we opted to just spend another day in the familiar harbor of Port Washington. I spent the morning trying to finish my electrical project, at least until I ran into a brick wall when I found I do not have the right size Wago connectors on hand.

The last of the Edmund Fitzgerald porter that I picked up in Hopewell. I am on the hunt for another porter.

On a very pleasant afternoon I had a nice walk down to the Ace Hardware, who had the screws I needed for a hatch project. I also stopped at West Marine, who had nothing I needed, and Target, where I expected to pick up some wine until I realized, after two circuits of the grocery aisles, that NY is one of the states where you can not buy wine in the grocery. I stopped at a bottle shop instead.

At dinner time we tendered over to the Manorhaven dock, figuring on a pleasant walk to dinner, only to find the gate padlocked. It's a seasonal dock, but we are well in season and the village web site says the dock should be open. Oh well, nothing to be done about it on the weekend and so we just tendered back around to the North Port Washington dock and walked to Salvatore's from there for pizza and beer.

Sunset over City Island, or thereabouts, from Manhasset Bay.

Yesterday would have been a good day to continue east, with conditions similar to today, but while we were in Port Washington we decided to try a new stop, in Mattituck, as we head east from Port Jeff. It's a tiny anchorage there, with room for just a few boats, and word is that it gets crowded on the weekends. So we opted to slow down by a day, which also allowed me to place an Amazon order to Port Jeff that would not arrive until today. We'd rather spend the extra day in Port Washington, where everything is easier, than Port Jeff, and so we just stayed put.

That gave me a full day to try to dial the engine alignment in a bit further, and once I had it, I got out the big torque wrench and tightened everything down. In the afternoon I made use of my newly acquired screws to install a pair of handles I had ordered on Amazon onto our aft boat deck hatch. I'm not sure why it took me a full decade, and a friend's broken fingers, to get around to doing this; I think it is because we were afraid we'd kick it when standing on the hatch as we deck the tender. We ended the day with dinner at Bosphorous before doing exactly that (without kicking the handle) for an early start.

New hatch handle so we don't have to work our fingers under the edge any longer.

Update: We are anchored in a familiar spot off the power plant in Port Jefferson Harbor (map). When we arrived some sort of alarm was blaring from the plant, which went on for a very long time. I am sad to report that the alignment change did not help and actually made things worse, so we stopped mid-trip to back it out, which also did not help. So tightening everything down is the culprit this time and I will have to do another iteration. It is said that a pro can align an engine like this in a couple of hours but that an amateur can expect to spend up to six, and I am well out of pro territory now.

As long as I had to drill two bolt holes, I put this one on the other side to make it easier to close, too.

My Amazon packages are coming to a drop at the Staples store, which closes at 6, and since they are not yet delivered it looks like I will be heading up there on the county bus first thing in the morning. That should still give us plenty of time to get to Mattituck. Tonight we'll dinghy ashore to Danford's Marina and eat in their restaurant, which is actually pretty good.

Meet me tonight in Atlantic City

We are underway northbound in the Atlantic Ocean after five nights in Atlantic City, New Jersey. That's an unusually long stay for us, but in addition to waiting on good passage weather, we also had a number of errands we needed to handle there.

Wednesday afternoon we had an early arrival, right around 1:30, and we picked a nice spot to drop the hook right off the Coast Guard station (map). That's about as close as we can get to the two places we can land the dinghy, and with so many errands I wanted to try to keep the rides short.

We just barely beat this thunderstorm after parking the car Thursday night. The "golf ball" atop the Ocean Casino is in the clouds.

A big storm with plenty of rain and high winds was forecast for dinner time, so we put out extra scope and left the tender on deck.  We thought we could make it ashore for dinner, but then we might well be stuck there until the storm passed, with Vector fending for herself in the anchorage. We opted instead to eat aboard.

Of course that meant the storm was a complete dud. We got very little wind and almost no rain, and after dinner it was clear skies and pleasant. I splashed the tender and headed ashore stag to get a walk in, and also get the lay of the land after an absence of a year. The very first change: our secret dinghy spot at the marina is now occupied by a PWC float and I had to find a different spot.

We tucked the dink into this notch behind a superyacht.

I checked in with the marina for the dinghy landing and got the gate code to get back on the dock before setting out on my walk. First stop: the county bus stop in front of the casino, in the event I might need to take the bus out to Brigantine to get our mail and packages. I ended my walk with a loop through the casino, where I noted that what used to be an Italian venue, The Grotto, mid-casino, is now the Mexican-themed Dos Caminos. The other half dozen dining venues were unchanged.

The anchorage was comfortable, but sometime after dark, loud music started up from the parking lot on the point adjacent to Gardner's Basin. We had forgotten about this but were now reminded, and our memory was that this pop-up party can go well into the wee hours. We weighed anchor and moved down closer to the bridge (map), a quarter mile farther from the music.

Bus stop. This will get you to Brigantine but is also the easiest way to get to the Borgata right across the highway.

That was a lot quieter, but just before bed time the Atlantic swell clocked around to the exact direction to come rolling down the inlet between the jetties, and we rolled the rest of the night. It was too late, really, to relocate, and Louise had to sleep cross-ways across the short dimension of the bed to get any shut-eye. In hindsight, we should have weighed, gone through the bridge, and dropped the hook in front of Harrah's.

Things started to flatten our with the turn of the tide Thursday morning, and we moved about halfway back to split the difference between too loud and too rolly (map). Almost as soon as we had the hook down, we got the notice that our mail had arrived at the UPS Access Pint in the CVS in Brigantine. The timing was wrong to take the bus, and so I called Seatow, across the street from the CVS and who has a few slips out back, to see if they would let me tie up for a few minutes. They were very pleasant and agreed to let me squeeze in.

They had me tie to this skiff to get to the dock.

Between the barrier islands and the mainland in this part of NJ is a lot of wetland, crisscrossed by myriad channels, some natural and some not, and the ones that run alongside land are chock-a-block with docks. Seatow is on one of these called the Golden Hammock Thorofare, which is completely unmarked. It is reached from Absecon inlet via the also-unmarked Little Panama Slough. I was navigating by chart alone when I was passed by a local, whom I then followed the rest of the way. They knew where the also unmarked no-wake zone started.

Seatow had me tie up to a skiff at the dock and it took less than five minutes to grab our package and leave. I walked past the "Brigantine Lighthouse" on my way back, just to snap a photo. This was never a real lighthouse, having been built here in the 1920s by a real estate developer just to attract business. It has become the icon of the town. I was back at Vector just a bit late for lunch.

1926 Brigantine "lighthouse," a marketing ploy for a real estate developer.

Chief among our motivations for extra time here was the need for a follow-up visit to my parents, about an hour north. They're actually right next to the Manasquan Inlet, but there is no place for us to anchor there, and a marina stay is $300 per night. By contrast a rental car (which we'd likely still need there anyway) is $60 a day, so it was a no-brainer to make the trip from here. We tendered over to the casino at 4 and Enterprise came and got us around 20 minutes later.

After picking up what turned out to be a pregnant roller skate of a car, we checked out the nearby Atlantic City Rail Line station as an option to get home after our after-hours return, and then thought about having dinner right there in Absecon on the mainland. But it was really too early for dinner, and we were concerned that we lad left Vector alone at anchor before having been through a full turn of the tide. We decided to find dinner in Brigantine, which would give us a reassuring view of the anchorage from the bridge.

Diminutive rental car. It was easy on the gas, at least.

That turned out to be a snare and a delusion. We drove around Brigantine for 20 minutes but could not come up with a place that was open for dinner, served beer, and was not a dump. Maybe the mob still controls the liquor licenses here. We decided to go someplace in AC instead, and the first place suggested by Google was our old friend the Back Bay Ale House, which is at Gardner's Basin. We've only ever been there in the dinghy, so it was interesting to drive around the Monopoly board to get there. After dinner we stashed the car in the free casino garage.

When I had booked the car my plan had been to pick it up Thursday at closing time, drive to Brick on Friday, and then return the car sometime on Saturday at our leisure. But by the time we picked it up, my cousin and uncle had also decided to drive down from New York on Saturday, and we changed our plan to arrive together with them. That gave us all day Friday for errands with the car.

Too sunny outside so we ate in the bar at Back Bay Ale House.

Among the things in the mail we had received was the legal paperwork for my "ordination" to officiate our niece's wedding next year. So I spent some time Friday morning filling out the paperwork for Douglas County and making an appointment with a notary. The UPS Store in Egg Harbor had an appointment available at 1:30.

Again around 10:30 we got notice that both my Amazon order and the replacement Spurs parts  I had ordered from Fort Lauderdale had arrived at the CVS in Brigantine, and so after lunch we headed out on our expedition, stopping first at the CVS and then heading directly to Walmart in Mays Landing. On the way we passed the Sams Club, where I posted the very first travel post to this blog a little more than two decades ago. It's been quite the ride.

Notarized NV affidavit and signed letter of good standing from my "church."

With the luxury of a car, we loaded up with a five-gallon pail of motor oil, printer paper, and dry goods. We omitted the fresh veggies and cold stuff until after our other stops. We arrived to UPS right on time for my notary appointment, figuring to head from there just a few miles up the road for Louise to get her hair cut at Supercuts. But we found a Great Clips right in the same shopping plaza as UPS.

Also in that plaza was a Lidl grocery, a first for me, so after her haircut we finished up the shopping. They had a very nice fresh bakery section and we picked up a couple of bagels as well. We returned home the long way, via US-40, so we could drive "the strip," Atlantic Avenue, past all the boardwalk casinos. The whole strip is looking quite shop-worn. The glitz that never really was has faded, lots of places are shuttered, and even the gritty Springsteen song no longer seems to fit.

We used our folding wagon to get our loot from the garage back to the tender, and after just an hour or so back home, we turned right around to come back for dinner. I found Bocca, a well-rated coal-fired pizza place with draft beer down in Margate, and we drove down there via Baltic and Ventnor. Of course that took us past Marven Gardens, which was misspelled on the Monopoly board (it's a portmanteau of Margate and Ventnor, on whose borders it sits). The further you get from AC the more upscale things become, and Ventnor and Margate both had a nicer selection of eateries than the city, apart from the casinos themselves.

I knew where the no wake zone in the Thorofare was by following a local. This guy was not so lucky.

The entirety of Saturday was given over to our trip to Brick. Our car had no EZPass transponder, so we ended up going through the cash lanes on the Parkway. Thankfully we asked at the very first toll booth -- the Enterprise clerk had told us to just go through the transponder lanes regardless and we'd be billed later. The toll taker confirmed what I already thought I knew -- NJ does not have pay-by-plate. 

I had figured to take the train back to AC after dropping the car off at the 5:30 due time, but we had it gassed up and parked by 4:30. We didn't want to wait for the 5:45 train, so we ended up grabbing a Lyft. That also aced us out of the brew pub near the train station, and we ended up eating at The Deck, adjacent to the marina. It was a great night to eat outdoors, before the current heat wave hit, and we thankfully finished before the pervasive live music started.

We might well have decided to leave first thing yesterday morning, except that as soon as I had the Spurs parts in hand, I had texted Shawn to see if he was available to install them. He agreed to meet us at the dock on Sunday, and that sealed the deal on staying until this morning. Farley State Marina has a very generous day-use policy, and we weighed anchor yesterday and headed over, asking for a couple of hours. They put us in a slip with just a few inches under our keel (map).

Vic & Anthony's steakhouse in the casino has stratospheric prices. But if you know about it, there is this unadvertised bar menu and even better happy hour menu in the bar if you can find a seat.

Shawn arrived with his wife and his own stepladder to get back out of the water on these ladderless docks. Once he was in the water it was a ten minute job, and I think he was really happy to wrap up what he saw as unfinished business from the little mishap in Cape May. I am happy to report that the new piece, with damper plugs properly installed, is not rattling.

After the dive work and taking on a little water we returned to the anchorage (map). We came back via tender at dinner time, venturing in to the bowels of the casino to try Dos Caminos, which was actually quite good. On a Sunday night the casino was not busy enough for cigarette smoke, which somehow does not respect the restaurant boundary, to be much of a problem. We decked the tender as soon as we returned home.

This morning we weighed anchor shortly after the start of the ebb. Conditions have been excellent, and we are just approaching Barnegat Light as I wrap up typing. I am maintaining a careful watch for a dead whale reported off the coast here. We have one more bail-out option, at Shark River, but if these conditions hold, we will try to push all the way to Sandy Hook, with dinner on board underway.

My Spurs went jingle jangle clunk

We are underway northbound in the Atlantic ocean, off the coast of New Jersey. We've been waiting for this window for several days, but, as luck would have it, we are in thick fog. Visibility has been 1,000'-2,000', and we've had the automated fog horn running since we weighed anchor. I have a guard alarm set on the radar, and typing is slow because I need to look ahead every few seconds.

Saturday afternoon we made the Cape May Canal just before the tide turned against us, and had the anchor down off the Coast Guard station by 5:20. We lucked out and found a spot about as close to town as possible (map). We realized too late that we'd probably need dinner reservations on a Saturday in season, and the best I could do was 7:15 at Lucky Bones near the boat ramp, which would be a cold, wet dinghy ride.

We fished this out of the Atlantic just as I was wrapping up typing. It's under our deck chairs to keep from blowing overboard. I really wish these were outlawed.

I also noticed Port Marina Restaurant is now on Open Table, and I put in to be notified if a table came up. One did, making for a much shorter tender ride. When we arrived we learned that their inside dining was now open, and that's where our table would be. The outside deck takes no reservations. On a cold, damp evening we opted to keep our inside table, even though the inside dining turned out to be high-zoot, with an expensive and very limited menu. If you want a salad of any kind, you have to eat on the deck. Fortunately, they had an unadvertised burger, which was actually pretty good.

Around 10pm, winds picked up to 25-30 knots, and we found ourselves plowing through the soft mud bottom with our Bruce anchor. Louise had to drag herself out of bed so we could increase scope, which we did twice until we had 100' of chain out in jut 15' of water. Thankfully, we had the room.

Sunday morning I started calling around for a local diver to add the dampers to the Spurs line cutter, knowing we'd be here for a few days. I got a good recommendation on Facebook and was able to make arrangements with Shawn to meet on Tuesday. With that scheduled I was able to turn my attention to some critical projects.

At the biggest marina, it is a loooong walk to your boat from the parking lot. I counted at least 40 of these wagons, each with rod holders, chained up in the parking area.

Chief among these was to adjust the engine alignment. As soon as I got the shaft coupler nuts loose I could see it was way off, even though it had seemed OK when I bolted it all together in Hampton. I might have been too tired to notice. I don't really have the right wrenches for this, but I was able make an improvement with a pair of slip-joint pliers.

After I had the engine mounts all buttoned up and the shaft back together, I pulled up the sole plates to get at the fresh water pump, which has been acting up lately. I think the last set of well-pump pressure switches I bought are just really low quality, and I've had to clean the contacts on this one several times. On this occasion it was the pressure mechanism itself and I just replaced the whole switch.

We still had 100' of chain out, and in the afternoon we ended up chasing off two sailboats that both tried to anchor with overlapping swing circles. We are a bit gun-shy of late. And somehow we forgot it was Father's Day and that, therefore, we would again need a dinner reservation. Lucky Bones had nothing until late again, but we headed ashore anyway knowing that Tony's Pizza, while beer-free, would have room. It turned out that Mayer's Tavern right next door was able to get us in with no wait, and they had excellent scallops and good draft beer. This was our first time here -- we'll be back.

Cheers from Mayer's Tavern.

Monday was another cold, bleak, rainy day, and I spent the morning working on travel reservations. That included planning for our upcoming stop in Atlantic City, where we will again be pinned down for a few days and will be renting a car to take care of some errands. We're having our mail and some Amazon packages sent to neighboring Brigantine.

By 2pm it was dry enough to tender ashore, and a bit less chilly, so I landed at the boat ramp and walked the mile and a half to the Acme grocery store. We needed milk and veggies, and I needed the walk. The wind picked up while I was out and I had a very wet ride home; thus we opted to just go back to Port Marina for dinner. This time we ate on the more casual deck, where they had the wind breaks in place so it was comfortable. We were home in time for a 7pm video conference.

Under her personal Louise Hornor awning. Nice of the Lobster House to roll out the red carpet like this. (We did not eat there.)

Sometime later we heard a sailboat trying to call TowBoatUS, but they ended up talking mostly to the Coast Guard. They were disabled seven nautical miles from the Cape May inlet, nearly half way across the mouth of Delaware Bay and needed to be towed in. They were Brazilian with limited English and only a Brazil cell phone, so the CG was struggling. TowBoat finally arrived to the harbor with them around midnight, circled around behind us, and then brought them to the middle of the pack of anchored boats to drop their hook. My entertainment for the evening, but I'm sure a miserable night for them out in short-period five-footers. By this morning they had dragged partway into the channel and I had to go around them.

Yesterday morning we weighed anchor to go meet diver Shawn for the liner cutter work. His day job includes responsibilities at the Atlantic Capes Fisheries docks, and that's where we met. We had to go through the very narrow Two Mile lift bridge, which I remember crossing in Odyssey, then we turned down Mud Hen Gut and rafted up to the scallop boat Captain Danny (map). I spent ten minutes with Shawn in Captain Danny's galley going over photos on my PC and the instruction sheet from Spurs.

New damper pads installed.

Shawn jumped in right at noon when his lunch break started, and I had the Spurs pieces in my hands in less than five minutes. Sure enough, the dampers were missing altogether, and I quickly cleaned out the residue and gunk from the press-fit mounting holes. I pounded the new dampers in, put a pair of new screws on the unit, and handed it back to Shawn, along with new bearings, to install.

A couple of minutes later he was back on the surface to report a problem. A piece of the assembly broke off at the screw hole, and that was the end of the project. I had him hand me everything back, including the new bearings, and we called it a day. I think he felt bad about it breaking on his watch and was ready to waive his charge, but we insisted on paying him -- ten years of crevice corrosion and a stress fracture are not his fault.

Oops. Tiny end broke off right at the threaded hole.

We left the fish dock, came back through the Two Mile bridge, and right back to the anchorage, where a Krogen had taken our spot. We ended up another hundred feet west on a shorter scope (map). The good news is that the rattle we'd been working to remedy was gone, confirming that it was the lack of dampers on the Spurs. The bad news is that we still had driveline vibration, so I did not get the alignment quite right.

After we got settled I contacted Spurs, who are happy to send me a replacement for $400. A good machine shop could probably fix this one for maybe half that, but it all comes down to how fast we can have it. At this writing it's looking like having Spurs send a replacement to Brigantine will be the quickest option. Shawn is willing to meet us in Atlantic City to install it. He told us that he is one of only four divers from Cape May to Point Pleasant.

My attempt to capture the crowded anchorage. By nightfall I counted a dozen boats behind us and one in front.

I spent the rest of the afternoon once again aligning the engine; this time is was out in the other direction, albeit closer. I think it's pretty close now, but it is still a hair off in a direction I can't easily fix. With the harbor fairly calm, the third time was the charm, and we finally made it to Lucky Bones for dinner last night. Cape May is full of nice restaurants, but there are fewer than a half dozen walking distance from the docks, and this is really the best of that lot. We decked the tender when we returned home in anticipation of an early start this morning.

As I wrap up typing, with less than two hours to go, the fog has finally lifted and we should be anchor down in AC by 1:30. Our mail is slated to arrive tomorrow morning and we pick up the rental car just before they close tomorrow afternoon. There is a big storm coming this evening, and I am very glad to be out of the tightly packed anchorage in the soft mud of Cape May for it. I just hope we can get ashore at dinner time.

Jersey boy.

We are underway southbound on the Delaware Bay, bound for Cape May, New Jersey. We've had a string of excellent travel condition days and have been using them to make tracks, but that will come to an end here and we will likely be pinned down in Cape May for a while as we wait on an outside window to make progress in the Atlantic Ocean.

Vector staring down the Hooper Island Light. "This is a lighthouse, mate. Your call."

When last I posted here, we were docked at the Reedville Market restaurant in Reedville, Virginia. After dinner we had a nice walk to the end of the peninsula and back, and I went as far as the main road north of town. Absolutely everything in Reedville is closed Monday, and I was halfway through my walk when it occurred to me that we could have landed the scooters and ridden someplace else. There are a couple of Mexican joints in Burgess, about a six mile ride.

Our view from the Reedville Market dock.

We had another short walk in the morning, after the rain ended, before shoving off. Before reaching Smith Point, Louise spotted something bobbing in the water, and through our binoculars we could tell it was a deceased dolphin. I radioed the Coast Guard to see if that required a report; it did, and they took all our information. Later the Virginia Aquarium Stranding Response unit called me to get more details.

The lone gas station and mini mart in Reedville closed long ago. Not one graffito.

I was on the phone with them just as we were passing "Hannibal Target," where we were strafed by a jet fighter maybe 300' off the deck. This is a US Navy live-fire training target, and we were just outside the no-entry security zone. The phone call kept me from snapping a photo of the jet, but I got some of the USAS American Mariner, the Liberty ship scuttled here as a training target after the USS Hannibal had basically been obliterated by the elements and decades of live fire. We've seen her from a distance many times; this is the first time we've ever passed at just a half mile.

The remains of USAS American Mariner, nearly clove in two.

Going around the target was only a minor deviation from our straight-line course to the Honga River entrance, where we curved around to the east side of Hoopers Island and dropped the hook (map). There is nothing ashore here, so I grilled some chicken on board. This first comfortable anchorage in the river put us just a short ride from Hoopersville, and after dinner we splashed the tender and landed at the boat ramp there just to get a little walk in. We decked the tender as soon as we returned.

Wednesday we had a quiet morning at home. Louise had been in contact with the Hooper Island Light folks and they did not expect to arrive at the lighthouse until noon. With a two-hour cruise to get there, we left close to 11 to make sure they had a good head start and would be settled in by the time we arrived. That proved wise; as we approached the light maybe a half hour out it looked deserted, and we were nearly on top of it when we saw the crew zipping out in their Highfield RIB from the marina at the other end of Hooper Island. They arrived just ahead of us.

The lighthouse guys sent us a few drone shots. Photo: Rich Cucé

We sounded a Captain's Salute on the Kahlenbergs and dropped the hook 200 yards off the light. We tendered over to the base and spent about a half hour chatting with them from the dink. As we expected, insurance limitations precluded an actual visit. Louise has been supporting these guys on Patreon for a while, and it was great to meet Thomas and Rich and catch up a little before moving along. You can find their work on the Hooper Island and Wolf Trap lighthouses over on YouTube, here.

The small basin in Hoopersville hosts a fleet of crab boats, and will host pleasure craft of shallow draft.

After leaving the lighthouse we had a two-hour cruise to Solomons, where we dropped the hook in our preferred spot near the island known as Molly's Leg (map). We tendered over to the Island Hideaway for dinner, even splurging on a decadent dessert. This has become our favorite place on the island, and the food was good as usual. After dinner we strolled the riverfront a bit before heading home.

We left the dinghy in the water overnight, contemplating spending an extra day. A vibration is telling me I need to adjust the engine alignment since doing the transmission work, sooner rather than later, and I thought this would be a good place. But after looking at the weather and the prospects of busy waterways and anchorages for the holiday weekend, we decided to keep moving and do the work in Cape May instead.

A fellow boater at one of the docks sent us some pics. Sunset in Solomons. Photo: Liz Marks

Thus it was that we left first thing Thursday to have some fair tide to Annapolis. I would have skipped Annapolis altogether this time, except for the fact that it was the only reasonable UPS Access Point and that's where I had Spurs ship the line cutter parts. Amazon also insisted I pick a specific UPS store to return the bolts I did not need for the damper plate, and I chose one here.

Our anchorage off Hooper Island. There is nothing on the island to even provide a wind break.

Leaving Solomons we found ourselves in a conga line of northbound boats, including a phalanx of long-range trawlers that included a big Selene, two Nordys, and our friends on Vahevala, a steel hull similar to Vector. We had to alter course a bit to be overtaken by USNS Charlton, whom I had seen on the scope about twenty minutes out. Evidently, many of the conga line were caught unawares and had to scramble out of her way, just as the downbound bulker Macheras was passing. We chuckled when the pilot of the Charlton, making arrangements with Macheras, said "I'm navigating a flotilla here, so you have that to look forward to."

We arrived to Annapolis after 4pm, and opted to drop the hook in the choppy harbor rather than our preferred spot on Weems Creek, on account of the errands. We had the usual hunt through the borrow pits before finding a safe spot (map). As usual, the gaggle of racing sailboats passed us close aboard in the evening on their way back to the barn; right now we have sailboat impact PTSD and Louise watched them carefully from the pilothouse.

USNS Charlton overtaking us. I altered course 20 minutes ahead to be this far out of the way.

To get to the UPS store for my Amazon return we tendered to a new landing for us, at the end of Burnside Street, west of the Spa Creek drawbridge. That made it about a half mile walk to the shopping center, where we had a nice plate of ribs at Adams Taphouse. I was able to walk over to the UPS store before they closed while Louise finished her beer. There are no tourists in this joint.

Vector in Solomons at night. Photo: Liz Marks

On the way back to Vector we detoured down Ego Alley to the town dinghy dock, where I walked the two blocks to the CVS to pick up my Spurs parts. Even after dinner the temperature was in the high 80s, and with all the walking Louise hit her heat limit and waited for me in the air conditioning at Chipotle with a cold drink. We were back at Vector after only a little more than an hour or so ashore, and decked the tender for an early start. We have several friends in Annapolis, but with the late arrival, errands, and early departure we did not reach out to any. It was a pitchy, rolly night in the harbor, and in hindsight we should have gone to Weems and landed the e-bike ashore for the errands, but beach landings are never my first choice for that.

Yesterday morning we got an early start to catch the last of the flood. Before reaching the Bay Bridge we passed a crane moving giant roadway sections between barges. They looked shop-worn, not new, and we wondered if they were wreckage from the Key Bridge. As we passed under the bridge, we were whizzing right along at nearly max flood.

A barge full of old road deck segments, complete with Jersey barriers.

I had figured we'd make it only as far as the Bohemia River, but after passing the Patapsco we realized we'd have fair or slack current all the way to the canal, and we decided to press on to Chesapeake City. We ran out of push just past the canal entrance, and the last hour was a slog against the current, but we had the hook down in the Chesapeake City Anchorage Basin (map) before 3pm. The anchorage was quite full when we arrived, and even more so by nightfall.

An upscale candy store has recently opened in the old bank in Chesapeake City.

Weekend nights are something of a zoo here in the summer. Live music at The Deck at the Chesapeake Inn, Rummur outdoor rum bar at the Inn at the Canal, and Schaeffer's deck across the canal all compete for the ear, and if you stand on the town dock you get an interference pattern. We had a nice dinner on The Deck while it was still the quieter warm-up duo; the six-piece band complete with saxophone was much louder and we enjoyed the music of our era from the comfort of our own boat.

We had a nice walk around town and also offloaded the trash and recycling before returning to Vector and decking the tender, ahead of a forecast thunderstorm. That storm fizzled out just before reaching us, leaving all three music venues unscathed and the myriad open small boats that arrive every weekend evening mostly dry. After the music stopped at 11 we had a quiet and comfortable night, although I noticed a passing RoRo in the canal moved us a good 40' or so across our swing circle as it went by.

This photo does not really convey how crazy it is at the Chesapeake Inn on a warm Friday evening.

We seldom go all the way to Cape May from Chesapeake City. But today we had to make a very early start if we wanted any fair tide at all, and the math, coupled with the scarcity of anchorages, made it work out to do the whole stretch in one day. That means pushing through one entire flood but getting the benefit of most of two ebbs, so it all works out in the end. During the flood the plotter was giving me arrival times of 8pm, but now that we're into the final ebb the time is right around 5:15.

Unless the forecast changes, we'll be pinned down in Cape May for a few days, and I hope to align the engine and get a few other projects that have been backing up knocked out. My next post will be northbound in the Atlantic Ocean, whenever that may be.