Running before the storm

We are under way in the Atlantic Ocean, just passing Atlantic City, NJ as I begin typing. We've been under way since 4pm yesterday, and we expect to be dropping the hook in New York Harbor tomorrow morning. Louise is just turning in for the night and I am "starting" my watch (in reality, I am on watch all day, but not solo). We are racing ahead of "Disturbance 1" off the Carolinas, which has an 80% chance of becoming a tropical cyclone and taking aim at the mid-Atlantic and New England states.

Yesterday morning we weighed anchor early, to take advantage of the last of the ebb to carry us to Newport News. The tide turned just a little before we arrived at the James River Bridge; this time we pulled off channel before the bridge, dropping the hook a short distance from the Huntington Park boat ramp. I did not want to beg permission again to tie the tender up at the Leeward Marina on the other side of the bridge.


Moonrise over Newport News from Burwell Bay. Bright lights are the shipyard.

The chart said I would be in 7' of water between a pair of shoals, but it was deeper than charted and we had no trouble coming in quite close to the park (map). We splashed the tender and loaded the e-bike immediately, before the day got any hotter. The boat ramp had two tie-ups that were not in the way of launching operations, and I locked the dink up to a sturdy cleat on a nice floating dock.

It was a three and a half mile ride out to the Office Depot and the Lowes. On the way I stopped at Harbor Freight for a couple of items on my list; there is also a Northern Tool here making this a great stop for those types of needs. My mission at Lowes was weather stripping for the window screens; they did not have the "brush" style I was after but I picked up some foam stuff that may or may not work.


As I did my run-up coming into Hampton Roads, several dolphins played in our bow wave. The water is a bit murky, but you can see an infant here swimming with its mother.

I had pre-ordered my printer cartridges at Office Depot and I did "curb side pickup" there; the associate was a bit confused to find no car at the curb. From there it was three miles back to Walmart for some much-needed provisioning. Our unexpectedly long stay on the Chick had us run out of a number of things. I filled a backpack and a large satchel that fits on the tail rack of the bike.

I was back aboard shortly after lunch, and we decked the tender, but then we just sat there until 4pm to start our passage. That choice of departure time was to give us favorable tide at both ends, put us in NY harbor after I come back on watch tomorrow morning, and give us daylight bailouts at Cape Henlopen and Atlantic City if we needed them.


Leaving the Chesapeake we had a little race to the bridge-tunnel with this bulker.

The forecast was for two footers on a long period for more or less the whole ride, but that proved overly optimistic as soon as we made the turn from Hampton Roads into Chesapeake Bay. We had a bumpy ride all the way to the Chesapeake Bay Bridge Tunnel, and, after crossing the tunnel at the Thimble Shoals Channel and making a sharp left, we had it on the beam all the way across the mouth of the bay. We dogged everything down and hoped for improvement when we cleared the mouth and turned more northerly.

Louise turned in at 8pm for her sleep period, right after we made the first part of the turn, at Nautilus Shoal. But fifteen minutes later, as I was still rigging the pilothouse for darkness, she was back upstairs, reporting that the motion in the master berth was too violent to sleep. We spent the next fifteen minutes or so looking at immediate bailout options, but it is slim pickings there. We could do a 180 and run more than two hours back to Lynnhaven Roads, with the same seas now on the port beam, and having to navigate an unfamiliar harbor and tie up or anchor in the dark at 11pm, well past her bed time. Or we could backtrack a little and then run up the bay to Kiptopeke, plowing through crab floats in the dark to anchor behind the concrete ships.


Sunset over the Chesapeake and the bridge-tunnel, across an angry sea.

In the end, she decided to just sit with me in the pilothouse until we made the final part of the turn and cleared the mouth of the bay completely. As luck would have it, the 20-knot winds that had been driving all this laid down somewhat while we were ruminating, and between that, the new course, and being out of the outrushing bay current, things were settled enough for her to go back below and get some shut-eye, a little after nine. We still changed the watch at 0300, so she got shorted an hour.

Things got progressively better through the night, and we've had a mostly comfortable, if not stellar cruise. It's taken us a little more than a day to go from Hampton Roads to the NJ coast, a trip that takes us a minimum of a week on the inside via Chesapeake and Delaware bays. And we're happy to be out of the region, given how the reopening seems to be headed there.


I had to slow and change course for this tanker to keep a 1nm separation.

It has been a very quiet cruise, and we've mostly been alone. Shipping is down. Pleasure cruising is down. Cruise ships are idle. Ferries are down. It's the emptiest we've ever seen. I did have to dodge a sailboat mid-watch, presumably under sail alone, but with his anchor light on. From a distance I first figured it to be a very large power vessel. I would have said something to him on the radio, but I did not want to wake the off watch, and many sailboats never answer the radio anyway.

Today I had to steer a couple of miles out of the way to dodge an enormous tanker inbound to Delaware Bay. I could not understand why he kept aiming for the very center of the traffic separation scheme, making me alter course even further, until almost the meeting point, where I realized he literally had to steer around a flotilla of center consoles, fishing in the middle of a traffic lane. Many small-boat skippers are clueless.


Atlantic city behind us in the haze, just after sunset.

This was our first overnight passage since Angel left us, and I really felt her absence alone on watch. Not that she spent much time with me in the pilothouse, unless it was to complain about sea conditions, but she'd make an appearance every now and then, or I would hear her moving around, and it was part of my routine to check on her. I miss her very much.

We've had an average of a half knot push for most of the trip, except for an hour or two coming out of the Chesapeake where we had a knot against us. We never count on such a push, so now we're early, and I've dropped the throttle, turning just 1400rpm but still doing 6.2 knots. The plotter has us in Gravesend bay, our usual arrival point, at 10:30, giving me just enough time to take the conn before Ambrose Channel. Due to the storm, we may continue right past the bay and up the Hudson if we feel up to it in the morning.