Departing for Cape May at 5 AM???

June 15

Delaware City is a cool little town. Not even a grocery store. Everything is a short busride away.

Part of the original C & D canal dug by hand in the early 1800’s

Our home for the past 3 nights.

The owner Tim of Delaware City Marina. Tim holds a briefing every day at 4 regarding travel and weather on the Delaware Bay. This is a treacherous area with regard to wind and wave action.

At a point where the bay widens, with no warning, waves will all of a sudden reach 7 – 10 feet! Tim has saved a LOT of bacon over the years. Our destination is where the grass icon under the cloud on the right side of the photo.

Low tide at the entry to the Delaware City Marina. It will look like this at 5 AM.

These fine floks are Carey and Kari Garber on Carried Away. Spelled different but pronounced the same. When you holler at one of ’em they both answer. Funny as hell!

Beer O’clock at Crabby Dick’s. At this point I will interject a story. In my neverending quest for good karma I got bit in the behind. When we arrived at our marina a dock hand by the name of Charley #1 was there on the dock and helped us tie up. He got the $5 tip. When we were close to being finished dock hand Charley #2 came by to see if he could help. Really nice guy. He got $0 tip cuz we were finished tying up. While Debbie and I were enjoying ourselves at the Crabby Dick’s bar, Charley #2 was there at the bar drinking a beer. Felt bad that I did not pump him up when we arrived so I whispered to the bartender to put Charley #2’s beers on my check. Figured he had had a few. Got the check. He had 9 beers. You are correct, he did not get a $5 tip. He got $33 worth of beer instead…when am I gonna learn?

This place has so many double entendre’s…

This is Grumpy, a 26′ go fast C Dory owned, captained and single handed by 82 year old John Hauck doin’ the Loop. A lot faster than we are.

We left the dock at 5:17 this morning. No sign of the sun at that time. However, by the time we got out of the marina and got on the bay we were greeted with this.

Here’s an Idea left just before us and Deb got off a great shot of them leaving the marina.

Carried Away catchin’ up to us. They were the couple that got beat up out on the bay a few days ago so they lit the fires and kicked the tires and raced ahead. Must have been going 23+ MPH.

We just finished binge watching Chernobyl last night. Saw this before full daylight. Yep, nuclear power plant.

Much larger than this photo suggests.

Once we got off the Delaware Bay we were on a canal that brought us into the Canyon Club Marina. This is a derelict RR swing bridge.

So you are probably asking yourself, why the heck did Debbie and Jerry get up at 4:15 for a 5 AM departure???

At 5 AM the winds were less than 5 MPH, but grew to 10 with gusts of 15. Doable.

Now, 30 MPH winds = REALLY BIG WAVES!!!

This is what it’s like in a PROTECTED marina at 3 in the afternoon…White caps outside the breakwater.

Our navigation equipment has an odometer. Who knew! This equipment was installed just before we started the Loop.

I had also installed new hour meters since the originals quit working. At times we have run as fast as 20 MPH. More often we are running much slower. The odometer and hour meter suggest we are running at an average speed of 8.5 MPH.

Can you use the word “speed” and “8.5 MPH” in the same sentence???

Did not sleep much last night as todays journey was eating away at me. Was pretty beat when we got here at 9:30 this morning. Transom was coated with soot from the diesel engines so we washed that off. Boat was covered with salt from the sea spray, so we washed that off. And THEN I changed the oil in the main engines. Ten gallons, thank you very much. Oh yes, let’s not forget those $75 oil filters that required changing as well.

Every couple of oil changes we send oil samples to Wayne Supply in Louisville. They are the local Caterpillar dealer. Those readers from Louisville might remember the old Miles Park where trotters raced. That piece of geography is now the Wayne Supply campus. Really cool place. Big earth moving machines everywhere.

Diesel engines are so darn expensive. A rebuild of a 6 cylinder diesel engine will set you back around $30,000. Lot of coin. BUT they will run for 20,000 hours if well cared for. Moral of the story is , ya take care of your engines and they will take care of you.

It is now 4PM. I’m beat.