Familiar Territory and Friends

Zooming through familiar territory

Down the Delaware – with a second stop in Delaware City Marina – where we reconnected with Dan and Jody via Thanks Dad’s John and Sue.  This is a story of strange coincidence.  Last year when we passed through Chesapeake City, Dan and Jody on Water Hog jumped out of their boat to grab our lines.  We ended up spending nearly a week traveling down the bay, a weather delay in Cape May and up to NYC with them.  Jody and Dan are a fun couple who had just returned from the Bahamas and generously shared tips and destinations for our future travel there.  We also learned about the DC TV we later bought from seeing theirs.  Most good mariners are familiar with their boats, but Water Hog is unique since Dan built it himself – it is beautiful and he knows every inch and system from the inside out – literally. When we left them last year the plan was for them to go back to work and boat closer to home on the east coast for a while. We hoped to see them on our down east loop in the future.  Imagine our surprise when we heard from our friends on Thanks Dad that they had met Water Hog in – Chesapeake City – the night before and could hear them calling us on the radio as we approached Delaware City! I immediately got Water Hog on the radio and we made plans to get together in Cape May which we did after a long day running down the bay – fortunately in fairly calm seas with favoring currents and winds. We dinked over to Miss Chris marina where Dan and Jody, now with a kitty and friend Craig, were docked.  It was delightful to catch up and very ironic that our paths again crossed in the same territory as last year.  Once again we ended up traveling up the Atlantic together – well we left early and they left late but we arrived together because they have speed while we don’t – anchoring again in Barnegat Bay on the way. It was pure torture for Steve to see their pictures of the lobster and fish caught in the Bahamas, but we did take notes for next spring on where to go and what to do i.e. good fishing spots. 

Even taking Monday off, this was a big mileage week for us – over 300 meant  long days – not our usual 5 to 6 hours of cruising.  But we now sit in Kingston, NY a little over half way up the Hudson to our Eire Canal goal.  We made a few stops along the way – but cruised a few extra hours since the tides were not in our favor.  The Hudson is known as the river that flows both ways since it is subject to tidal currents as well as river currents.  These can be significant for a slow boat like ours – running with the tide we got up to 10+ mph and against below 4 at one point.  The side benefit was a slow ride through scenic NYC – on a day with low clouds but interesting light. Further up the weather cleared and we had sun for our salute to West Point on Memorial Day weekend.  We stopped again at Croton-on-Hudson and took time for a walk in the park before leaving (to hopefully catch a better tide). At the Croton Point Nature center we met John, the naturalist, who is an avid artifact collector so we spent some time discussing arrowheads and other rocks we have both collected. We will be planning to visit again on our way south to share some of our finds since he doesn't have any Arabian specimens in his collection – a problem we can fix!

 Pete Seeger's Clearwater - replica to support a cleaner river