We left the 79th Street Marina about 8 am Tuesday and caught the ebbing tide which gave us a 2 knot boost thru New York Harbor.  The harbor had a lot of traffic especially water taxis.  We stayed out of the shipping lanes and saw at least 12 large freighters apparently moving up the Jersey side of the harbor.  We passed Ellis Island (where my grand parents entered the USA) and The Statue of Liberty.  Certainly a majestic sight in the harbor.  As we neared the freighters, we saw that they were anchored one behind the other.  Must have been some problem with the traffic in the harbor.  This made it easy for Island Time as we needed to cross the shipping channel to get to the Jersey coast.  Shortly after going under the Verazano Narrows bridge, we crossed west to the Jersey shoreline.  When Sandy Hook was abeam, we were out of most of the ship traffic and since it was blowing about 15 knots from the north, we finally got to sail. The wind lasted for about 3 hrs and then died to less than 5 knots which is not enough wind to move Island Time. 

We motored down the coast all afternoon and at sunset, we were 3 miles west of Manasquan inlet, which is the last harbor accessible to Island Time until Atlantic City.  We chose to continue thru the night and go to either the C&D Canal or Cape May.  At sun up we were just outside Cape May and decided we were too tired to continue.  We took about 2-3 hour watches with the off watch catnapping in the cockpit so we did not get much sleep.  This was our first nite sail on Island Time and we were both nervous and excited.  We saw many tugs with tows (two whites over the red or green) which stayed outside the sea bouys while we were inside so there were no conflicts thankfully.  A few sailboats passed us as we slowed down not to reach Cape May before dawn.

After anchoring in Cape May harbor, we showered and thought we would get some sleep.  We still had too much adrenaline for sleep so we took a swing around the harbor took scope out the bridge over the Cape May Canal to see if we felt comfortable going under it.  Island Times mast is 54 ft 3 inches above the waterline.  We have lights, VHF antenna, and wind indicators above that add another 1.5 feet to that height.  The marker board at the bridge showed a little over 56 feet at low tide.  Since we planned on leaving on Saturday, the low tide was at 1 am.  This meant that we would have to try to get under the bridge in the dark.  We decided to go around the bottom of the Cape rather than risk damaging Island Time’s mast.

There are many shoals at the outside of Cape May and the course we plotted around them would add several miles to our trip.  Fortunately, we met Irv and Marsha, experienced cruisers on a boat called Hangout, who hearing of our planned route told us to follow them thru the inside passage close to shore.  Since their boat draws 5.5 ft and Island Time draws 4.6 ft, we followed them knowing if they didn’t run aground, we would not.  We decided to follow them and left Cape May at 9 am Saturday morning. 

Thursday saw a front move thru with north winds.  As we would be going up the Delaware Bay on a flood tide, the wind and waves would be opposite which makes for large, short period waves on the Delaware Bay.  We stayed put on Island Time just loafing.  Friday, we went to shore and explored Cape May.  It is a quaint town with lots of Victorian houses.  We walked from the marina area to downtown (about 2 miles) thru a nice old neighborhood.  Unfortunately, the downtown area was a typical tourist town with tee shirt and souvenir shops.  Not very interesting. 

After lunch at a very nice restaurant on the waterfront, we stopped by to visit with Jack and Karen on White Knight, an Island Packet 35 anchored in the harbor.  They could fit under the bridge and were leaving at 3 am to catch the flood tide up the bay.  After a nice chat with them, we headed back to Island Time.  Enroute, we passed Octopus a fellow club member at MBBC.  No one was aboard at that time.  I dropped Genie off at Island Time and went for ice and beer at a nearby marina.  When I returned, Genie told me that Benoit from Octopus had stopped by.  I also noticed a new boat anchored next to us was Spellbound with a home port of Charlotte, Vermont.  I went to visit Benoit and had a good chat and cold beer with him.  On my return, Genie was talking to Jud and Paige Guertin from Spellbound.  They are also going to Annapolis to exhibit their turncouple product at the show.  We met them several years ago in Vermont.  This is a small world.

We left Cape May at 9 am Saturday morning following Hangout around the cape.  The water did not go below 10 feet deep during this transit.  We continued up the Delaware Bay, a very boring stretch of water and anchored at the Cohansey River for the night.  We saw several freighters along the way, but we stayed out of the channel so the passage was easy.