After a month and a half in the Chesapeake we finally left for greener pastures. We made our transit out through the north end of the Chesapeake via the Chesapeake / Delaware (C&D) Canal. Our first canal….I wonder if this is what the Panama one will be like. :):) It was actually a very small waterway with houses lining both sides and a lot of bridges to go under. Even though I know that the bridges are 140 ft and we’re only 75 ft it still makes me nervous every time we go under one.

Stanley and I as we head down the C&D

We made it to Delaware around 3pm and docked at a marina along the old C&D canal which seemed to us like nothing more than a glorified irrigation ditch! Being in a new state we were eager to check out Delaware City so we leashed up Stanley and went to visit the town. There was not much going on and the town was quiet but we got some appetizers at Crabby Dicks. While there we were trying to think of what Delaware is known for and could not think of a thing… Our waitress at the restaurant asked where we were from and when we said San Francisco she looked at us in amazement and asked “Why would you come here?!?!”. LOL. I thought it was not so bad. A fine stop for one night.

The water front in Delaware City.

We wanted to get an early start the next morning to take advantage of favorable currents in Delaware Bay as we made our way to New Jersey!! (I couldn’t wait to get to New Jersey to see all the awesome hair poofs that I’m sure every resident there wears 🙂 An early start meant 4am so we left our irrigation ditch in darkness.

Yes, we left at 4am!

Leaving before sunrise meant we got to see sun rise over the Delaware Bay. We loved the way that the colors really lit up the nuclear power plant. As Ryan would say…..Glorious.  🙂

Beautiful sunrise?

We did well with our timing and had a very smooth ride through the Bay arriving in Cape May, New Jersey around 4pm. The anchorage was not really close to anything so we took Stanley ashore and went back to the boat. We saw some folks (Jim and Judy) we’d met in Delaware City pull in so we went over to have a drink and a chat with them. After a couple fun hours of shooting the breeze we headed back home again for dinner. Once home we discovered that our water tanks which we had filled in Delaware City were empty! Uh oh! We finally realized that it was because someone (Stanley?) left the deck hose on and drained the entire 120 gallons of water over the day. Yikes. Luckily we had 15 gallons in jugs on the deck and were headed to a marina the next day.

We breezed through the rest of New Jersey, stopping for a few days in Atlantic City (more on that later), then heading to Mannasquan and finally Sandy Hook.

Mannasquan seemed to be a nice place. We were there only one evening and left early the next day but the town seemed cute and there was a nice beach with some cool restaurants.  We also saw a pretty amazing sunset.

Chilling at sunset.

We had seen some of the effects of Hurricane Sandy in Atlantic City, but it was really obvious in Sandy Hook. We anchored outside one of the marinas that had been completely destroyed and was in the process of being rebuilt. A lot of the boats in the yard also looked like they had sustained a lot of damage, and they were the lucky ones who didn’t sink outright.

A week after leaving the Chesapeake, we are ready to keep moving and make our way up to New York.