Passage to Cape May and beyond

Saturday, Oct 2
We left this morning about 8am after Phil woke me at 730am saying that the weather window is closing, we should have left last night.  Great!  So I quickly got dressed and we were off.  We had a current, so it was difficult to get Changes bow off the dock and we almost hit a powerboat, but I turned the wheel left, to spin the boat and we were ok with a foot to spare.  We motored down the Hudson River past Ellis Island and then the Statue of Liberty.  I was glad that the sun was behind our backs so it was good for taking photos.  There were many tugs and commercial boats in the channel and we move so we were just right and outside of the channel.

It's sunny with no clouds in the skies, but not very warm at max 62F in the shade and 65 in the sun.  The winds have been lighter than we had hoped for at 4-9 knots earlier in the day, but they are starting to clock around to be 90 - 100 degrees from port (left). Now that we are in the Atlantic Ocean, we have about 3ft swells that are far apart, especially compared to the swells on Lake Erie.   We are keeping our course about 1 nm off the coast, so we're close enough to see the buildings, but not close enough to get a lot of detail.  We started watches at 2pm with me being up first.  We will rotate 2 hr on and 4 hrs off.   About 1 hr into my watch, the winds finally reached 10-11 knots - long enough for me to let out the jib as we had the main sail up since early on.  Of course the winds dropped, so we have been motor sailing, but the sails do give us a lift on our speed.  According to the GPS we are expecting to get in the Cape May, NJ area about 8am tomorrow morning give or take and near the end of Phil's watch.  We are probably not going to stop there but continue on.  The winds tonight are forecasted to be from the NE 9-12 knots increasing to 14-17 knots, which isn't too bad and clear skies.  We will be in the Delaware bay with they get in the 21-25knot range and we'll be in more protected water with the waves maxing at 3 feet.  The rain is suppose to start tomorrow sometimes and continue through Wednesday night.

We  have been having to run the bilge pump frequently from water getting into the engine room.  Today Phil emptied most of the sail locker and tightened up the stuffing box, which is around the propeller shaft and prevents water from coming in around the shaft. 

While we were still in protected waters, I made sandwiches for lunch so they were available whenever someone wanted to eat.  We will be having chili for supper and no one wants me to make anything more to go along with it.  Can you imagine???

I will push the OK button on the Spot GPS when we get to our stopping point which is the C&D Canal, but don't be surprised if it's later tomorrow afternoon.  It's about 45-50nm from Cape May to the C&D Canal and we base our ETA on 6 knot/hr. How fast we go also depends on whether the tides or with us or against us.