Heading Home Portsmouth VA to Bristol RI June 11 - 16, 2013

Portsmouth VA to Bristol RI via Cape May NJ, June 11- 16

June 11 Bob and I fly to Norfolk VA. Port City taxi, (Helen) picked us up and dropped us at Food Lion to provision while she picked up another passenger.  We arrived  at the boat around 7:15pm, cleaned up, checked oil, all seems good.  Had some wine and went to bed.

June 12 Wed: depart Portsmouth VA at 5:45am, very nice exit from slip and out to channel.  We made it to the outer harbor at 8:45am.  Lots of tankers moving and waiting to come into harbor.  We headed out along shoreline towards Cape May NJ, our destination for Thursday am.  We will wait for predicted storms to pass and hopefully depart sometime Friday for Bristol RI.  There were calm seas to start, little wind, and swells picking up later in day.  It was actually sunny and warm and I had to change into shorts and tank top.  Imagine that.  We are doing 3 hour shifts for this trip, with the stop at Cape May it should work out fine.

During the night lots of thunderstorms came down the Chesapeake.  I got to navigate around them, actually went backwards to get out of way of some nastier ones.  The seas were flat calm and the eerie fog made it seem surreal.  When Bob came back on watch we were back to where we were when he went off watch, but, I had avoided all the nasty cells. 

June 13 Thursday:  We pulled into Cape May around 10am.  We were promptly stopped by the coast guard and boarded. We had all our documentation, required safety gear and passed the inspection. Welcome to NJ.

We then pulled into the South Jersey Marina tucked way down the end of Cape May Harbor and tied up to the fuel dock for 100 gallons of diesel, and filled up the water tanks.  After talking with the marina they were able to put us on a long dock for the night.  Getting to the other side of the dock was tricky because of an incoming tide pushing you towards slips opposite the dock. Bob brought us around and maneuvered us along side the dock, but not without some interesting rope handling by the dock master, he almost got pulled in. 

We took showers, took a nap, did laundry and when we got up there was a 47’ Swan behind us with three men aboard, Eric, Roger, and Collin.  Bob had struck up a conversation with them and we had some interesting and fun exchanges.  Eric was very interested in having me meet his wife when we get back to Bristol.  We may try to hook up with them over the July 4th weekend in Nantucket. 

We went out to dinner at the lobster house, mediocre at best and headed back to boat for some much needed sleep.  It had already been raining on and off and the wind was picking up. The worst part of the storm seem to go around us and we escaped with little excitement.  

Friday June 14 We had breakfast on board while most of the storm cleared.  Hawk, the swan behind us was going out and would radio us back with the conditions.  

We moved off the dock at noon and anchored in the harbor close to the inlet so we could exit as soon as possible. 

Hawk called us and said conditions were good, big rollers but very manageable.  So we headed out and had a good ride until we got close to Atlantic city where more thunderstorms developed. Atlantic city lit up the sky, it was quite a sight, and to top it off there were fireworks over the city. 

During the day we could see Hawk ahead of us in the distance.  We could see their running lights once in a while at night.  Through the night we motored sailed and made pretty good time. 

Sat June 15: morning finds us near long Island sound, we tried to go straight across but it got a bit too sloppy so we stayed closer in to shore.  As we cruised though the day we spotted Hawk with a spinnaker up but now well behind us.  They were not motor sailing. 

As we passed Block Island around 10pm we decided to keep going and to anchor in Newport or potter cove.  There we several tankers waiting and starting to move, and tugs pushing and pulling barges coming out of Narragansett bay. By the time we got to Newport it was 1am, we were tired and I was not comfortable trying to anchor in a dark harbor with lots of boats.  So with some discussion that didn’t go well, we headed over to potter cove and anchored twice and settled in for the rest of the night.  We had a little chat and then went to bed. DO NOT DO THIS WHEN YOU ARE TIRED.

Sunday June 16.  It was a quiet night and good to get some sleep so the morning was relaxed.  We pulled anchor and headed up river with the tide to Bristol.  Along the way the Newport races had begun and we did some interesting maneuvering to get out of the way.  Bob was not happy about the placement of the racing course across the entire bay.   We  made it to Bristol Yacht club and were guided to Dwight’s mooring.  The wind had picked up as we unloaded as much as possible onto the launch.  At least the boat is back in New England.  And now to play musical moorings and set up work on the boat.  We will sail for fun the july 4th weekend and then do the work on the boat.