11/10/2007, Cape May

Today we head to Cape May, NJ where sister Joanne and brother-in-law Andy are planning to come visit the boat. Joanne has seen Leander and spent a good amount of time on board while explaining to us what we would do in case one of us got something stuck in an eye or how we would suture if we needed to back when we were in Marblehead. Thank you again Joanne! But Andy has not yet been on board and has been bombarding Joanne with questions about the mechanics of our boat, so we get to share Leander with them tonight.

After our troubles this morning, sailing to Cape May was without trouble for most of the way. Paul called a number of marinas in the area and after a couple of unsuccessful calls, one of the guys hung up saying “whatever”, he found us a nice T-dock at Canyon Clup Marina thanks to Monty.
Since our chartplotter’s coverage area ended around Atlantic City, we cannot use it for locating our exact position with regards to our surroundings. This is a challenge as we come into harbors with markers that get moved around because of shoaling and hurricanes. In the absence of our chartplotter’s assistance, we plotted our course into Canyon Club marking the turns and changes of course based on the buoys that mark the channel. We were to follow the channel until we saw red buoy #12 and then turn right. We did that all right, except the water under our keel kept getting lower and lower as we turned. Hmm, not entirely what was supposed to happen. We went back out to the channel and called Monty to make sure that we were coming in the right place, confirmed the location of the Marina and headed in. After we safely docked the boat, we met Monty in person and thanked him for being such nice company all day. We also found out from Monty that they had re-marked the channel and that the right-hand turn that we were to make was to happen after red #16, not 12! Good thing they update the charts!

Joanne and Andy came to meet us shortly after our arrival and were nice enough to take us to a West Marine where we purchased a chart chip for the rest of the coast, and some more things that we needed. We then went to a spectacular dinner at the local hotspot, Lobster House. It was wonderful sharing great food with Joanne and Andy, chatting all night long. Thanks again for making the three hour trip down to see us off!