Friday, Oct 7th, Offshore NJ coast and Sat, Oct 8th, 2011, Cape May, NJ

  Ken and I organized the boat and I cooked for our long passage.  Katja and Geoff went to town and arrived back just before intended take-off.  We set off at 2:45pm after a lot of the other anchored boats had left.  Ken put out the jacklines and life jackets and we were bundled in warm clothes.  Motoring up Sandy Hook Bay it looked like a perfect day, then we rounded the corner into the Atlantic and huge swells swept towards us, one right after the other, dipping down one, coming up, and then dipping down another.  Needless to say, it was uncomfortable and to go down below made it worse.  That soup never got heated; cold left-overs had to do plus we didn’t feel like eating much anyway.  We had even taken precautions of pressure point bracelets, Motion Eaze behind the ears, and Stugeron 15, an antihistamine I’d picked up in the Bahamas.

  The night wore on, the moon came up, and the lights from the shore kept us company.  Atlantic City lights were visible miles and miles and hours and hours before we came abreast of it.  At one point we heard a loud clunk where we must have hit some flotsam, but nothing seemed amiss.  Finally it was dawn, that pre’mariner’s dawn’ with the first tinges of pink.  We slowed down to arrive at Utsch’s marina near 11am, check-in time. 

  Because the entrance to Utsch’s is so tricky with the large 5 feet tide, I wanted Ken and Geoff to hear the directions and I hailed the marina on VHF channel 9.  It went something like this:  ‘Utsch’s Marina, Utsch’s Marina, come in please.’  ‘This is Utsch’s Marina.’  ‘We are just coming into Cape May from the ocean and could you please repeat the directions on how to get into the marina?’  ‘Certainly, Skipper.  Keep marker 14 on your starboard then turn to port at marker 16, and keep *static static* off the bulkhead.’  ‘I didn’t copy that, could you repeat it?’  ‘Turn to port at marker 14 then keep *static static* off the bulkhead.’  Geoff hailed me and asked if I caught that.  I said I think from what they’d said originally we were to keep within 20 feet of the bulkhead.  Of course we were coming in at low tide and it got real skinny going into the marina and only registered 4 feet at the fuel dock.  We draw 4 ½ feet.  We all managed and finally got into our slips.

  Utsch’s looked like a fishing boat marina with only a few sailboats and the fishing boats would rev up their engines leaving gas fumes in their wake and gut and clean the fish right in the marina.

  I insisted Katja and Geoff try The Lobster House, this huge conglomeration of venues that seats 500 people.  We walked over there around 4pm, ate a great dinner, and then proceeded to walk downtown.  All of Cape May is an historical district.  It has more Victorian houses than anywhere else in the United States, and was the first seaside resort in the US. We saw some amazing houses and estates.