“38:52N 074:57W”

 

We sailed from just outside New York Harbour to about 8 miles from Cape May, a distance of approximately 110 miles. The wind was mainly south west/west south west, so we were quite tight into the wind. 

 

As we approached Cape May there were quite a few fishing boats around. One of them called us up (he was behind us) and asked our intentions. We replied we were continuing on our present heading and would be rounding Cape May.  A short whole late he called again to say that he couldn’t see our running lights only a white light. We told him that we had a trilight at the top of the mast and as he overtook us he should be able to see our port side red light. As he didn’t call again we assume he managed to make sense of our lights.

 

At Cape May there are two ways to round the cape to get into Delaware Bay; go wide to miss all the shoals or pick your way through the shoals and go quite close inshore. We opted to do this by using our chart plotters and constantly watching the depth metre.  We managed to get through but all the way up Delaware Bay there are shoals and shallows unless you keep in the shipping lane.  With four of us on board it was quite straight forward navigating up to an anchorage on the New Jersey Side (right hand side going north). We motored up the bay straight into the wind, a north west force 3.