Today was a “motor-sail” day for 13 hours against wind and current a lot of the time….not the pleasant experience of yesterday’s great sail. Anyway, by turning north to come up Delaware Bay we saved 120 miles in getting to Annapolis ….so we readily accepted the day of burning fuel.

Enjoyed the walk down the Atlantic City Boardwalk last evening after dinner on-board Sea Mist. We walked all the way from Showboat at one end to Tropicana at the other end of the Boardwalk/Casino strip…..and never spent a nickel so that was novel for me being around Casinos. Tropicana is definitely the hopping spot; most of the other Casinos seemed relatively empty. The taxi drivers said that everything is way down for business for a year now with the bad economy.

Nice quiet anchorage here tonight tucked in behind an Island at the side of a busy waterway/thoroughfare….loads of big ships and tug towed/pushed big barges. Really great to have AIS coming through New York harbor a couple of days ago and then much appreciated again today while sharing the channel with the big commercial vessels. Oh….I should probably also mention another “feature” of the anchorage tonight….we are a short 4 miles from a nuclear power plant….came right beside it on the way up the Delaware River just before we got to Reddy Island anchorage….found a small “gate” in a long dike and slipped through to the quiet anchorage behind the dike.  A bit anxcious coming through the dike as we were down to under a meter of water under the keel…great to have another sailor fill us in on local knowledge as we came up the Delaware River together…I never would have found the gate in the dike if someone hadn’t told me. Once I was told, I was then able to zoom in on the right part of the chart and found the day-marked nav aids that are on each end of the narrow opening in the dike.

Tomorrow our day will begin with a 15 mile transit of this canal; someone long ago was really thinking when they commissioned this ”dig”. It will be good to do it in daylight even though I understand it is very well marked for a no-hassel nighttime transit.