Victorian Day Out

Serafina
Rob & Sarah Bell
Fri 22 Jun 2012 20:00
Thursday & Friday - 21st & 22nd June

The Coastguard chorusing started at 0500 ours according to Rob, but not loud enough to disturb me (!), followed by reveille and saluting to the Stars & Stripes at 0800. In fact the Coastguard recruits seem to be put through at least three sessions of PT to singing each day - obviously this regime is something that lapses once in post, judging by some of the less than sylph like figures we have met on our travels.

We dinghied into Utsch's Marina, a very well run family concern that actually welcomes dinghies in from the anchorages. We discovered that there is no local Raymarine agent so will have to continue with the boat's VHF on channel 16 and the hand-held on 13.

Note to self and anyone following on: if the marina offers bikes for hire there is probably a market from them and leap at this opportunity. We opted to walk the mile (I don't think so, more like 2) into town in 35 degrees and 90% humidity with little shade.

The residents are proud of the fact that Cape May is an island, by dint of the canal dug in 1944 to create a safe passage for ships between the ICW north from here and the Delaware River, but the architecture really is impressive and we happily wandered round admiring and photographing the locale. The main street quite definitely reminds you that you are in a holiday resort with seaside accoutrements and souvenir shops galore. And best of all a Ben and Jerry's, yes with the coffee ice cream (and the possibility of 35 different toppings.... Its a bit like a coffee shop, you would have to know what to ask for as there isn't time to gaze around). Sadly Rob had not paced himself at lunch to allow for this treat so he declined.

We had a very nice lunch in an air-conditioned hotel called Mad Batter, in one of these lovely Victorian houses. I had even been able to nip upstairs and visit the cupola for the view. The interior has been developed to enhance its origins, keeping the incredibly narrow halls etc - not sure how they will have influenced health and safety round that one. The detailing on the houses is spectacular: they all have very intricate woodwork and balconies, all painted in at least four colours (a decorator's goldmine) with striped blinds to match. Some of the colour schemes are very tasteful and unusual, and some of them are downright sickly or gaudy.

We plodded back visiting a really dinky (as in the toy) old fire-engine in its own garage built like a tiny church alongside the present day station; meeting our anchorage neighbours in the supermarket and reaching the marina at meltdown point. At this point Rob got into an hour's discussion with the man running the bait and tackle shop there, which resulted in replacing our broken reel and a few more vital pieces of fishing kit. I settled down in front of three fans and played Freecell on my iPad - these were desperate times!

We have been watching the weather forecasts and we are due rain and thunderstorms on Friday night (which will break this humid spell) and also on Sunday night. The best time to leave would be Tuesday for a reasonable sail albeit to windward, but we have been contacted by Craig and Karene on Il Sogno inviting us to join them where they are anchored in Rhode Island, a hockey friend of Rob's, Dave Enstone and his wife live nearby and there is a visit to my uncle's to fit in as well - nothing is keeping us here, so we intend to motor up (no wind forecast) over the weekend to Block Island, as just traveling northwards sounds much more fun than sitting here. As I have started doing my navigation planning I have spotted the charts show routes for ships to avoid Right Whales around Cape Cod (these whales will not be startled and are an endangered species as they get driven over and killed) - surely soon we will get our close encounter?

So Friday was spent doing boat jobs, managing to squeeze enough water from the tanks to run the washing machine in anticipation of finally being able to use the watermaker again. The water quality in the Chesapeake Bay has been so murky and green we felt we would be running through pre-filters at a great rate, but we are back to the Atlantic ocean now so feel more confident to make water again.