Fw: Baltimore to Cape May and Washington.
Swiftwing
Tue 5 Oct 2010 15:05
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Baltimore to Cape May including
visit to Washington.
We collected Will and Sarah from Newark Airport at the start of their holiday. Due to their very late arrival on Saturday night we collected them from the Sheraton Hotel, which is close to the airport, on Sunday morning. Great to see them, but we are still a couple of hundred miles away from New York, so they have a fair bit of sailing to do with us in their two week holiday if they wanted to see the 'Big Apple'.  The yacht anchorage in Baltimore Harbour with
Swiftwing in the middle.
Baltimore is a nice city to walk around as it has pedestrian walkways which wind their way through banks, shopping malls and hotels about fifteen feet above the very busy streets. Baltimore is a famous trading city with the result that the town centre surrounds the harbour which is very pretty. The day after Sarah and Will arrived we had a run ashore and visited some of the local attractions. Firstly, we dingied ashore to a very interesting lighthouse which occupies a prominent position next to the concert hall on the harbour front. American lighthouses have a very unique design and were home to whole families for years, even rearing livestock, including hens and a cow in a byre type structure one floor below the living quarters. Ocassionaly the byre would get washed away in a storm by which time the livestock had been moved into the living quarters for safety. (so we are told)  The old Wolf Trap lighthouse, so named because it guarded the hook-like sand bar which trapped HMS Wolf during the War of Independance. We then visited the ships museam on the harbour front which is a number of historic ships moored alongside, no further than 100 yards from our anchorage. First we visited the submarine USS Torsk, which is famous for having fired the last shots of WW2 when it sank two Japanese coastal patrol vessels only hours before the surrender with torpedoes, and later as a training vessel, recording the highest number of dives of any submarine. Something in the region of 1,900 dives.  USS Torsk. Torsk is the Norwegian
name for a fish of the Cod family. The
odd looking boat in the foreground goes around the harbour picking up
rubbish with a wire mesh conveyor belt to the front.
The sailing ship USS Constellation, was the last all-sail warship built by the American Navy and spent most of it's early career off the coast of Africa capturing illegal slave ships, slavery having already been abolished by the British and Americans but not it seems by others. She also spent time carrying famine relief stores to Ireland in the 1840's, trained 60,000 naval cadets and served for over one hundred years.  USS. Constellation. Built 1854 and classed as a
sloop of war.
We decided against a ride on the dragon shaped
paddle boats that liked to escape from their enclosure and come out
to visit us for a chat. Baltimore is famous for having an American
football stadium and the birth place of Basket Ball. It's stadium was only a
couple of blocks away from our anchorage but unfortunately it wasn't the
'football' season.
A train ride on the Merk Line, which is a rush-hour commuting service between Baltimore and Washington, is a great way to see the governing centre of America. Union Station is an amazing place and we picked up a trolleybus which had 19 different tourist stops meaning we could hop on and off it all day wherever we wanted; seemed like a good deal when it was 98 degrees Fahrenheit and we wanted to see as much as possible. We got off the trolley at Capitol hill  Halfway along the walk from Capitol Hill to the
Lincoln Memorial.
 The Lincoln Memorial is absolutely huge in real
life.
 Union Station, Washington.
and walked down the famous avenue to the
Washington Monument and then down to the Lincoln Memorial. We stopped along the
way to visit the Botanical Gardens and the First Nation People's( Indians)
museum. It was an amazing building and thankfully air conditioned We could
really we could have spent all day there.
 An early 'First Nation' Indian reed
boat
We boarded the trolley again grateful for the
open windows and some fast movement movement of air, and headed for Arlington
Cemetery which is an area reserved for the burial of American servicemen, it's
an alarmingly large cemetery. The good thing about taking a tour is that
you see a lot in a short time and you visit areas that you would normally
find difficulty to find. The banter from the driver was quite good as
well. We next walked over to the White House which is a 'have to see' in
Washington. It is actually fairly small compared with Buckingham Palace, in
fact it is positively tiny, couldn't swing a cat and all that..., We were
most taken with the old lady protester who had taken up residence outside the
White House. She has been there for twenty five years and it looked like it
too! Back on the trolley which dropped us back at the station and we
caught the train back to Baltimore having had a great day out, we could have
spent a week there and will go back for a few days when we return to Swiftwing
next year.
 Achamore House, Gigha.
 The White House protestor who has lived here for
25 years.
The following morning we headed back to the Chesapeake for a 35 mile sail
to Bohemian River, a bay which is situated just before the entrance
to the Chesapeake and Delaware Canal. It is very shallow either side of the
dredged channel but we managed to creep into a spot which was about 9 feet deep
and got us sufficiently close to land that we wouldn't get run down by a
super tanker during the night. We all splashed in for a swim and again
another lovely spot to anchor. We had a small yacht with no
lights coast silently past us in the dark, the crew seemed to be
out just enjoying a sail.
The following morning we caught the tide in the C and D Canal and scudded along at 7 to 8 knots so covered the 14 miles through the canal quickly. We then sailed down the Delaware River at between 7 and 9 knots only losing the following tide towards Cape May which guards the entrance to the river. The charts and cruising guide say that the channel into Cape May is only 6 feet deep, our draft is now 6.8 feet, so we opted on the safer option and went outside the Cape to enter from the Atlantic side, It wasn't a bad day, but we had a few threatening black clouds so we were surprised to hear over the VHF radio that the coastguard couldn't go out on a rescue to a boat in distress because of the weather conditions and were advising (A weather Advisory!) boats to go to their nearest harbour and to baton down the hatches and sit tight, also that Atlantic City bridge was closed due to bad weather. Anyway, we took down the sails, started the engine, and had only 4 miles to go to enter Cape May. The sky soon became as black as night and the lightening started with a vengeance and after a short time of steering with the broom handle ( so as not to get electrocuted in a strike) Duggy decided that we should anchor and go down below until it had past. After about 15 minutes the sky cleared and we set off again. It wasn't until later that we heard that the winds in the Delaware had been up to 70 miles an hour and that there had been a lot of boats caught out and considerable structural damage had been caused ashore. We were happy to get into Cape May after what had been a long day. We dropped anchor off a stretch of beach along from the coastguard station. Because the coastal waters are shallow the harbours on the Eastern Seaboard are entered through dredged channels and the towns and anchorages are behind a strip of beach which is usually no higher then 6 feet. It makes for a very flat anchorage but sometimes a rough approach is usually on to a lee shore. We could afford a day off so the following day we decided to visit the town of Cape May as we had been told that it is very pretty. Doody the dinghy was launched and we headed for the fish key in the morning and found a very friendly marina that let us dock for free. Cape May has some lovely architecture and cool leafy lanes, houses painted all sorts of vibrant colours with attractive gardens. It has been the posh beach holiday destination for New Yorkers since
the 1800's, however we decided that there was no way we would pay $5 each for
entry to the gated beaches so after a few hours sightseeing and some home made
ice cream and made our way back to Swiftwing.
 Downtown Cape
May.
There was an old fish quay at the harbour and alongside there
is a sailing ship that had been built specifically to be a restaurant, a
very cool place to watch what is going on in the harbour and a free dock for
Doody, so we had dinner there.
 The fish quay, Cape May.
The next day we headed back out to sea and on towards New York. |