This morning we got up at 6 AM and got ourselves a quick breakfast and we were on our way out of Baltimore harbor and headed north toward the C & D Canal. As we neared the tallest bridge out of Baltimore we found the tall ship Libertad anchored and waiting for the tide to go out some more as there masts were so tall they could not clear the bridge. We figured the journey for the day was about 70-80 miles but we were able to take a heading across the bay and not follow the commercial channel. We were running at about 13 knots until we started to get near the part of the bay where it narrows and we got hit by an adverse tidal current which put up some pretty heavy chop against the Southeast wind behind us and for a long time we were going through some pretty heavy two feet or better stuff until we rounded the corner and then it got a little better going. The shoreline was much wooded and the lawns and pastures were looking like they were very well manicured and we also saw some beautiful homes as usual on the side of the bay. We met and passed other trawlers and small boats but for a canal which is the busiest canal next to the Panama we never saw a ship the whole trip. We did see a couple more lighthouses in the center of the bay. We are tied up tonight at the Delaware City Marina off of the C & D canal in Delaware City, Delaware at the entrance to Delaware Bay. If our weather holds tomorrow we are going to try to make it to Cape May, New Jersey where we will reenter the Intracoastal Waterway along the New Jersey coast. This should take about two or three days as we are nearing the point where our motor needs to be serviced again. This means we have been running for about two hundred hours since we started out in Crystal River, Florida. We are in a channel which is a shortcut from the Canal to the bay and the bugs and the tidal current are very fierce. The bugs are the famous no-see-ums that we are finding exist virtually everywhere. There is a brand new sportfisherman tied behind us at the pier which is one long dock along this channel with barely enough room to turn around in. The dockmaster has some beautiful peonies growing out back but the bugs are too bad for me to go get a photo of them.
This is not much news but the pace will slow down a little soon. Our current dilemma with the water leak just won’t end. We now have placed sponges in the bilge and just wring them out after our days run. The blister spot that was leaking was dry at the end of the days run. We now are wondering that since one of our sponges was near a piece of equipment that is fastened to the inside of the bottom of the boat is the culprit and we may have one or more if this is true. We dried out the area around them and will check there tomorrow while we are running. Maybe the screws are going through the bottom of the boat and if so we will take them out and reinsert them filled with sealant compound and hope that will stop it. We are determined to find the leak.
Please read and send gas money, as fuel went to 3.99 a gallon here. We are only kidding.At the rate the people who buy 500-600 gallons at a time and really getting hit hard. It might slow the traffic on the waterway during the upcoming holiday
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