Cape May, NJ to Hampton, Virginia

Sunday, Oct 10


After a nice afternoon of visiting we returned to the boat. Thank you again Doug and Jackie for your hospitality, laundry and the car!

In the evening we met another cruiser, Roger from JoHee, who is traveling with his cat, Kitty. He invited us over to his boat to share the bottle of blueberry wine that the marina provides. We are looking forward to reading Kitty’s blog and getting the cat’s eye view of cruising.

Monday, Oct 11th.

We had to leave the dock by 11:00, so we anchored by the Coast Guard Base in Cape May harbor and spent a relaxing afternoon resting up as we are going to head straight for Norfolk or Hampton Virginia tomorrow which will be about a 30 hour run.

Tuesday, Oct 12th, and Wednesday, Oct 13th

At midnight flashes of lightning woke us up. When the wind started to pick up we got up to check on the anchor. Our anchor was fine but through the strobe light of the lightning we could see two boats dragging down on us, one to port and one to starboard. The wind was over 30 knots, gusting higher, and the rain was coming in sideways. The boat to starboard missed us by about 15 feet. We are still not sure how the one to port missed our anchor. We were both on deck with the engine running. Luckily both boats were able to get under control before they hit the ruins of the old dock behind us. It was pretty exciting for a few minutes. By 12:30 the storm had passed, everyone was re-anchored, and the rest of the night was peaceful.

We headed out of the Cape May inlet at 5:15 a.m. for an overnight trip to Hampton, Virginia. All day and most of the night the wind was very light and the seas were calm, so we motor sailed (okay, we motored and put the sails up just for the sake of having them up). Around 3:00 in the morning the wind came up, and by the time we got into the Chesapeake in the dark the wind was 15-20 knots and the seas were up. The waves are very steep and square in the Chesapeake. We were very happy to tie up to the Hampton Public Pier around 8:30 a.m., especially since most of the the other boats on the dock are cruisers headed for the Bahamas.