New York to Chesapeake City, Maryland

We went through the Verrazano Narrows Bridge and found lots of very large vessels in the travel lanes to and from New York until we moved over to travel down the New Jersey coast.
We had a rather uneventful trip down to Manasquan Inlet but had heard that some threatening weather was on the way and figured that the wisest choice was to continue down the New Jersey Intracoastal Waterway. We went right past the expensive fuel docks in Manasquan and Brielle and went through the Point Pleasant Canal.

We started through Barnegat Bay heading for a safe anchorage for the night, but realized that we had misread the cruising guide and ended up detouring down to the anchorage near Barnegat Inlet for the night.

The sunrise the next morning was well worth the extra time and distance!

With bad weather still forecast, we elected to stay inside and head for Brigantine anchorage across from Atlantic City the long way. We went past a rather large "ooops" along the way in the rather thin water.

Although it was quite breezy, the passage was fairly quiet, albeit lumpy in some areas. We got to the anchorage with no real problems.

The Eagle 40 that came in behind us didn't fare quite so well and had to call on Tow Boat US to pull him off the sandbar.

The forecast was still pretty poor, but a trawler named Shangri La, who we had spoken to the night before, convinced us that the last weather window to get up Delaware Bay for the next few days MIGHT be the next day, so we pulled the anchor and followed them up the inside toward Cape May, going by the Trump Towers on our way through.

Instead of going on to the usually lumpy anchorage in Cape May, we stopped at Sunset Lake for the night where they were having a street festival and fireworks later at night.

We left bright and early the next day despite a somewhat questionable forecast, knowing we would be stuck in southern New Jersey (yuck!) for another 3 or 4 days at least if we didn't move. Delaware Bay was misty, windy, and rather miserable for most of the way, but we never had any real problems during the long passage. We DID put the pedal to the metal and used a lot of fuel to get to the Chesapeake and Delaware Canal as quickly as we could. We stopped at a fuel dock in the canal to replace the many gallons we had expended in our successful effort to beat the bad weather.

Our timing was perfect since we pulled into Chesapeake City just as another boat was pulling off the free dock. We pulled in quickly and ran up to the Tap Room Pub for the skipper's traditional crab feast. Then the Admiral went shopping while the skipper walked to the canal museum.
A couple of the coal fired pumps which were used to keep the original canal full of water are still there.
Sesame is happily on the free dock (electricity is $15) for a couple of days while the weather clears on the upper Chesapeake and we can wend our way toward Annapolis. (Shangri La, who left around 4:00 AM to try to beat the weather, called to report that they were being beaten up pretty badly down by the Bay Bridge. We are quite happy that we stayed put!)
After moving for six straight days, we are happy to have a couple of lay days to relax and renew. The skipper is relieved that the "delivery" part of the trip is done and that the "cruising" mode can now commence.

(Sesame is in the center of the picture.)