Good Judgement Comes From Experience...

Experience comes from bad judgement.  This is a truism.  Today, I gained good judgement in bucket loads.

My trip to Manhasset Bay was spectacular!  Wind on the beam, jib and jigger and flying along at 7 knots!  Beautiful day. 

I met, over the radio, Matt and Kim of Orca, a 48 ft ketch and it was the first contact from having the AIS - it is really something!  They continued on to City Island, knowing we'd meet in the morning for the tides.

 I arrived, got fuel, and settled down on a Manhasset Bay Yacht Club mooring arranged for me by my friend, former Commodore, Dan Brown.  What a guy!  Sadly, we couldn't connect.  On the way back, then.

Friday morning I woke up at 4:30 to make the East River currents in my favor out the Verrazzano Narrows and, in theory on to Sandy Hook to wait for weather.  But the reports weren't good.  So with help from my friend, Laura, I decided it was the day to go down the coast to Cape May to miss some awful weather.

Off I went - apparently Orca and another boat, Reverie, were behind me.  It took Orca until Atlantic City to pass.  Most of the trip was uneventful.  Sunny day, clear night, low winds, small seas.  Pelican was running well.  Unfortunately sailing wasn't an option.  But I got to listen to my podcasts, so there's that.

This trip was interesting for another reason:  contact with the outside world.  There was no place without service for phone or internet.  Facebook, sadly, was my watch mate in the dark hours of the night.  That's new, and maybe a little disturbing.

I arrived at Cape May Inlet at 2:30am - the wind was out of the south west so the entrance was pretty straight forward.  Note to others following in the night: The jetties stick out some distance from the lights marking their ends.  Give them a couple of hundred feet of berth.

The range lights at the head of the entrance are really helpful. Pay attention to them.

It took me about an hour to get through the canal.  It's not long but at night hard to see the marks and know the way.  Chart plotters are the cat's meow.  I would not have attempted the traverse without them. Even if it's only an app on your phone.  I recommend MX Mariner for Android.  It also connects to Active Captain.  You can also use Open CPN which could, in theory, connect to your electronics and do your autopiloting.  But that's another story.

As I exited the canal at the west end around 3:30, the wind was about 12 to 15 on the nose going up Delaware bay.  Not bad.  But by 4:30, it was `18-25, and by 5:00 gusting higher.  The waves were steep and short, perhaps 2-4 feet.  Very uncomfortable but completely do-able.  Pelican is pretty strong.

But then the engine started to sputter.  Then it wouldn't keep headway. So I unfurled the jib and fell off thinking I could sail to a shoal of 9-15 feet, drop the anchor, do the repairs, and be on my way.  This is where the bad judgement comes in.  You can't reasonably anchor in 2-4 foot seas, and worse, the bottom is hard.  Even an 80lb anchor and chain won't hold or grip, although it did slow me down some. 

Even with snubbers, the windlass took a real beating.  It cracked the fiberglass it's mounted on.  Now, I had to get the anchor up with little or no strain on the windlass. 

I got the engine to idle and let it bring me up to the anchor.  With patience, a great deal of swearing, and a lot of stress I got it up.  Now with hardly an engine I decided to retreat.  This was what should have been done first given the conditions.

When the poop hits the fan, go back.  Unless it's safe to stop.  Now I know the limits. 

It was a brilliant downwind sail back to the Cape May Canal - in fact I sailed halfway through it, only taking the sail in when a bridge was I was approaching a bridge.  Fortunately in the calm, the motor worked again and I got into Utsch's Marina safe and sound around 9:00am. 

Here's something:  They remembered me from my passage with Dan and had a gift bag for me.  That was very nice.  And they didn't laugh at my, um, docking.

As I came in, I got hailed by Reverie, with Donna and Ken, asking how I liked the marina.  They had anchored in the canal and were having trouble holding.  A little while later, they made a reservation and now we're off to dinner!

Yay!

Anyway.  fuel filters changed, new fuel pump installed.  Engine runs.  Let's see what happens.