Chesapeake City MD (2013-10-31)

N39° 31.632', W75° 48.671'

Tonight finds us securely tied up at the Chesapeake City town docks.  We'll stay here for a couple days waiting for the weather to settle a bit on the Chesapeake Bay.

Yesterday morning we stopped at Utches marina to refill our fuel tanks before heading through the Cape May canal to the Delaware Bay.  We had waited in Cape May for a couple days for the conditions on the Delaware Bay to improve (starting to sound like a theme... :-)).

Delaware Bay was calm most of the way up.  The only issue we had was with the rain and misty conditions, which made it a challenge dodging the many crab pots and fishing boats darting about the bay.

It was getting on past 1700 when we reached the head of the bay, so we decided to anchor east of Delaware City, near the entrance to the C&D Canal.  It was a peaceful looking anchorage, but a number of large ships heading up the Delaware River passed our anchorage and gave us a rolly night.

This morning dawned quite foggy, but the sun coming up provided a nice photo op for one of the sailboats sharing the anchorage with us.

Sailboat sunrise

We left the anchorage just after high tide, which ended up being the right time to travel westward through the C&D Canal, where tidal currents can make a big difference in speed.  We were getting between 1.5 and 2.0 knots of boost from the tide.

We soon found ourselves at Chesapeake City.  We were hoping for a spot on the town free dock, and if that was full we were prepared to anchor in the city basin.  Luckily there was a spot available for us, so we tied up at the floating dock.

Chesapeake City town dock

After getting ourselves settled we decided to take a walk around town.  Chesapeake City is a very picturesque little town, with a motto I can relate to.

Beautiful old houses

A motto I can identify with

They do however have some odd entertainment ideas...

Not sure what to make of this event...

After our walk we got settled back on the boat to relax for the evening.

One of the things we had been concerned about was meeting one of the huge cargo ships that ply these waters while we were transiting the canal.  The only thing we met while travelling here was a large tug pushing a barge.  Late this evening though we caught sight of this behemoth cruising by the city basin.  I wouldn't want to meet this thing in the canal, day or night. 

Impressive traffic on the C&D Canal

There's currently another small craft advisory out on the Chesapeake, and poor conditions will be continuing through Friday.  Saturday is forecasted to be favourable, so we'll wait until then to begin our southward trek down the Chesapeake.