Tom here to relieve you all from my mother's bounty of drab tales about laundry and food.

We left from Cape May around 8:30 in the morning for, in my opinion, one of the more exciting day sails yet.
The weather was suspiciously warm as shown in the photo, and the wind was blowing a lovely 20kt out of the southwest. Our first bit of excitement for the day was navigating the canal leading into Delaware bay. Due to the two 53,1/2 ft bridges we went under, the navigation turned out to be more of a vertical affair than horizontal, as Nancy's masts stick 52 feet into the air. After just clearing the bridges I remember my mother saying something along the lines of "that's all the adrenalin I need in the morning". This is funny, I'll tell you why.

Shooting out into Deleware Bay we made good time in fairly calm seas until about three in the afternoon when the swell began to grow due to a foul current. We were just begining to get worried about the cold front headed our way when the wake from a passing tanker swamped us like a fire hose fills a martini glass. I was still in bare feet at the time and was pleasantly surprised to find the water all over me to be mostly salt free and not half as cold as I had expected.

Mum was making us admit that she was smart for wearing full foul weather gear and Randy was totally unsurprised as this sort of thing is not that outrageous when compared to our previous luck with water making its way to the top side of the boat.

Continuing up the bay the weather is not getting worse but it is getting uglier. The cold front is getting very dark and close and Randy makes the decision to drop the mainsail. At this point I don't feel the need to ask him why. Mum was good enough to remind me that wearing rain gear in rain is smart so I went and got suited up. With pretty damn good timing. It was around five o'clock when we were hit with a squall that could easily have been mistaken for a train or large truck. The wind was blowing around 50/60knots (100/120kilometers) and the rain was a bit like being continuously shot 50 times a second for the duration of the squall.I had to run forward to retie the main sail down. Upon my return Mom told me "don't do that again or I'll throw up!" and Randy was expertly keeping us nose into the wind so we didn't crash into the nuclear powerplant on the leeward shore. How's this for excitement? I thought Mum might be having a heart attack from fear so I tried to reassure her, to which she replied "I just want Randy to put some dry clothes on!"....... She was fine.

About an hour later we are another mile up the shore trying to find a very small entrance through a breakwater into our anchorage. The wind and rain have let up enough at this point so we can sort of see and the passage through the entrance goes relatively smooth with the help of a spot light. After anchoring (get this) we all sit down to a large plate of chicken mole which mum prepared and hot rum toddies all around.

The next day we did a short hop to the end of the Delaware bay and through yet another canal into Chesapeake Bay and down to the Sassafras River. (You heard me, "Sassafras"). We anchored over a very muddy bottom and only had to reset the anchor twice.

Next update -- pictures we took sailing by New York!