We left the Atlantic Highland's mooring in Sandy Hook NJ at 1:00 PM on Sunday, September 27th with a planned arrival at Cape May, NJ around 11:00 AM the following morning. We had an ebb flowing tid leaving Sandy Hook colliding with the East driven waves off of the Atlantic. These conditions caused very steep 6-8' breaking waves with a 3 to 4 second internals. At one point Scheherazade buried her bow into a breaking wave which sent a wall of water down the decks and over the cabin top. We endured these conditions for the next two hours. When we could make the turn and head south down the NJ coast, the ride became somewhat better. The highlight of the evening was watching the lunar eclipse of the harvest moon and passing by Atlantic City which was all lit up and could be seen 8 miles off shore.

We arrived at Cape May at 10:00 AM and anchored in front of the coast guard station. Deb attempted to release the anchor only to find the bolt which holds it in place was jammed. So Ron went up and discovered the anchor had gotten forced back 5" as a result of the pounding waves at Sandy Hook. He also found a bolt from the roller furling lying on the deck. That lead him to remove the three remaining bolts, which he then coated with Loctite and reinstalled. Next it was time to repair the bow running light which had stopped working during the night. It ends up that when the anchor moved back it hit the light and broke the filament in the bulb. The last repair for the morning was to readajust the fittings on the bow roller which holds the anchor in place. Once the repairs were all finished, we had our breakfast/lunch and took a nice long nap. Our friend Pierre off of Troika, stopped by after picking up some fuel. He and Ron discussed our trip up the Delaware Bay over a cold beer. It is now time for us to part ways. Troika is heading for Norfolk and Scheherazade is heading to Annapolis for the boat show.

The next morning, September 29th we got up bright and early to catch the flood tide to go up the Delaware Bay. The initial plan was to spend the night on the Delaware side of the Chesapeake Delaware Canal. However, we made good time and were able to catch the westward flow of the C&D canal, allowing us to move forward into the Chesapeake Bay. We spent the night anchored off of a sandy beach in front of some cottages off the Elk River. We traveled 80 miles today. Tomorrow we plan on being on the Chesapeake and traveling to Annapolis. As a side note we are monitoring the possibility of being hit by Hurricane Joaquin that is coming up the coast.