.... and from my assessment our decision to hunker down in Cape May is a good one. Although today would be a good day to travel anywhere we want to go, Block Island or Sandy Hook, for example are over a day and a half so we would be at sea when the nor’easter settles in. Not fun! Even today was a bumpy cross from Lewes to Cape May.

Very much on the plus side, the Cape Henlopen anchorage behind the inner breakwater is simply wonderful, just as our friends Chris and Bill told us. Essentially you are sheltered from much fetch 360 degrees and there is a state park within easy dingy distance. Periwinkle would have loved it.

We had a leisurely breakfast and raise the jib only to find out that it is still binding somehow in the roller furling. I think it is fouling with the spinnaker halyard so that’ll be one more thing to fix only it’ll be an easy one.

Our trip across from Cape Halopen to Cape May was a bit more “sporty” than my tastes allow. Deciding to hunker down is turning out more and more to be a smarter move. I am one of those who is always second guessing himself and in this case I was trying to second guess whether we should have gone last night for Block Island. As it turns out we would have had a very bumpy ride for half of last night and all day today. Apparently the storm we ducked in here to hide from will pass over us tomorrow evening and goes by the name Zeta. It is supposed to have been downgraded to a Tropical Storm when it gets this far - still. I guess we will be doubling the lines. High tide tomorrow will be at about the same time as the storm comes through so I imagine there will be a significant surge.

While underway and a good ten miles offshore we were joined by a sparrow that fluttered from spot to spot panting to regain its breath. How do these wee things get this far from shore? It flew off a couple of times but alway had the sense to come back until we were within a mile of land and then with a small chirp and a twitch of its tail feathers it flew off. Hope he made it.

As we came in we saw about ten boats anchored off the Coast Guard station. During the peak season this number would be triple but at this time of year there are normally nobody. I guess they are all in hiding too but I wouldn’t want to trust myself to an anchor especially at a significant storm surge. I will try to remember to take videos.

Back at Utsch’s Marina and hunkering down. Not a bad spot and definitely the least expensive in Cape May. Clean washrooms, showers and laundromat. The only possible negative thing is that we arrived at dead low spring tide so we tied up both to the dock and to the bottom. What fun.

We did a walk recce this afternoon to check out local restaurants so we could treat ourselves to dinner. Tomorrow night we will be huddling below watching the wind howl around us. The lady that runs the marina has told us that some of the ten boats out at anchor have also grown a brain and are coming in to ride out the storm. She was also saying that their experience is that a lot of people don’t do anything until it gets ugly then they come in while it is howling a gale and expect miracles.