...but I don’t care. It’s only money and as long as we are safe and comfortable we can see it through. Last night it was flat calm in here but the harbour cam shows it rougher on the outside. It will start building tomorrow and it looks like it will max out sometime on Friday. Post tropical storm still has 85 kph winds and three meter seas. Thank you very large, we will buy another day at the dock and I have already doubled up the lines. The only time that Nelleke has had damage from a storm was tied up at a dock but in that case there were direct winds of nearly 100 kph blowing across the Neuse River near Oriental which means a ten mile fetch which resulted in six foot waves at the dock. Here at this marina there is perhaps a half mile fetch and we are behind a large wooden breakwater. We should be ok but watch for the videos.

We met the owner of a pretty picnic boat who is planning to leave this morning and race up the Delaware to the canal. His plans are to get to Annapolis by sometime today. We wish him luck. There was also a large motor cruiser that shifted positions in the marina to facilitate an early departure this morning and sure enough, they were off at six. These power boats have the option of getting up and flying along at well over twelve knots so they can go through the Cape May canal and make the trip up the Delaware in six or seven hours.

The threatened rain began at five this morning and has continued on and off all day accompanied by gusty winds. Before it got too bad we took an Uber downtown to the ACME Grocery Store to stock up on a few things. We did it early to avoid the rain but too early for most of the other stores to open. Ten o’clock seems to be the magic number. Downtown Cape May has a really nice pedestrian walk about a block from the beach with a number of interesting stores. We didn’t want to hang about for an hour to wait for them to open and later in the day the rain began in earnest. Now we are cabin bound. That’s the thing about sitting in a boat waiting for weather to pass. There ain’t a whole lot to do. Too wet to walk around. Too wet to work out on deck. I don’t even feel like taking an Uber down to the Square again this afternoon. Maybe tomorrow. It will still be raining but we will bundle up in all our foul weather finest and soldier forth to brave the elements.

The family that owns and runs this marina are definitely republicans. Can’t fault them for their political views. To each their own. However I happened to be in the office when Rush Limbaugh was on air ( I think that’s how you spell his name ) and he was going on and on about how Mr Trump is leading in the polls! That flies in the face of everything else we have heard. I guess the Republican Party is hoping that if their talking heads say something often and loudly enough their political base will believe them and continue to support their candidate. Odd the tactics, isn’t it? I will have to keep a much closer eye on what the political parties do at home in the next election.

Ah well.

I have just got to stop looking at the long range weather forecasts. Right now we don’t seem to be catching any kind of a break for a week and that includes little hops up the Jersey coast towards NYC! We could do a day hop to Barnegat Inlet and then get stuck there for a couple of days! I am even reduced to semi seriously considering trying to go up the NJ part of the inter coastal even though sailboats normally don’t do it for a reason. Half the bridges we would have to go under at low tide and there are numerous spots that are so shallow that you would have to go over them at high tide. Nope. I have to keep reminding myself that we still have two months on our cruising permit but we want to get home and we really don’t want to spend Christmas aboard here.

At around 3 o’clock the barometer began to drop and the wind picked up. I can see the puffs beginning. the forecast is calling for winds to 75 kph by seven this evening. There are still boats out at anchor by the Coast Guard Station. I wish them well but really, they should cough up a few bucks and come in here at least for the worst of Zeta.

I’ll post this now and give you the low lights of what happened tomorrow.