We, Evelyn, Leslie, and Anne, successfully completed our first day underway without Colin. I confess, I was a white-knuckled basket case at the departure and approach to anchorage, but all-in-all it went very well. Evelyn took us out of Utch's Marina without hitting anything, and better than that, she made it look pretty easy. Then she deftly piloted us under the two fixed bridges over the Cape May Canal. The posted bridge clearance is exactly the same as our mast height, but at dead low tide (which we timed perfectly), the clearance is actually a couple of feet more.

After that it was a quiet motoring day up the Delaware Bay. We stayed outside the main channel to avoid the commercial vessels. As a result, with the exception of one that gave us a huge wake, they were a non-issue.

There were four other Canadian sailboats that left Cape May earlier than we did because they couldn't clear the bridges. When we popped out of the canal, there they were just a bit ahead of us. We followed them up the bay and had a few conversations. We chose to anchor for the night, while they chose to press on through the C&D Canal in the dark.

So we come to the other end of the trip: picking our way into an anchorage. The scary part was threading the needle between the end of a submerged dike marked by an unlit buoy and unmarked rocks with a good current washing us upstream. Again, Evelyn handled it calmly. Leslie helped find buoys and I used the super-powerful light to illuminate the unlit ones, and we found the anchorage with at least five other sail boats in it.

So it hasn't been the most restful of nights. I am writing this at about 0530 because I needed to make sure our anchor reset when the current changed directions, and I was up a few other times just to check on our position, but we made it!