A profound fact about the eight-month cruise in 2015 was this: Mark and I rarely had words, you know, the kind of words you wish you hadn’t said. As I’ve gotten older, patience seems to be more difficult to maintain. To my children’s mock horror, I’ve been known to use the F word on occasion, and I admit I used it on the day we ran aground twice in the New Jersey Intracoastal Waterway.
After our tiring cruise in Delaware Bay, we zipped into the first marina we came to in Cape May and because of weather, stayed several days. We lucked out. They had space, and with that space came nice showers, a bottle of wine, handmade soaps, and biscotti—all part of the package.
Cape May was a delightful spot to be holed up. Lots of interesting historical sites with guided tours and a bevy of good restaurants. But all good things come to an end and I began thinking about how I did NOT want to travel up to New York in the Atlantic Ocean. So I whined enough that Mark said we’d use the inland route. Well protected, narrow, and as I discovered the hard way—rather shallow.
We left Cape May and were winding our way through the channel in the marshes of New Jersey. Day marks telling us what side of the channel to stay on were plentiful, but not always accurate. As the old timers at the gas dock had warned , “They haven’t dredged the intracoastal channels here in 50 years.” I forgot to mention that to Mark.
As we left a place called Avalon, the part of the channel with water got very skinny and very shallow. Four-foot depths were on the chart for low tide. It lied. We got into a three-foot depth and tried to find deeper water. Not there. Went aground in two feet of mud.
Captain Mark could have called for a tow. We subscribed to a service and paid more annually so it would be free and unlimited. No way. He likes to do things himself . We tried backing off. Then we tried using the bow thruster. Then we loaded the anchor in the dinghy to row out to deeper water, but we have all chain rode. Too heavy. By now I was cursing, yes I was.
Then we hooked up the auxiliary anchor to the bow (it has some chain but mostly line) and Mark rowed it out to the three-foot water and dropped it in. When he came back I held tight to the anchor line while he pulled the boat toward the anchor. Then I tightened it. We did this again and again until the boat moved and we literally pulled the boat by sheer force over to the slightly deeper water. When finished, we hauled up the anchor loaded with stinky mud and ploughed through soft mud as we went on our way.
It was an exhausting, time-consuming mess. An hour later when it happened again, we waited for a rising tide to float us, said words we shouldn’t have said, and then took off for Atlantic City and found a spot in a marina. Captain Mark (who is usually patient) declared in no uncertain terms we were heading out to sea to finish the journey to New York. I considered packing up and leaving (Atlantic Ocean was rough when we left Cape May), but I calmed down after a good night’s sleep and a renewed chocolate stash.
Miraculously (in my mind) the weather cooperated. Sea was smooth as glass. Made it to Staten Island in eleven hours. Lesson learned: listen to old guys at gas docks and do not run out of chocolate.