Date - September 12, 1997 - September 17, 1997 (five days)

Crew list:

Don Boyd (your correspondent)

Peter Hallberg (Scurvy Dog #2 "The fishes friend")

Miles traveled - 100 (aprox)

Engine hours - 18

Sailing hours -4

Money spent:

Food / beer / ice / snacks on board - $50.00

Diesel / gas / marina fees / lock fees - $ 82.00

Charts / guides / port fees - $ 0.00

Eating out / drinking out / touring - $80.00

Aprox. total this leg - $212.00

There's no doubt about it. Sailing south is a boaters fantasy come true. But like most fantasies, there are many little fantasies that must come together to make up the big one. For example, one of the sub fantasies is fishing. I am not a fishing type person normally, but the idea that I could feed myself from fishing the ocean, is a small part of the trip south.

But the problem on this leg was three fold. -It's hard to catch fish, especially when you don't know what you're doing -The one or two fish that have come our way have been too weird for us to even touch never mind eat, or they came at times that we didn't need them for dinner -Scurvy Dog #2 is a personal friend of all fish and can not believe that I would want to kill them. He even developed a trick where when I wasn't looking he'd haul in the line, remove the hook and put the bare line back into the water, knowing it would be at times an hour before I'd notice I wasn't catching fish because there was no hook on my line!

Of course this brings out the crew whacking 2x4, but Scurvy Dog #2 used to raise fish and learned to love them, speak their language, became emerged in their scaly little cultures and likely would have begun dating some of the better looking ones if his wife wasn't monitoring the situation.

Scurvy Dog #2, who occasionally goes by the alias Peter Hallberg, arrived just in time for happy hour September 11th, having driven 10hours south from Montreal. The stay on the free mooring, complete with free launch service, at the unbelievably helpful Richmond County Yacht Club, had been great, even though there had been some serious wind on our first night with gusts of up to forty knots. With the arrival of the rental car awaiting return to Canada and Scurvy Dog #1 knew that his time was up.

That was the area where Scurvy Dog #1 had caught, just before "Fish Boy" arrived, a fish that when hauled out of the water spread out wings, wiggled it's tail, and barked like a dog at us. One weird fish, too bad #2 never saw it, the thing looked more like a mutated devil bird than a fish and we may have been able to trick him into caging it for us. (BTW, locals said it was a "Robin Fish")

#2 and I were to sail the boat down the New Jersey shore, rounding Sandy Hook and stopping in Manasquan, Atlantic City and Cape May before heading up Delaware Bay towards the Chesapeake.

Before leaving RCYC, I was lucky enough to meet a couple off a Danish boat, "Larua", which was also moored in Great Kills Harbor having just finished 15 months of sailing across the Atlantic and Caribbean. "Bjorn Dolby" and his wife "Tove" had lots of charts which I needed and I had a bunch that the needed and by the end of the day (and a bunch of beer and aquvit) I now had almost every chart I am likely to need for the trip!

Manasquan was one of the wackiest, busy little spots I'd ever been. The locals seemed to take great pleasure in swamping little boats. We stayed at a little marina, where for $ 1.50 a foot you could be rocked to sleep by the steady wake. I can not recommend this now brutally busy spot.

Another nice thing the marina beside wake was commando destructo bird. Large bold yellow billed Satan worshipping Devil Feathers would fight each other for the right to bust windvanes. they'd park on top of your wind vane and wiggle around to get comfortable until they sent bits of metal and plastic crashing to the deck. I noticed that there wasn't a single sailboat with their masthead gear intact! We were lucky, I kept birds from parking themselves on my mast be maintaining a sunset vigil to scare them away before they landed.

On our way to Atlantic City, I caught a 3 lb Blue Fish and Scurvy Dog was appalled. While I attempted to free the fish, he grabbed the crew whacker and headed towards the tackle box. A brawl followed, only being settled when a temporary moratorium on fishing was signed after the fish was realised and Fish Boy served several pale effervescent beverages directly from the can.

Atlantic City is like Vegas except, and this is going to be hard to believe, greedier. Yes, it's even greedier than Vegas. At least in Vegas drinks and chow are cheap. Here a draught beer in a Casino will set you back $ 4.00 and we saw a menu at the "Trump Castle, Give Us You Credit Card, Marina and Casino" on which a roast lamb dinner sold for the low low price of only $ 36.00 not including drinks , appetiser or desert. Here you realy get the feeling that they want your money, they will get your money, and how dare you ask for something for free you cheap bastard.

At least there still are some nickel machine left and I lucked out on one, making almost $ 30.00 in nickels in about fifteen minutes. Luckily the first thing Scurvy Dog #2 and I did was to think about how much I would have made if the nickels had been dollars.It drove me nuts, so I quickly converted the winnings into casino chips and lost all my hard work, plus another $ 30.00, in about seven minutes.

What fun! Oh, by the way, the Trump Marina was pretty nice, with cable TV and such for $ 1.50 per foot. Jitney's (local taxi sized busses) cost $ 1.50 and took us to the main drag and Boardwalk just a couple of miles on the other side of the combat zone. The combat zone is slowly being bulldozed into the ground as more and more development comes to Atlantic City, and if all goes well and according to the city plan, all the muggers and thieves will have to move to the suburbs by the year 2000.

What a contrast Cape May, on the southern tip of New Jersey was to Atlantic City. The entire town, with it's Victorian architecture and ginger bread homes, is an American national historic landmark. We stayed on anchor, amongst some moorings just off the Corinthian Yacht Club near the Coast Guard Station.

I reminded Scurvy Dog #2 that "Free is Good", and that the calm weather meant that we'd dinghy ashore to check out the town, and pickup a handful of six packs...I mean items.

We puttered ashore, left the dinghy at the extremely friendly and helpful Utsch's Marina and walked the two or so miles to town, we were not disappointed. The town is a handy mans dream come true!!! Every single building must cost a fortune to maintain, all wood, all painted, all well taken care of, and probably in a constant state of handy man billing pads. I think that the local printer probably prints 89% of his paper stock in handy man and painters billing pads.

They do a darn good job these guys too. A walk down the "mall" and "Ocean Street" is just like it would have been in the mid 1800's...if the streets were filled with senior citizens with cameras and the people of that time could have afforded the handy man expenses.

All I can say is that everyone should see Cape May before the Handy Men of American form into a Union and price themselves clear out of town!

On the way back to the boat, there was a light chop and Scurvy Dog #2 got a little wet. I was reminded that salt water is pretty nasty stuff and even though #2 did not complain, I allowed the crew a shower bag shower, AT NO ADDITIONAL CHARGE!!! I am a compassionate skipper.

Till we update this page again!

 

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