Category: Summer 2021

Farley’s basically told us that we had to get out of Atlantic City no later than Tuesday morning because of a huge boat show.  Whether we die or not really was of no concern.  They even threw out Arctic Pride II, which made an early exit on Monday. 

Stealth was going around to the outside of the fuel dock to make room for the gobs of new fishing boats that are looking for a home.  Farley’s didn’t give us that option.

The good news is that Tuesday looked to be a one-day-only opening for safe travel, before the spin-off from Hurricane Larry and Tropical Depression Mindy rolled up the coast.  The problem for us was that the run to New York is between ten and twelve hours, depending on where we stop.  And leaving Atlantic City requires timing the Absecon Inlet.  And high tide on Tuesday morning was about 8:30.  Which meant even if we went to Great Kills, we’d arrive close to dark, in the wind, with no dock help.  Which wasn’t an awesome plan.

Low tide, however, was at 3.  In the morning.  There are many reasons why leaving a marina at 3 a.m. is awful.  Start with the fact that sleeping is the only reasonable thing to do at 3 a.m. and go from there.  But screw it.  We can catch the inlet at slack and make it to Jersey City by early afternoon.  The ocean by moonlight is beautiful, right?

Up at 2:30, off the dock at 2:45.  The one benefit to the garish Golden Nugget casino lights shining like a thousand suns is that at 2:45 the marina was as bright as a young Einstein.

Once out of the marina, of course, the lights faded.  Just our luck to hit a new moon.  Zero light.  Black.  As black as the souls of the people who flew into the World Trade Center almost exactly twenty years ago.  Lots of stars, but since God invented electronic charts we didn’t need to use our celestial navigation skills.  Which is fortunate, because we have none.  Just spin up the radar, put some George Jones on the stereo, and head north.*

Oscar was more than a bit befuddled by the early departure, but he’s a good soldier so he sucked it up and immediately went back to sleep on his cat bed in the pilothouse.

Unfortunately for him, he slept through the sunrise.  The only good thing about traveling at night is watching the sun come up.  Tuesday morning we got a good one, even if we did have to share it with a fishing boat.

Shortly after sunrise we passed the Barnegat Inlet, which is notable only because of our self-imposed obligation to take yet another photo of Old Barney.

About 9, the reasonable people who appropriately used the night for sleeping started showing up, although jamming in with dozens of other people aboard Norma K III does raise some questions as to the definition of reasonable.

By the time we reached Sandy Hook, even the beach-goers were out in force.  And yes—despite what certain criminally-insane politicians and talk-show hosts might claim—these are real people.  No hoax.

On every other trip up the Jersey coast, we’ve hooked around Sandy Hook and collapsed with exhaustion.  Since it was only noon, this time we forged ahead.  We don’t know the technical entrance to New York Harbor, but for us it’s the Verrazano-Narrows Bridge.  We also are obliged to photograph the bridge every time through, but this time we went crazy and took the picture from the back side.

The fort, by the way, is Fort Wadsworth.  It’s been around in one form or another since 1663 but never saw military action.  Now Coast Guard Sector New York and some other outfits use part of it, but mostly nowadays Fort Wadsworth is known for being where the New York City Marathon starts.  As an aside, two of us believe that people who run 26.2 miles without being chased by a mugger are even less reasonable than people who get up at 2:30 to boat in the dark.

And finally, we rounded the bend and started up the Hudson River, past lower Manhattan and the Statue of Liberty for the sixth time.  Yup, we’re still taking pictures.  Yup, they all look the same.

Thanks to adverse current, we cruised the last ten miles to Liberty Landing at about five knots, but on balance the twelve-hour trip couldn’t have gone better.  We found exactly one wave bigger than two-feet, although it happened to hit us just as Doug was dozing off on the couch.  Dana had a nice long nap and shower while underway, however, which is all that matters.

Dang good thing we didn’t need fuel when we pulled in to the marina.  Bella Vita monopolized the fuel dock all day and into the night.  Thirty-thousand gallons takes a long time to pump.  She’s a 200-footer.  These boats are of a size not seen since Fort Lauderdale.

We’ll have more about New York after our friends Mike and Lucy arrive for the weekend, but the highlight so far by far was catching up with Dave and Becky.  Doug and Dave worked together thirty years ago in Phoenix, and shared more than one life-threatening situation created entirely by their own poor judgment.  We’re hoping next spring they’ll cruise with us a bit when we pass back out of Long Island Sound.

Today so far isn’t a highlight.  It’s raining.

——————

*Nobody does lovin’ and hurtin’ and cheatin’ and drinkin’ like The Possum.  The first concert Mallory and Shannon attended was Ol’ George, with a special appearance by Jesse Colter as a tribute to the recently departed Waylon Jennings.  Although the girls were too young to remember it now, we’re pretty sure that exposing them at a tender age to old-school lovin’ and hurtin’ and cheatin’ and drinkin’ songs (1) was an act of stellar parenting and (2) helped them become the wonderful and successful people they are today.

We’re alive, although now the ocean conditions have pinned us in Atlantic City.  So far Atlantic City this time isn’t as bad as that time with the AC/DC tribute band, but still.

Being stuck somewhere for several days stinks for multiple reasons, not the least of which is the guilty feeling if you don’t finally fix those niggling problems that that you sort of resolved with duct tape but not really.  Before we unstuck from Cape May we did some of that, which required a walk downtown to the local hardware store.

Swains’s says it’s been in Cape May since 1896, which is a long time.  It’s crazy to think that even before the invention of horseless carriages and aeroplanes, the Helpful Hardware Folks^TM at Swain’s were directing people with pesky leaks in their anchor locker to the aisle with Flex Seal^TM.

Another way to pass time is to look at other boats.  For example, a line of commercial fishing boats lines the east entrance into Schellenger Creek.  Lots of fishing boats up and down the coast, which is a good thing, because someone needs to supply all the seafood we buy at the Costco on Hayden Road.

When we arrived on Monday they put us  next to T/T Double Barrel.

This may look like a typical center console of the type found in every marina, but the T/T means it’s a tender and the 1200 horsepower means it goes fast enough to be unsafe.  The mothership pulled in a bit later.  Double Barrel is a Viking 82 Sportsfish that cost about $10 million new.  You’ve really got to be into hobby fishing to pay that kind of money.  We’re not into fishing, but even we know you can buy a heck of a lot of fish at Costco for $10 million.  It’s a pretty boat, however, with pleasing colors and a huge deck.

Here’s the thing though.  No matter how big your deck is, there’s always some dude with a bigger one.  Eileen’s Way showed up on Tuesday.  At 120 feet, she’s the second-largest boat Ocean Alexander has built.  A guy with a deck that big doesn’t need to compensate with a sports car.

Cape May is on the tip of New Jersey, with the Delaware Bay on one side and the Atlantic Ocean on the other.  The middle mostly is a swamp.  And yet inexplicably a zillion tour boats zoomed past South Jersey Marina every day.  We don’t get it, unless they go out into the swamp looking for Jimmy Hoffa’s body.

There are pontoon boats, which at least are more seaworthy than those round things found in South Carolina.  There’s also a tiny cruise boat.  She might’ve been born just plain white trash but Fancy is her name.

Then at night, there are big boats, lined with people who mistakenly believe they can sing along with the loud music on the DJ’s short playlist, probably because when they were little their parents said “you have a beautiful singing voice” even though their pet cats kept running away.

The point is, we have no idea where they go.  We also have no idea why New Jersey passed a law requiring all boats carrying tourists to blast “YMCA” multiple times each trip while all the decent people in town are trying to watch Suits or football on TV.   We’re pretty confident, however, that idiot Chris Christie somehow is responsible.

Back to Painkiller, who until Friday was docked beside us in Cape May but then moved to the bad part of town when her slip owner returned.  She looks a lot like Misty Pearl, undoubtedly because they’re both Selene 43s.

Fine looking boats those Selenes.  Dave and Pam are great folks who grew up in Phoenix, which gives us lots to talk about.  Their broker wanted them to look at Misty Pearl when we had her for sale but they weren’t quite ready to buy.

Saturday morning we finally shook lose the Cape May shackles and headed north.  Nice day to cruise on the Atlantic Ocean.  Finally.

Still a little chill in the air, which may explain why more boats are heading south than are heading north.  But our air conditioners probably were glad for the vacation.  We were glad to be moving.  The plan was to stay only one night, since Sunday looked like a decent day for the long run from Atlantic City to Staten Island.

This is our fourth trip up or down the Jersey coast.  Not much has changed over time.  Except Wildwood recently repainted its water tower, which now stands out from the rickety roller-coasters that look more dangerous than the Atlantic Ocean.

The fishing boats were out en masse, apparently because there was exactly one spot in the entire ocean where fish were biting.

A couple of hours in, the skies turned blue and the water was comfortable, allowing us to slide up to Atlantic City nice and easy.  Perfect timing of the Absecon Inlet meant no worries for the mile or so where we always worry.

Although Farley State Marina is not necessarily one of our favorite stops, it does generally deliver something interesting.   This time, it’s the two 150-foot superyachts along E Dock.  The one closest to the just-short-of-decent  dockside restaurant with the red roof is Arctic Pride II.  The other is Stealth.  These both are the kind of boats that carry crew members who bicker and backstab and fornicate, which we know only because we may have watched a couple or fifty episodes of Below Deck.  For the low price of $160,000, plus tips and expenses, Stealth can be enjoyed by mere mortals.  For a week.

From our back porch, essentially we only see a white fiberglass wall that blocks out the sun.

It could be worse, of course.  If our slip was forty feet in either direction, every time we walk off the boat,  Arctic Pride II’s enormous deck would be staring us in the face, making a mockery of our tiny one.

Last night we enjoyed dockside chatting with Painkiller.

Dana and Dave diligently dithered, not about alliteration but about the sea conditions.  They were back at it this morning.  Ultimately Doug went back to bed because the trajectory of their discussion was against traveling.  Good call.  Twenty to 25-knot winds.  Physics tells us that 20-knot winds with a 60-mile fetch can create eight-foot waves.  The ashen-faced folks who came in during the day seemed to be cursing God for their ordeal.

Because we’re stuck again, of course, more guilt-driven chores awaited.  Doug’s theory is that it’s a huge lazarette, and given enough time and adequate lighting he can retrieve anything he’s thrown down there.  Dana’s philosophy is “a place for everything, and everything in its place.”  So Doug spent the day organizing the lazarette.  He would’ve skipped the work and popped into the Golden Nugget, but we never want to see Dana react the way David reacted when Linda lost the nest egg in Las Vegas.*

Tomorrow?  Not leaving.  Tuesday?  We can hope.

——————

*Also shame on anyone who hasn’t see Lost in America.

Well we had a hell of a run of nice travel days and fun stops.  Now we’re worried that we’ll never get to New York.  It’s not that we mind Cape May, but storms and big waves are in our future as far out as the people who predict these things are predicting these things.  Grrrr.  Don’t they know we have friends and family to meet and packages to collect in New York?

Sunday morning the forecast for Delaware Bay was horrible, and the actual conditions reported by the NOAA weather buoys were worse.  We don’t voluntarily travel in six-foot waves.  Tim said we could stay another night in Delaware City, which wasn’t as magnanimous as it sounds since he had about a thousand feet of empty dock.

Our heroes Jeff and Ann famously celebrated Sundays aboard High Drama and No Drama with “Bloodies and Beethoven.”  We aren’t that high-brow, but we fired up some Bluegrass gospel and settled back into our wise decision not to travel.  Praise the Lord, we saw the light.  

The good news is that the extra day provided time to ferry over to Pea Patch Island, which on previous trips through here we’d only managed to visit from afar by drone.

Pea Patch—in the middle of the Delaware River—is home to Fort Delaware, which protected Philadelphia and Wilmington from Confederate attacks that never came.  Apparently it didn’t occur to the designers that mid-nineteenth century armies were using cannons and other heavy artillery—not horses, lances, and spears—such that a medieval moat probably wouldn’t do much good no matter how cool it looks.

Then they stacked up Rebel POWs in nasty barracks outside the fort.

Now, Fort Delaware is just a neat tourist attraction run by the Delaware Park Service. 

In addition to all the history stuff, the Park Service is quite proud of and protective of the large colony of brown bats living in the fort.  They also host “paranormal tours.”  No offense to anyone who believes in ghosts, but spending Delaware taxpayer money to subsidize crack-pot searches for the spirits of dead confederate prisoners amongst a large colony of brown bats is bat-shit crazy.

Monday looked to be a nice travel window for the run down the Delaware River to Cape May.  Light variable winds and moderate waves in the forecast.  Perfect.  Fortunately—unlike on our trips farther north—we don’t have to worry about fog in these parts.

When we woke up and looked out that nice travel window, of course, the view was obscured by fog.  What the fog is going on here?   As everyone who ever encountered fog said, however, we figured “it’ll burn off soon.”  Plus, fog in part is why God invented radar.  So off we went.  Not too bad in the Delaware City canal.

Truthfully, although the river was a bit foggier and although the C&D Canal Authority shut down traffic because of it, it wasn’t too bad.

Delaware fog turns out to be the kind of fog that Nova Scotia fog and Maine fog would bully on the playground.

The Delaware Bay has a series of shoals, with menacing lighthouses plunked on them to warn people like us.  Every single time through, we see those lighthouses in the distance and mistake them for big boats heading our way with ill-intent.

Yesterday we were minding our own business, relying on autopilot, and glancing up from the iPad just often enough to make sure we were keeping those lighthouses on our port side.  Maybe a bit more glancing up was in order, however, because suddenly one of those lighthouses was named Majestic and was bearing down on us at a twenty-five-knot closing speed.

Despite our fog of stupidity we dodged her—and survived the five-foot wake she gave us just off her stern—and we left a much larger safety margin for the next few lighthouses steaming up the river.  We also gave the ferry plenty of room to get into the Cape May Canal ahead of us.

We got to South Jersey Marina just fine, tied up, and settled in with a plan to run up to Atlantic City this morning.  No rain predicted.  Moderate waves.  Might be uncomfortable, but doable.  But just as we were discussing that plan with Painkiller, the storm hit.  Eddie Rabbitt may love a rainy night when the lightening lights up the sky, but we don’t.  Especially when said lightening strikes a transformer and knocks out the marina shore power, which is what this one did.  Then again, no shore power in part is why God invented diesel generators.

1.21 Gigawatts!  If Tumbleweed had a Flux Capacitor and we could hit the connecting hook at precisely 76.45 knots, right now we’d be in New York next week.**

Instead, Ida’s remnants are going to roil the Atlantic for the next few days.  We’re stuck here until at least Saturday.  If it stretches out beyond that, Dana might qualify as a Real Housewife of Jersey and Doug might join the mafia.  At least Cape May is a decent little town though, with shops and restaurants and a bookstore Dana found on one of our prior stops.

Cape May claims to have been the first “seaside resort” in the country.   Maybe that’s true, but it’s bizarre that vacationers were frolicking in the waves while just up the river an army was waiting behind a moat in case King Arthur laid siege.  Either way, Cape May does have a beach.

We’re not sure what else we’ll do to fill time but hopefully something other than storms will come along.

——————

*RIP Merle Haggard.

**Shame, shame, shame on anyone who hasn’t seen Back to the Future multiple times.  And yes, we’re pretty sure none of the Georgetowns were named for Marty’s wimpy father.  Hello McFly.  Anybody in there?

Wednesday we had an absurdly easy ride up to Rock Hall, after a decent-but-not-spectacular sunrise in St. Michaels.

And yes, we chickened out of Kent Narrows yet again—thus adding two hours to the trip—but there’s no need to be in a hurry when the water is as smooth as a delicious smoothie from the Paradise Juice next to where the Albertson’s used to be across from Doug’s office on Tatum Boulevard in Phoenix.  Plus it gave us time to take an artsy photo while passing under the Chesapeake Bay Bridge, which clearly should be plural not singular.

There also were some bulk carriers waiting to pick up or drop off in Baltimore, but they weren’t in our way so we don’t need to complain about them.

We’ve been to Rock Hall a few times now, but this is the first time we’ve noticed the town motto, which is way sketchier than the St. Michaels’ motto we referenced in the last post.

If the town claimed that “Only Nice People Live Here,” that’d be saying something.  But as it stands they only need two nice people in the whole place to make the motto work.  Which makes it pretty unimpressive.  Heck, almost anywhere in America could muster up at least two nice people who live there, the obvious exceptions being Tuscaloosa, Alabama, Gainesville, Florida, and a handful of maximum security prisons.

Rock Hall is famous for being the place where we first encountered Second Wave, the Mainship 400 with which we traveled some two thousand miles on our Loop.  It’s hard to imagine better times than the times we shared with Brent and Karen.  Rock Hall ironically is not famous for being the Rock Hall of Fame, which is in Ohio.  But it’s a neat little town.  Very scooterable.

We figure our luck won’t last forever, but Thursday was another great day on the Bay.  Smooth, and we had current push us all the way to and up the Sassafras River.  Monique on Star Gazer calls that kind of day “Girls Day Out,” which probably would be sexist if it didn’t come from Monique on Star Gazer.

In the happy coincidence category, whilst enjoying the trip up the Sassafras to Georgetown we happened upon Rock N Chair, the sailboat we helped off a stump in the Pungo-Alligator Canal a couple of months ago.  Seeing them was awesome, in large part because it provided an unexpected opportunity to work in the word “Pungo” again.

After some more dock assignment funny-business, we tied up at the Georgetown Yacht Basin rather than The Granary Marina.  No biggie.

We’ve now stopped by boat in Georgetown, South Carolina, and Georgetown, Maryland.  Mallory went to Georgetown University in D.C.  The Second Wave crew lived in Georgetown, Texas.  That’s a lot of Georgetowns.  It’s not really that odd to find so many places named Georgetown, of course, because history has given us so many Georges worthy of the honor:  Costanza.  Jefferson.  Jetson.  Curious.  And most notably, The Possum.  What we do find quite inexplicable, however, is the dearth of Dougtowns.  Go figure.

This Georgetown is another town on the Chesapeake Bay that England’s forces sacked, because the people of Georgetown apparently weren’t as clever as the people in The Town that Fooled the British.  Kitty Knight’s House is one of the few places left standing after the attack, which is quite lucky for us because the barbecue shrimp and crab flatbread was unbelievable.

Tumbleweed has been due for a wash and wax job, and we picked Georgetown to do it.  Unfortunately, the Thursday and Friday “real feel”—which we understand is the millennial version of what us old-timers knew as heat index—was roughly a gazillion sweaty degrees.  Celsius.  Miserable.  We only can imagine how much worse the chore would’ve been if we hadn’t found the great guys at Sunshine Boat Detailing willing to do it for us.

This Georgetown is sandwiched between Galena and Fredericktown.  All three are so tiny that even when combined they’re not any bigger.  But the scootering was fun and the marina ferried us across the river for an early dinner on Friday, maybe to make up for failing to process our slip reservation.

We’re well behind the Looper peloton, so it’s nice when we bump into boats with the familiar burgee.  In Georgetown, we joined Our Town and Carousel for docktails.  Big fun.

This morning we exited the Sassafras River into the path of some joker pushing a barge towards the same Chesapeake and Delaware canal we needed to get through to reach Delaware City.  AIS said he was traveling about a half-knot faster than us, a mile and a half behind us.  Basic math told us he’d catch us in three hours, which is just about how long we had until we hit the Delaware River on the backside of the canal.  At least that gave us something to worry about when we weren’t worrying about the railroad bridge and the potential for rain.

Railroad bridge?  No problem.  We took a picture—it’s the background one—only because now it’s a tradition.

Shortly after we passed under it, the railroad announced that the bridge was dropping for a train.  But not in time to stop Joker, which actually was the tug’s name.  Maybe he slowed down, or maybe we don’t math well, but either way we still had him by a good quarter-mile when we hooked north up the Delaware River.

As we’ve noted before, we do love us some Delaware City.

This time through is supposed to be just a quick one-nighter, however, so as soon as we arrived—in a choreographed move every Looper immediately will recognize—Tim the Dockmaster spun us around for a quick getaway tomorrow.

In spring this dock is full of Loopers and unbridled enthusiasm.  This is our second time through during the sad off-season.  Three Dog Night was right.  One is the loneliest number.

Tim also is famous for his weather briefings for the trip down the Delaware Bay to Cape May, New Jersey.  Today Tim told us it might be fine.  Or there might be six- to eight-footers.  It all depends on a few degrees of wind direction.  So maybe we’ll go.  Maybe we’ll stay.

One of the things Dana looks for in a town is a cool bookstore.  Preferably one that’s full of mysteries.  She popped in to the punny and possibly world-famous “Mystery Loves Company” Saturday morning.

Not only was this place Dana’s kind of quirky, but the owner hooked her up with a book not readily available elsewhere.  That’s like turning on your TV and watching the final season of Yellowstone even though it doesn’t come out until November 7.  We already liked Oxford, but bumped it up few notches on the list before heading off down the Tred Avon for Cambridge.

Cambridge actually required about eleven miles of going in exactly the wrong direction for our intended arrival in New York, but we couldn’t very well let some waterspouts control our destiny.  Plus the weather was decent so we were in good moods.

Shortly before reaching the point where boats hail the marina for docking instructions, we passed a giant yellow ball with a West Marine ad on it.  Very weird, but we saw it too late to get the camera out.  The West Marine ball wasn’t the only weird thing we encountered though.  As we pulled into the marina, we had to dodge weird looking skinny boats being hip-towed out.

Turns out they’re called “log canoes,” and they have sails despite sounding like something Pocahontas might’ve paddled out to meet John Smith before she was was turned into a white woman.  Log canoes are big on the Chesapeake Bay, and we bumbled into one of the several races held in these parts.

The freeboard on these suckers  approaches zero, so they can’t be dry.  Which means they can’t be fun, although the folks aboard seemed in good spirits.  Doug rushed around to get the drone up but was foiled by pesky FAA geofencing.  Anyway, most of these boats are a hundred years old, plus or minus a few years, and pass down through the generations like granny’s silverware and china.  Later on—after applying our powers of deduction to the circumstances—we figured out that those West Marine balls might possibly have been race markers.

Geography-wise, Cambridge is on the Choptank River.  Which explains the Choptank River Lighthouse.  Since we came up it, the river somewhat obviously feeds into Chesapeake Bay.  Which explains all the Chesapeake deadrise crabbing boats.

History-wise, Cambridge is famous for slavery-related stuff, good and bad. The marina, for example, is hard by the place where slaves were off-loaded and traded.  The Dorchester County Courthouse still stands, although not-surprisingly the slave auction pens that once were in front of it are long-gone.

Harriet Tubman was born just down the road, did much of her railroading through the area, and rescued several family members from auctions at this very courthouse.  Which is why the Harriet Tubman Museum and Educational Center with the cool mural on the back wall is located in Cambridge.

But of course we were there on a Sunday.  The Harriet Tubman Museum is closed on Sundays.

The one of us who enjoys Indian food is the one of us who walked to the delicious-sounding Bombay Tadka for lunch.  Bombay Tadka is closed on Sundays.  Lots of other options in town, but none with shrimp vindaloo.

Fortunately the one of us who enjoys poking around in the little shops is the one of us who found some little shops open, so things worked out.  For one of us.  But Cambridge is very cool.  We’ll stop again next time through Chesapeake Bay.

Although Oxford and Cambridge were awesome, time for the trifecta.  Back down the Choptank yesterday morning, heading for St. Michaels.  No yellow balls to dodge, and although at the start we encountered unexpected waves,  we cranked up John Denver on Pandora and ignored the spray that reached the flybridge.  It’s a long way from this place to Denver, but we’re happy to be in this part of the Bay, especially after the waves started cooperating.

Because we have great memories from our family trips to St. Michaels, rounding the corner at the harbor entrance felt like going home.

St. Michaels was the first place Doug flew the first drone—which some readers may recall was murdered by dirty, rotten, drone-killing-tree-planters, in Rogersville, Alabama—so it seemed fitting to send up its replacement as the sun was setting.  Where’s Waldo?

Anyone who can spot Tumbleweed might notice the Prestige and the Azimut right behind her.  The former is She Said Yes.  The latter is Knot Divorce.  We find it noteworthy when two adjacent boats both are somewhere on the continuum between marital bliss and an episode of Forensic Files.

As town mottos go, St. Michaels’ motto is high on the list.  Not only is it unique, it’s also more factually accurate than, say, Grafton’s claim to be “The Key West of the Midwest.”

During the War of 1812, those pushy Limeys pushed a barge of cannons into the harbor under cover of darkness.  The St. Michaelsers were tipped off, however, and put out every light source in the town.  The cannoneers then wasted all their artillery shooting at lanterns hanging in trees well behind any valuable targets, and the next morning left empty-handed.  Only one cannonball hit a house, which not-surprisingly now is known to history as “Cannonball House.” “And to think that we saw it on Mulberry Street.”

A town that has a “Cannonball House” is cool and all, but an Old Bay store and a place that sells Christmas what-nots all year-round would make it incredible.  Yup, St. Michaels.

Anyway, Oxford, Cambridge, and St. Michaels, are a great threesome.  From here, we’re now planning just one new stop before Long Island Sound.  Penn’s Landing basically said if we came to Philadelphia we’d have to sit on mud in four feet of water, so we declared our independence by deciding to give it a skip.  That leaves only Georgetown and a bunch of familiar places that can’t be avoided on the run to New York, although we do like Delaware City and Cape May.