Cohansey River - at anchor - they all lie!

Goodbye Atlantic City

Lies, lies and more lies! The weatherman is not to be trusted! He speaks with a forked tongue! It doesn't matter if he's from NOAA, the Coast Guard or Grib, they all lie. You would think that with all the modern technology, including weather satellites, that they could get the weather correct for the next 8 hours... Wrong! Well, they got part of it right. We left this morning from Atlantic City with the predicted 5 to 10 kts of wind and had a perfect ride down to Cape May. We were due to arrive at 1:30 pm and so we thought, "Why not go further?" given the excellent weather with the light winds. So we turned the corner at Cape May and went through the canal at low tide and headed out into the Bay. It should have been a perfect day until the wind chose originality vs the dull old prediction.

At least our dink was faithful, unlike the weatherman

Thinking about the next few days, we thought we could make the Cohansey River anchorage by 7:00 pm, just before sunset so our next day's journey to Chesapeake City would be a short, morning jaunt. Well, as we rounded out of the canal, the wind piped up to 15 kts and shortly we were seeing 15 to 20 all the way into Cohansey! The weather chart said 5 to 10 kt winds, the wind meter on our boat showed 15 to 20! So much for forecasts! We were pushing the edge of acceptability on current since the current was still outgoing when we came out of the canal. So we had wind against tide all the way north but at least the wind was behind us, the only thing in our favor.

Eventually we did make Cohansey by 7:00 pm and we hurried to take Hoolie ashore for the first time since this morning. He hopped back in the dink covered in mud. We were at a low tide and the water level was below the sand line, mud all over him and the dink. After an extensive rinsing on the back of the boat, Hoolie was presentable and he had his evening meal.

Ann got this picture of the day's end

Regardless, we still had our evening wine (got to keep your priorities straight!) and Ann prepared tuna and melted cheese sandwiches, tasted great! We are now snugged in our anchorage with no other boat in sight but with a full moon, beautiful. We plan on leaving Saturday around 8:00 pm to catch the tide going north. The prediction (for what it's worth) is for north winds for the next several days which is going to present a problem for all those boats at Cape May waiting for a weather window! Since you want a tide with you going north, a north wind would be wind against tide, not good at all for a trip up the Delaware Bay. I think we lucked out on our decision to push on today. Hoolie did fine on his long wait between shore leaves. Kudos to Hoolie!