Monday, September 21, 2015

Cape May - at Utsch's Marina at a dock

Cape May is famous for their gingerbread houses
The winds continue to blow. Looking at the buoy in the middle of Delaware Bay, the winds averaged 25 mph with gusts to 28 mph all day long. So with that weather, we're still sitting in the marina. We did rent a car today and explored the area. We were interested in looking at the bay in all this wind but it appeared to be much calms than we expected. Now, it is a northeast wind which blows across the bay and now up or down but it didn't appear to be producing the 2 to 3 ft waves predicted, at least not on this side of the bay. So now we have to decide to either trust to the NOAA weather predictions or follow what we see, at least close to shore.

With a normal 4 ft high tide, not exactly 55 ft clearance!
The other consideration is getting under the two 55 ft bridges in the Cape May canal on the way to Delaware Bay. They are listed with a clearance of 55 ft at high tide but the height boards on the side of the bridge do not agree with that listing. I took a photo of the height board on the eastern bridge with a 4.0 high tide, the boards show clearance of a little less than 53 ft! (see photo) Since I need 55.3 feet to clear, that's a no go for me! Now some of this could have been affected by the high winds so to be sure I'll check the height board on the eastern bridge before leaving (I can see the board from the marina).

Here's the eastern bridge at a 4 ft high tide
Now everything is up in the air again. Can we go Tuesday? Wednesday? Thursday no long looks good with winds predicted to 30 kts later in the day and Friday is out of the question. We'll decide in the morning, always exciting.

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