Virtual World--Life on the Inside of a Ping Pong Ball!

Waking up this morning in Manasquan, New Jersey, I can see maybe 100 yards which is reminiscent of the past couple of days.

After a wonderful visit to Annapolis and a memorable dinner at the Annapolis Yacht Club as Joe and Susan Dyer's guest, Joe and I departed on a rainy Wednesday morning with about 3 miles of vizibility. We traveled 76 miles up the Chesapeake, under the Bay Bridge and across the C&D Canal. At the far end of the Canal, we emerged on the

Delaware River, cruised a couple of miles upstream, and arrived on a dredged creek (think narrow ditch) hosting the Delaware City Marina. The creek had strong current on both the ebb and flood but the dockmaster, with more than two decades of on-site experience, excelled at getting boats landed, turned around, and docked. Lest you think we were in a metropolis, Delaware City has a population just north of 1900 people. It does offer a couple of small restaurants--fried and fried--a library and community center, and a school. By the way and please don't tell the Admiral, Joe and I have taste tested the fried oysters at almost every stop. Those at Kathy's Crab House, though fine, did not take home first honors--same for the hush puppies.

Yesterday (Thursday), we delayed our departure until about an hour after low tide to ensure we had enough water to exit the creek. Turns out we did. The Delaware Bay forecast lived up to its promise--less than a mile of visibility in fog, light winds, and waves 1-2 feet. We made good time on the 55 mile run during which we passed a nuclear power plant, a survey boat that politely requested a wide pass, several looper boats, and at least a couple of sailboats. Radar was handy. We didn't encounter large vessels until the mouth of the river where several ghosted by us in the fog. With the trails function on the radar turned on, they would be hard to miss--a very good thing.

Given the morning's forecast of 4-5 foot waves and fog off the Jersey shore, we had planned to overnight in Cape May at the foot of Delaware Bay. However, we stuck our nose out of the river to test the waters as they say. Yep, the forecast was right. But, it turns out that with the SeaKeeper turned on, Katahdin handled those conditions very well. What the heck, let's go to Manasquan--a 105 mile trip from Cape May. The mile or so of viz that we had rounding Cape May quickly deteriorated and, for much of our trip, the fog limited visibility to a quarter mile or less--for those of you who haven't experienced it, that's essentially zero visibility. Traveling at an average of 26.5 miles/hour, that visibility focuses the mind. You alternate between the virtual world of your radar overlayed chart and peering over the bow to see what might jump up out of the fog to bite you. We changed course a number of times to give other vessels a quarter to half mile berth; we never saw them except on radar. As for being bitten, at one point, a number of crab pots jumped up and we ran slalom through them. Causing more excitement, breakers sprung out of the fog as we passed Little Egg Inlet. A hard turn to starboard, a crash through one breaker, and we were out of harm's way. Speaking of a crash over a breaker, one of our on-board members held an ill-fated wish to fly as the 4-5 foot seas buffeted us. Sadly, she wound up dead.

About 7-8 miles from Manasquan, just as we encountered a large dredge pumping sand a few miles onto the beach, the visibility lifted dramatically and offered us 4-5 mile views. I had been worrying about running Manasquan Inlet in dense fog so this seemed a very good thing. As I looked ahead, however, a dense fog bank lay over Manasquan and as we approached we were once again in the thick of it. I had to use the chart and radar to line up between the jettys and plunge into the inlet without knowing what was there. Sure enough there were a couple of breakers, mercifully not huge ones, but at 15 knots we passed through them quickly and without incident. Unlike this morning where the visibility is less than a quarter mile even on land, once we got into the inlet last evening, the fog lifted. A lot of folks were fishing in the harbor and we wove our way through them to the marina.

We're heading to New York City today where we'll dock next to the World Trade Center site and meet Admiral Hewett for a metropolitan weekend. I'm thinking maybe we'll wait until 11:00 to depart--the dense fog advisory is in effect at least until then and at that time we should have a slack tide to reduce the breakers in the inlet .