July 19-20, 2018 VA to Delaware Bay passage

7-19 Thursday

Before leaving today, we made water.  Yesterday, we noticed water in the bilge in front of the engine compartment.  We didn’t notice any water leaking as we made water.  

We left the anchorage at 11:00am.  There were a lot of interesting ships today.  The Monterrey 61 guided missile cruiser passed by.  Impressive!  It took us about 3 hours to get to the mouth of the Chesapeake and open water.  Usual shifts Dave at 8:30 pm. Me at 1:00 am.  I love the sunrises when I am on watch.  From about 5-6:00 am, a ton of fishing boats crossed our path.

lighthouse outside of Fort Monroe

cargo ship and fishing boat

cargo and sailboat, if we all obey the rules of the water, we make it through ok

cargo ship passing

you can see how containers can fall off of boats-big hazard for us

too close for comfort

every geometric shape is a boat, and there are smaller boats without AIS signals

glad they know where they are going

guided missile cruiser

south shore of entrance of the Cheasapeake

 
 

amazing color changes with the sunrise this morning

 
 
 
 
 
 

7-20

We started entering Delaware Bay about 1:00 pm and were anchored by 2:00 pm at Henlopen Bay on the south side of the entrance.   We had considered going all the way to Sandy Hook, New Jersey, but the weather was turning for the worse.  Plus we needed to repair our fuel and water leaks.

We are finding water in the engine compartment.  Dave checked the stern of the boat inside the lazarettes after we were anchored to see if the water was coming in from that direction.  Nothing obvious.  

Along the way, we noticed the bladder was leaking fuel.  While we were at sea, the bladder had  shifted and one of the tie down straps damaged the drain valve.  We had fuel “diapers” on board.  Dave had bought a lot of them and almost left some in storage.  We were glad to have plenty of them.  Dave rotated the bladder while under way to have the drain valve in a higher position.  Then we kept the valve wrapped in diapers and replaced them as needed.  

entrance of Delaware Bay

fuel diapers