July 29-Aug 1 - Cape May, NJ

In Cape May, we stayed at South Jersey Marina. This is another first class marina that caters to boats small to mega. There was no swimming pool, but each day they bring the morning paper with fruit to your boat.

If you look on a map, you will see that Cape May, NJ sticks out on a point between the Delaware Bay and the Atlantic Ocean. The goal is to make the run to New York. Although there is an intercoastal in NJ, for a boat the size of Grand Fromage, this route is not recommended. The alternative is a 130 mile run out in the Atlantic. Almost all loopers live in dread of this segment and stew about it for months.

Although we were eager to spend time exploring the town of Cape May, we were also looking for favorable conditions to make the Atlantic run to New York. It was a lovely, warm day when we arrived in Cape May. This was very positive. We awoke the second day to thick, dense fog. This was very negative. As an aside, coming from northern California, fog means cold, damp, drizzly conditions. The fog in Cape May looked like a familiar situation, but it was warm.

Fog....egad....how do you predict it? We could check out weatherunderground and other weather sites to get a pretty good idea of storm possibilities and wind. Fog, how do you know? We did manic google searches to learn about fog, dew point, ocean temperatures vs air temperature. I became the instant queen of fog knowledge. I became steeped in fog prediction lore. The next day showed all the conditions I had learned would produce grey, dense fog and it was gorgeously clear.

A beautiful boat docked next to us...a real classic. It was an 80 foot Trumpy named SS Sophie.
We became friends with John, Aimee and Servern ....captain, first mate and first dog. They have traveled between Nantucket and Floria many times. John told us that his read of the weather indicated that Aug 1 was going to be ideal. They invited us to follow behind them, but this was not a practical solution because they planned a departure much later in the morning.

When we weren't studying the weather, we toured Cape May...known for quaint victorians and birding. Here are a few of the victorians:


We rented a car to visit some of the well known birding hot spots. While too early for the fall migration, we did see some black skimmers. I had looked forward to visiting the Cape May Bird Observatory in order to shop for new binoculars. A very knowledgable young man helped me to methodically select the pair right for me. I am thrilled with my choice - Swarovski 10x32 EL.

While we had the car, we stopped by the grocery store for a little provisioning. We encountered a first...a pay lot for the grocery store. Only the first half hour is free. There are so many tourists in Cape May that we figure it was a defense move to keep people from using the lot for all day sightseeing.