Heading back south

July 28 – August 20, 2024; 15547 nm and 1979 days after departure from La Rochelle   Since last October our big goal was to get to Maine to explore the whole beauty of the east coast. It was a long fascinating and exciting journey. Yet somehow it took us a bit by surprise when we realised that we had reached our destination and it was suddenly already time to turn. Our visa was going to run out in a few weeks (which meant we had to leave the country), Germany was calling and a looooot of boat work was waiting to get started. Already in spring we had found a marina in Deltaville Chesapeake which was approved by many other cruiser friends. There we wanted to do most of our planned projects and leave Altimate on the hard when travelling to Germany. Our new destination was roughly 700nm away from Rockland and we wanted to get there by beginning of September. Five full weeks sounded a lot of time at first but when cutting it down in smaller legs, it meant 140nm per week or 20nm a day. Quite some sailing! We decided to do rather big legs which meant longer passages including night sails than only day trips. Those overnight legs resulted into longer distances but of course gave us more time available to spent at the lesser number of anchorages. Kind of a win-win decision. That (and of course the favourable wind) was the reason why we headed directly the 145nm to Cape Cod. We left Rockland in the early morning hours and set the hook in the early afternoon the next day right in front of Province town.   as I did not dare to take pics of cool looking people on the streets I had to take a pic from a pic, though not all of the people looked like those on the pic but here and there we saw some fun examples   Located at the northern tip of Cape Cod, Provincetown (locals just called it “Ptown”) provided a protected anchorage, fairly easy access to shore and a fun vibe. We learned it was the land of lighthouses, lobster and the largest LGBTQ+ community that side of the Mississippi. I read, that for almost a century, gay and lesbian traveler had made Ptown a destination. There they had found a bohemian culture that embraced them-and they had embraced the town right back. Strolling through town we could feel the colourful spirit and energy drawn by the LGBTQ+ community. We loved that! It was a different but very special place with lots of crazy interesting people and more clothes shops for men than for women! Has anybody ever seen that before anywhere? I haven’t! Oh and the juicy shops had extraordinary cool clothes quite often with a sweet sexy touch. It was so much fun to do window shopping in Ptown! Just a pity I couldn’t persuade El Capitano to try some of the outfits 😁. Apart from all the LGBTQ+ scenery the town was like many others along the east coast – very picturesque. The small, pretty houses were wonderfully framed by their fondly designed and flower filled gardens. The Main Street filled with clothes shops, souvenir shops, restaurants, bars and at least one ice cream parlor. The only difference to other towns were the many rainbow flags next to the US flags.   fancy a kilt?   I do like sexy short shorts, I really don’t know why Norbert didn’t want to try that, it looked so sweet!   We were happy to have had the opportunity to finally visit Ptown as we had missed that on our way up. Yet after three nights we moved on to the village of Marion. That day trip of 43 nm made us leave just after sunrise to get in time to the Cape Cod Canal entrance for the right tide change. The current let us speed once again through the canal and in the afternoon we set the hook at the bay of Marion/Buzzards Bay in front of an islet named Ram Island. We had picked that anchorage as a sailor friend which we had met once in San Blas happened to live close by. Susan offered to pick us up and take us to a nice restaurant somewhere in the vicinity of Marion. Such opportunities were always welcomed by us. No doubt we had a great day catching up and enjoying a surprisingly good meal!! Thank you Susan for taking us!!!! Marion btw was another pretty village but the fun part for me was that it reminded me the whole time of my friend Marion from Germany. As the village name was marked everywhere, General store Marion, Marion garden group, Marion monument… I just couldn’t stop thinking of her. That was pretty funny. Hi Marion🤗, hope you’re doing well!!!   you were mentioned just everywhere, Marion   Only two nights later we moved on heading further south to an anchorage at Point Judith. It turned out to be a long day (45nm) with not the most favourable weather. So we were happy and relieved that we had managed to set the anchor just before anew fog had caught up with us. A white humid wall had risen out of nowhere- again! I have no idea how we would have managed to anchor only a quarter of an hour later. We were so damn fed up with fog, I can tell you! At least the next morning the fog was a little less dense that we dared to leave. The weather forecast was not optimal for the next coming days but we wanted to get going as a hurricane was crawling up the Caribbean and potentially as well up the east coast. Therefore we wanted to get to Port Washington to be in a safe area and went for another overnight leg. It was a tough trip with unfortunately a lot of thunder and lightning -of course at night- but we made good progress (120nm) and arrived safe and sound in Port Washington(PW) the 4th of August. There we spent five mostly relaxing days before we moved on. On our first day we were eager to once again visit the big apple and on our last day we got hit by the remnants of the hurricane Beryl. That was somehow scary exciting. It was the first time ever that we had experienced such strong winds. 48knots in gusts! Absolutely enough for my taste! Even though the bay of PW was well protected, shallow and the fetch was short the strong winds let us rock like a nutshell. Apart from that and a lot of rain we were good.   that was in the Long Island Sound heading to PW before sunset and before the lightning and thunder started- at least we could actually sail!!!   The next 200nm we wanted to do in one go. From PW through the East River, passing the famous statue, down the NY bay, along the New Jersey coast and up into the Delaware bay. Thanks to Beryl the next couple of days the wind was supposed to be low and sometimes even coming from the north. That was probably the best weather window we would have for the next coming week to head south. So off we were leaving at noon-time to leverage the current of the East River. It was a beautiful sunny day for travelling which felt especially amazing after the scary experience the day before. With all the exciting buildings to watch and the hustle and bustle on the river and in the bay of NY the first 40nm passed by in a blink. In the evening we were already sailing down the New Jersey coast. Before sunset of the following day we had surprisingly fast reached Cape May with the luck of having the tide just changing in our direction. So we could look forward to a rather fast sail. That coming night was super exciting! The Delaware bay was quite shallow in a lot of areas and scattered crab pots also an issue. So to make our night shifts a bit easier we took the official waterway. No crab pots and the water deep buuuut many big ships. It was so busy that about every 15min a boat would overtake or pass us. Super big ships passing little Altimate only a few meters as the waterway was pretty narrow. Sometimes they hailed us to let us know that they were coming and which side they would pass. I thought that was very kind of them – as it felt safe to know that they did see us as well!! That excitement kept us easily awake the whole night!   that was the kind of ship passing us at night time, only that the ships were much closer   Originally our plan was to anchor somewhere in the Delaware bay. But it turned out that we could reach the Chesapeake Canal in time for the perfect current which was at sunrise. What a lucky trip! Of course we took that opportunity, jumped on the magic carpet and just kept going the last 10nm to Chesapeake City. At 8:30am we arrived in that little bay and even got a space at the free public dock with Altimate. What a luxury!!! Normally it was only allowed to stay 24 hours at the dock. But when we talked to the dock master and told him we came the whole way from NY in one, leg he let us stay two nights. Sweet guy! Our next stop, only a day trip away was the friendly village of Rock Hall. It was nice for a change to go back to places we had been before. Knowing our way around made life easy. We felt like being on holidays and did not really do much. Only we took advantage of the free bicycles and enjoyed 5 days of not travelling. Monday the 19th of August we sailed the short trip to Annapolis. From there it was only 100nm to go to Deltaville and we still had two weeks time.