Thursday, June 5, 2008

We're Off - Finally!

The first cruise day of our voyage into the future was Thursday, June 5. And it couldn't have come soon enough. We departed Summit North Marina at 1000 hrs thus ending the longest "good bye" in modern civilization. You know you've stayed too long when the dock neighbors start saying, "You still here?" We waved goodbye to Summit North Marina and hello to the world of adventure. It was a beautiful smooth-water cruise to Cape May, NJ. Just when we thought we'd seen the last of dock B for awhile, one of our dock neighbors, Captain Ron, comes zinging by us delivering a boat from New York to Maryland. Dock B is everywhere!

Jim and Robin Roberts are our cruising buddies for the trip to Nova Scotia. They are experienced cruisers, good teachers, fun people, and seem happy to act as our training wheels when needed. Their boat is identical to ours which means that they can give us advice on all sorts of things like the inverter which currently screams when the microwave is turned on while underway. Yes, Vicki's intentions of quiche for lunch were thwarted - drat! Friend Rick Tierney also gave some good advice about the inverter (Vicki was soliciting ideas from anyone - she really wants that quiche)--Rick's sage advice was "Read the manual"! Ya gotta love common sense.

Anchoring wasn't in the picture. The lone anchorage in Cape May harbor was already filled with boats - overfilled actually - they were sticking out into the channel and the commercial boats were not too kind about that on the radio. So, we headed for the Canyon Club Marina, arriving at about 7:30. The first cruise day was celebrated with champagne and lentil soup aboard Tidehiker. It was, as we'd hoped, a good start.