One more day!

We are leaving home tomorrow and spending the night on the boat. We'll leave Sunday morning for our first leg of the trip, to Cape May. The weather forecast could not be better! I've been tracking it all week, and it looks like we lucked out so far.

Sunday morning forecast - no rain in Baltimore, perfect temps. A great start!

The Delaware Bay is known for strong currents and about 5 feet of tide, so timing the approach is useful. Looking at the tide tables for where the C&D Canal meets the Delaware Bay at Reedy Point, high tide is at 12:29 pm, so that's when we want to arrive there, and hope to ride that tide all the way down to Cape May, saving us fuel and a faster, smoother ride than we would have against the tide. So, I think casting off around 9:00 a.m. should be about right. As long as we don't get a strong SouthEasterly wind, we should be fine.

High tide at Reedy Point at 12:29 pm 

Yesterday, I flushed the water tanks and filled up with 210 fresh gallons of water. We won't drink that water, but it's used for showering, washing dishes and fruit, and hosing down the boat. Today, we are going to fill the fuel tanks, which take 581 gallons of diesel, and tomorrow afternoon, I'll pump out the waste tanks, so the boat will be as ready as can be.

I went over all of the systems with a mechanic yesterday, checking the oil levels on the engines and the generator, inspecting all the systems, cleaning out the air filters and water strainers, and loading spare parts onto the boat. 

We have been bringing our supplies and clothes onto the boat over the last several days and unpacking, so we will not have too much to bring tomorrow when we move aboard for three weeks. We will do some shopping for food and other provisions tomorrow, and there is supposed to be a musical act on the party pad by our boat in the evening, so we will enjoy that before we go to bed for the last time in Baltimore until the end of July.

It's getting real!