#50 This post was originally “New York New York!”

However, we have been delayed. (The photo above is our friends on Enchanted Circle, who we hoped to get to New York with. They made it and got the iconic shot!)

Let me start with our trip getting to Cape May, NJ. We were socked in by rain and wind a few days at Delaware City Marina, which is a little bit annoying, but Cheryl turned it around by putting together a docktails/dinner at a local restaurant for all the boats waiting at the marina. We had Short Order, TinkerToy, TugAlong, Wiggle Worm, Alba, Why Knot, Coast, Sea & Air, Wade-ing Around, Betty Marge, Tortue de Mer, and Moonshine. A special guest was Foster Schucker, local harbor host, weather presenter, and all around good guy.

The marina won the AGLCA marina of the year recently, and we can see why. They were super accommodating, and at 4 pm almost every day they do a weather presentation so that boats can decide if they want to make the run down the Delaware Bay, which can be rough if you don’t time it right. That is really above and beyond.

Captain’s meeting at Delaware City Marina. This is extremely valuable, and hugely appreciated.

Stuck in the marina a couple of days, Cheryl got into the boat-cleaning mode. Is this a dedicated gal or what?

So all was good as we left the Delaware City Marina one morning and headed out into the Great Delaware Bay. It was foggy and rainy so very little visibility, but the seas were flat which is nice. As we got out I remarked to Cheryl that the boat was steering funny, easy to turn to the left, harder to the right. Hmm. We got out into the bay and I hit the gas to get up on plane and make some time, and, huh? Nothing. No go fast. As the kids say today, WTF? I stopped the boat and tried the starboard engine. All good, we had forward and reverse. Tried the port engine. Zilch. It wasn’t even churning the water. I popped the hatch and looked at the transmission and had Cheryl shift forward and back. All good, the prop shaft was turning ok. Again, WTF? Did the propeller FALL OFF? No way to know so we headed on down the bay, running on one engine. Got to Cape May and the marina where I hired a diver to jump in and see what the heck was going on. He came back up and said the propeller shaft had snapped off just in front of the propeller. We have no shaft and no prop. I gotta say it again. WTF? The diver said it was corroded partway through, as if it had been cracked a long time, and finally just failed. So. Now what? Well, we spend the next 24 hours talking to marinas, mechanics, locals, and other boaters, trying to find someone to get this repair going. We needed a prop, and a new shaft, which has to be custom made by a machine shop, and a marina to pull the boat, and a mechanic to do the work. The first marina we talked to, who I will name, was Utsch’s Marina. Totally unhelpful, even unfriendly. Almost antagonistic that we asked them to pull our boat. They have two marine lifts, but they showed zero interest in pulling us. Ok, forget that place then. So we went on to Canyon Club, a resort marina across the river. They were great. They no longer have mechanics as they have built condos and are now more of a resort than a working marina, but they were happy to pull us, and they found us a top-notch mechanic as well. Ok that’s wonderful, but we still need a prop and a shaft. Turns out the mechanic here, John, went to high school with the guy who owns the local shaft-making machine shop. Wow! What luck. So now we need a prop. Lead time on a new one is something like 4-6 weeks, and cost can be as high as $3000. I contacted an acquaintance on the west coast who has the same boat, asking for the specs on the props so I knew what to look for. Drum roll please…he had a prop! The correct side and size! It’s being shipped as I write, and he sold it to us at a very generous price. Holy cow, is our luck holding up or what? A million thanks to Tony on Caspian. This is really kind of crazy, how well all this came together. The shafts will take a couple of weeks to make, so we may be delayed say three weeks, but it could have been a whole lot worse. If that shaft had snapped while we were offshore in the Atlantic, miles from an inlet, well, that would have been bad. We do like having two engines, this is the third time that has saved the day.

We had been talking about a trip home but just didn’t see a way to find time to get that in. Well, that has been involuntarily decided for us, so once we get the boat over to the marina, we are flying home. It is not what I wanted, but it will be nice to get off the boat a while, and get things done at home that need doing. Gotta make lemonade when you get lemons, right? And it will be exciting to get back to the boat and head for New York, Canada, and Michigan.

This whole broken-prop thing made me realize something we all know, but sometimes takes a while to really learn. This is life. Obstacles and changes of plan and disruptions happen – all the damn time. Once you accept that, which it seems I couldn’t do when I was young, but now am pretty good at, life smooths out. 24 hours before we started looking for a repair we had no idea we’d be flying home, or that we’d find a great mechanic who had connections, or how we would solve this one. But like every other time in my life, you do solve it. Once a person learns that, and can keep that perspective when the s*** hits the fan, life sure gets easier.

Cape May is a really nice stop, forced or not. The entire town has been designated a historical site, the only town in America so designated. There are dozens of Victorian homes and buildings in town, so we took a tour that highlighted the history and architecture of these giant homes and hotels.

However, it is a tourist town. You have to pay to walk on the beach, and parking is at a premium. So much so that the only grocery store in town charges you eight bucks to park!

The view from our boat one night. This was at South Jersey Marina, folks who treated us very well. Great marina, showers, laundry, and even a free on-demand shuttle to downtown and back.

So here’s one way to look at this Looping experience. Check out my highly technical (but yes way oversimplified) chart. On the vertical axis is what I’ll call the “enthusiasm rating.” On the horizontal axis, time. When you “discover” the Great Loop, you are starting at the bottom left. Immediately things get interesting. So much to learn, so much excitement, so much to look forward to. That enthusiasm is off the scale, headed almost straight up. Awesome. Then you get the boat and actually start the Loop. Reality sets in. Now the enthusiasm rating becomes a variable. It goes up and down depending on what kind of day on the water you are having, what issues crop up, what new fun things come along, what the gorgeous sunset looks like. Every day, every week, has its ups and downs. In general, it is all positive, but you quickly learn that it is not all roses. Some days are challenging. So your enthusiasm rating begins to sink. Slowly, for sure, (my chart is compressed), but as you become real boaters, the gloss is off and now you’re living the life. As the trip progresses, this line naturally goes down, because you become more and more cognizant that the trip will in fact end one day.

See that little blue arrow? That’s the day you get home. The yellow line? That’s someone who completed the Loop with an enthusiasm rating still above the line. Still positive. That purple line? That’s someone who got home after they went negative. Their enthusiasm rating upon getting home was negative. The difficult times outweighed the rewarding times. So the goal of this trip is to keep your spirits and attitude up, or get home before one crosses into the negative zone!

(Just noticed something. This chart works for finances as well! You can either finish the Loop before you run out of money, or after. Once again, the goal is to get home before you get into the negative zone!)

Horseshoe crabs have always fascinated me. For one thing, they have blue blood. (Copper based.) They are living fossils that have crawled through Earth’s oceans for over 440 million years, meaning they survived the dinosaur extinction and predate trees by millions of years. Despite their name, they aren’t actually crabs at all, but are more closely related to spiders and scorpions. A compound in their blood reacts immediately to dangerous bacterial toxins, making horseshoe crab blood absolutely vital to modern medicine, as it is used worldwide to test the safety and sterility of everything from vaccines and intravenous drugs to pacemakers. Which of course means they have been harvested almost to extinction, however, recent work to preserve populations is making a difference.

More later, once we get back here and aboard the boat!

“Every dog you’ve ever seen riding in a car, head out the window, had absolutely no idea where it was going. Imagine living like that.”,