Into Delaware!

This is day 3 of the journey, and this little town of Delaware City is quaint. One of the photos shows Breaking Away docked in the Delaware City Marina, where we'll stay this afternoon and tonight. This is the course of the original Chesapeake-Delaware canal from 1829! In 1927 they moved this eastern end of it a mile south. Another photo shows a section of the original narrow canal, where mules or horses pulled the barges along. This is right where the canal began from the Delaware River, which we are on but just out of the main channel (a mile wide here).

Another photo shows a huge freighter yesterday as we were approaching the canal, and it was leaving it headed into Chesapeake Bay. It was from Goteburg, Sweden. Notice how calm the water was!! It was totally glassy all the way to Georgetown. Amazing considering how windy and churned up the bay was the day before.

The picture of me is when we were in the canal, about to go under two of the six bridges. The canal was widened in this century to 450 ft, and made level between the two bodies of water so that there are no locks anymore. In the canal, it was calm water but we had a tail wind, allowing us to go 10 mph at 1600 rpm, vs 6 mph at the same rpm when we exited the canal and turned into the strong wind of the Delaware River.

I just finished a walking tour of this historic and OLD town. You can tell the citizens are proud, though, as almost every home and building are preserved and cutely done up. I took about 20 photos of homes because of their decor and unique architecture. So many of them were from the early to mid 1800s. The old hotel facing the entrance to the river/canal from the Delaware River had naked mannequins in the windows of the third floor, to jokingly recall the days when it lured sailors into the comforts of port.

When we arrived, we thought we were going to spend only a couple hours and then continue up the Delaware, getting closer to Philadelphia. Alas...the learnings of being dependent on the weather! I barely could dock Breaking Away, as I was facing a strong wind and the channel is extremely narrow. Bruce did a great job, but he's only one person! I leaped out the side door next to the lower helm to assist, but you have to hope for the best if the wind decides to gust. We pulled and tied and pulled, and finally got it secured. A landing like that prompts one to ask locals for advice, and before you knew it, we decided to stay here even though it was only 1:00 pm. But in hindsight, I'm glad because the walking tour was fabulous, and tonight's dinner promises to be worth the wait.


Earlier in the day we anchored in a little cove off the beginning of the canal, Cheaspeake City. We took the dinghy to a little dock, and walked to the C and D Canal Museum. Wow, it was really interesting! The building is exactly the pump house from where they had to pump water into the lock, and the HUGE pump/waterwheel are still there. The museum showed how the canal was built (2600 men digging and hauling dirt), changed over the years, and problems such as caving in of the muddy sides and ships crashing into the bridges. It originally had four locks, but now none. The canal reduces by 300 miles the distance a ship would need to travel to Baltimore, and they said that the canal saves 40 million gallons of fuel because of this shortcut.

Yesterday we left the little marina I had taken shelter in on our first afternoon, and as I mentioned, the bay was completely glassy. We got to leisurely sight-see the mansion estates along the water, all the way to Georgetown. Once there, we anchored in the river across from six different marinas. By then we couldn't wait to eat lunch, and it was one of those times when your goal eludes you. At the first dock where we landed the dinghy there was no restaurant, but she advised that the next one over did. We moved, tied up again, walked up the steps salivating, but alas, closed until 4 pm. So, back in the dinghy, up to the end marina closest to the bridge. Certainly the deli/pizzeria was open! We finally got there, and no, closed on Tuesdays and Wednesdays. In desperation, we asked the first person we saw where we could eat? Hmmmmm, maybe the Kitty Knight Inn across the bridge and up the hill over there is open. So, off we trudged, with the heat beginning to get to us. It looked promising as we got there since we saw people inside eating. "Sorry, no, that's a special group. We don't open for lunch until next week. About a half mile more there is a restaurant." We started off, but when it was an empty road as far as we could see, we just about slumped to the ground. Then Bruce uttered one of his favorite lines (those who know him will laugh cuz it's true), "Give me a fricken break!" And his "prayer" was answered!!! The waitress from the Kitty Knight came up and said she could make a lunch just for us!! I can only imagine how hopeless we appeared. Anyway, the pastrami Reuben sandwiches were great, and we read the history of the Inn. In the War of 1812, the British were burning everything in Georgetown but Kitty Knight would NOT leave the house, where she was caring for an invalid. Supposedly she declared, "If you burn this house, you will burn me too"...and the house (1755) was spared.

We got back to the boat and cruised up to the final anchorage in the North Chesapeake Bay, Bohemia River. It was calm as we dropped anchor all alone there, in a beautiful setting with forested green in one direction, and mansions/estates in other directions. It felt good to have a calm evening with nothing around but the generator, dinghy, TV, computer, cell phones, ipod...you know what I'm saying. hahaha