Greetings from Trudie

Hi everyone.
You have been hearing from David, so I thought you might want to hear a woman's point of view !! During my first day at sea, looking in all directions I rarely saw another boat, and realized if anyone wants to "get away from it all" they should definitely go to sea. Saturday was my first nighttime watch. It was actually quite enjoyable, and very peaceful. Huge barges were anchored at sea 50 miles from the coast. It was difficult to judge their distance from our boat and also if they were moving or anchored. Everything looks so much different at sea in the dark, and there was no moon to light the way. But the black sky had millions of stars that made for the largest planetarium show I have ever seen !! The Carnival Cruise Lines broke the night's ambiance by leaving NY Harbor with noise and the brightest lights imaginable. They looked like huge slot machines going into the night. On Sunday, we had a very pleasant day on the water. There was no wind and we could not sail, but it was warm and sunny. We needed a quiet day for some mini naps to catch up on our lack of sleep the night before. We saw millions of blue jelly fish float by in the water, and we saw Atlantic City, which looked like a bunch of huge monoliths jutting out of the water. We approached Cape May just as the sun was setting, and it was so beautiful. We couldn't wait to get into the harbor and get anchored so we could finally relax. Monday morning we motored into the marina where we were able to catch up on cleaning the boat, and doing laundry. There is a saying in the cruising community that the definition of cruising is repairing your boat in exotic places. Well, I have something to add: it is also cleaning and doing laundry in exotic places. I am thinking of writing a guidebook entitled " A Cruiser's Guide to The Best Laundromats on the East Coast". I think it will be a bestseller !!
We have had 3 Goldstar Days on this trip so far. A Goldstar Day means that we have not spent any money during that 24 hour period. But I think that we made up for those days while in Cape May. We had to reprovision the boat for the next full week, and, of course, had to replenish our beer supply. We had one beer left !!
Tomorrow morning we will head out early for our next adventure. We are heading up the Delaware River through the C + D canal to the Annappolis area, and it will take us two days, stopping along the way to anchor at night.
We don't know when or where our next internet connection will be, but hope to be in touch again soon.