September 13. We were up and underway at 0600 hours. The tide at the inlet will be ebbing so we’ll get sucked out the inlet and into the ocean. The only downside of this is that we’ll be transiting the channel to the inlet at just about low tide. The last time we went through this channel we bumped the bottom but were able to force our way through. Today, not so much.

We hit bottom at the same place we did last time except this time we were good and stuck. As the parade of fishing boats sped past we tried to use their wakes to bounce our way along and get going again. No dice. We had to call Tow Boat US and they showed up after about 30 minutes and towed us free of this series of speed bumps. We’ve traveled about 4000 nautical miles and this is the first time we needed to be towed free from a grounding. In our home waters no less.

Once free of the bottoms clutches we were on our way to the inlet again. The time spent “parked” cost us our shot at the last of the ebb tide so it was a little slow heading out the inlet into the newly flooding tide.

Once clear of the inlet we turned south towards Cape May. The breeze was between 3 and 8 knots so we were forced to motor sail the entire way. It was so pleasant I was able to take the time to fix a problem that my professional electrical “technicians” left behind. It wasn’t so bad and with the little bit of lift from the sails we were able to drop the hook in Cape May by 1700 hours. We anchored among 6 other cruising boats after a pleasant 75 mile day.