Destination: Vulcan’s Rest

Have I mentioned that the main reason I agreed to doing the New Jersey coast was so that I could stop at the weaving store called Vulcan’s Rest in Chesapeake City? I kid you not that I was willing to endure almost any sailing conditions to get there, and luckily I made it there with almost no trauma!

Day 6, Sept. 16: Atlantic City to Cape May (#25)

Finally, a zephyr!  We motored most of the day down the coast of NJ, and I actually got to knit a fair part of the day!  This is a very good thing because no one, including me, likes to be around me after I’ve been emptied handed for a couple of days.  I have to admit that my knitting was something on the order of knit one row, look at the horizon and breathe deeply for a few minutes…..knit another row.  Still, it was better than not knitting.  I do realize that this paints me as somewhat of a fanatic, or an obsessive person.  Well, I’m officially calling the pot black.

We got into Cape May in the mid afternoon.  I’d been told that the anchorage is no where near the town, and boy was that right!  It was a long dinghy ride to shore, but both Bob and I were bent on having a walk to stretch our legs.  My dear friend June is always visiting her sister in Cape May, so I rather wondered where she lives!  I had also heard she has a boathouse right on the water for a summer cottage.  When we got ashore I found myself looking across at a lovely row of about eight vintage boathouses.  I had a feeling one of them had to be Stina’s.  I did try calling Stina since June had given me her number.  No luck….

Then Bob and I took a walk through a residential area that put us on the road right behind these boathouses.  The one I’d imagined Stina living in had a bright red Volkswagen bug parked behind it, and I imagined Stina driving this very car.  It seemed to fit with my image of her, even though I don’t know her at all.

We stopped and had a drink on a fake schooner-turned-cocktail bar in the harbor and then got back in our dinghy to head out to Pandora.  But as we left we just took one little turn by the boathouses.  There were two couples sitting on the deck of the one I had dubbed as Stina’s, and wouldn’t you know one of the women looked about the right age (80s).  So I decided to give a yell, “Are you Stina?”  And she was!  We were invited into this lovely boathouse that has been beautifully renovated to look very Swedish.  It was really wonderful!  My huge regret is that I never thought to get a photo of all of us together!  Stina is June’s fireball older sister and is almost 89 years old.  She has far more energy than even my 28 year old son, and she makes my energetic husband seem positively unconscious…. yes, I know what that means I look like in comparison to her!

Oh!  Wouldn’t you know that Stina’s boathouse is the very next house to the right that didn’t get included in this shot!  Could I have had worse luck??  And hers is even quainter than these….sigh…

To totally top things off, Stina asked us what we did when we came ashore, and when we mentioned getting a drink at ‘The Schooner’ she asked us if her granddaughter might possibly have been our waitress.  Of course we had no way of knowing, but Bob thought to check the receipt which showed our waitress was the granddaughter.  Pretty serendipitous!  We were meant to meet!

Day 7, Sept 17:  Cape May to Chesapeake City (#26 – 33)

In order to get the tides just right we got up at 4.45 this morning.  Ugh!  We left Cape May and went rather far out due to the shoaling around the tip of New Jersey, and then found our way into the shipping channel for the Delaware River. That was when we got the big payoff of a stunning sunrise which made me thankful for getting up today! It was 50 miles up the river to the C&D Canal (Chesapeake and Delware).  Today was truly zephyr breezes, and I finished the Flower Basket shawl!

I really don’t like how lace looks when it comes off the needles, before being blocked.  It’s so spongey and amorphous.  I will tackle blocking it on 0ur bed tomorrow!

The C&D Canal was a lovely ride, with lush greenery all the way to the water’s edge.  It had the feel of another century, when farms were all along both banks.  Some of the old farmhouses are still sitting along the banks, and some new suburban looking developments have also cropped up.  Everything was very verdant and peaceful.  Beautiful!  Very southern feeling.  I can only imagine how much more ‘southern’ its going to get in a few more weeks!

I got my stop at Vulcan’s Rest!  This was my much anticipated destination on this first part of our journey. I bought yarn….no kidding!

Lovely Chesapeake City….

A ship going down the canal right in the backyard!  Pretty amazing!

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