We were up before the sunrise at our anchorage at the mouth of the Delaware River. Today we have to travel a little over 50 miles up the Delaware River where we will anchor for the night just behind Reedy Point Island. The challenge with the Delaware River is the current. Unfortunately given the timing of the tide with the available daylight hours that we have to travel, we will have to fight a ebb tide that is going down the Delaware River while we are trying to go up the Delaware River. To try to maximize as much of a favorable tide as we can get, we got up to leave at first light to make our journey.

We are bright eyed and bushy tailed and ready to go.

The Delaware River is a major commercial shipping area for boats that are transiting to the Chesapeake and parts of Pennsylvania. They grow them big here.

See that sailboat in the photo? The boat is named Shanti. We had a bit of a challenge sailing near Shanti. He seemed to be alone aboard the boat and he started way over to the right hand side of us. He can gradually over to us on the left and just kept coming and coming, not seeming to care if he would run into us or not. Eventually he passes us and then immediately slowed down directly in front of us. What the heck?!? So, he calls us on the radio to ask what speed we are going and asks if we want to pass him???? He continues to go slow so we end up passing him on the right, which put us between him and a light house. As soon as we got on his side, he not starts to move to his right and is coming right into us and pushing us toward the light house to avoid a collision with him. Can you say boat rage??? We are now wondering what his problem is. We finally just hit the throttle to get past him quickly and be done with the games. Immediately he slows down considerably and falls way behind us. We see another sailboat coming up behind him and we watched as he repeated this pattern of behavior with the next boat behind us. Weird…..

We spent the rest of the day slogging up the Delaware River and fighting the sometimes 2 – 2.5 knot current. We motor sailed the entire day since we needed to motor to keep our speed up. There were a lot of sailboats out on the river today, all heading the same direction we are.

We got to our location behind Reedy Point Island around 5 pm. We had to navigate into a narrow channel marked by a red and green bouy with just enough room to get behind the rock walls on either side that takes you behind Reedy Point Island. There was one boat in the anchorage when we arrived, however as the evening progressed we had at least 4 other boats that pulled into the anchorage. One of the boats that pulled into the anchorage were some friends that we were stranded with on the Erie Canal. It was Jason and Sherry aboard their Island Packet.

To give you an idea of the current in the anchorage, here is a photo of our anchor bridle in the water with the current running past it. We are anchored! Sorry the picture is a little blurry.

Normally sailboats will lie facing the wind when at anchor. However in this case we were pointed into the current. Once the tide turned later in the evening the boat turned around 180 degrees to face the other way.

It was a beautiful anchorage.

And a spectacular sunset!

Tomorrow we transit the C&D canal.