Three boats left the York River on Sunday the 19’th of June heading for Nantucket, MA — “Delphinus”, “Camden”, and “Elixir”. Delphinus left at 9am with George Jones, Rich Watkins, and Tucker VanDyck. Camden and Elixir left around 3pm with Larry and Maureen Davis and with Joran and Lin Gendell.

Delphinus left early enough on Sunday that we had to contend with a Gale blowing 60 to 75 miles off the Del Marva peninsula. We went inside the gale just off the coast in 25 – 30 knots of wind on the starboard beam in 3 – 5 foot seas and made excellent time up to the New Jersey boarder. We then crossed dead calm waters under motor until we picked up a good SE breeze near Atlantic City, NJ. We spent most of the day on Tuesday running along the outside of Long Island trolling for bluefin tuna and listening to radio Margaritaville on satellite radio. In the end, all we managed to get on the boat were several large bluefish in the 20 – 40 lb. range — these we threw back. We had a nice easy run Tuesday night and found ourselves at the harbor entrance to Nantucket at 7:45am Wednesday morning. We took down our sails and made our final scheduled SSB radio contact with Joran aboard “Elixir” at 8am. Captain and crew arrived happy and hungry for breakfast at our mooring ball at 8:30am. The initial gale and then the location of the SE breeze off Long Island kept us pretty close to shore so our actual track to Nantucket was 470 nautical miles vs. the rhumb line distance of 430 nm. Total trip time was 71 hours. In the harbor, we met a couple of Larry’s friends from Annapolis and we all enjoyed the town while waiting for Camden and Elixir to arrive.

Camden and Elixir left in the middle of the afternoon on Sunday the 19’th and had to deal with winds a bit more on the nose than we had. The pounding caused Camden some fuel problems and they had to put into the Harbor of Refuge at the northern tip of Delaware. They spent two days waiting out weather and fixing a fuel system problem before heading North once more and arriving safe and sound in Nantucket on Friday afternoon, the 24’th of June.

Starting Friday evening, my wife Denise arrived and we all spent a couple great days together on Nantucket before Camden and Elixir headed off once more. Denise and I stayed in Nantucket until the 5’th of July and then sailed to Edgartown on Martha’s Vineyard which is where we are now. We plan to slowly make our way back to Williamsburg sometime in the last week of July. It’s been a great trip so far and we’re still looking forward to Newport, Block Island, Mystic Seaport, and New York City. See you all soon.

George Jones
“Delphinus”
YRYC Vice Commodore