Post #12: Prediction: “It’s only going to rain a little bit”

Saturday, September 26, 2020        

                                                                                                                                                                                                               We left the Cohansey River at 6:30 am to take advantage of favorable currents helping us go up the Delaware River and then through the Chesapeake & Delaware Canal (the C&D for short).  We were a trio of boats weaving through the crab pots at the entrance to the Cohansey.  But sure enough, like their Maine counterparts, the crabbers were already hard at work:

Visibility was shortened given the low ceilings and intermittent showers.  However, we couldn’t miss the Salem nuclear power plant belching steam 24/7.

It took us 3 hours to reach the C&D canal. Although first imagined in the 1600s by Czech (I knew you’d be impressed, Martha) cartographer Augustine Herman, the 14-mile-long C&D was still just an idea until Benjamin Franklin took up the cause in the 1780s. There were surveys, financiers and speculators and digging got underway—until the money ran out.  Finally, in 1822, Delaware, Maryland, and Pennsylvania raised the funds to complete the project.  Men with shovels and pickaxes dug for 7 years until the canal was 10 feet deep and 66 feet wide.   Two hundred years later, the C&D has a minimum depth of 27’ and 450’ width.  It now carries 40 % of the commercial shipping traffic between Philadelphia and Baltimore.                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                      

It rained much of the way along the canal but at the end we saw our first glimpse of the famed Eastern Shore of Maryland, land of farms and manor houses:

It finally brightened about 3 p.m. and we took in the long view from the northern end of the Chesapeake Bay, our country’s largest estuary and a priceless natural resource we need to protect.

We turned into the Sassafras River about 15 miles south of the canal.  We were intrigued to read of a secluded anchorage where someone had counted 13 bald eagles in 2017! Unfortunately, the heavens opened up with a deluge just as we were setting the hook so we’ll look for those eagles in the morning.

My goodness, rain on the canvas enclosure sure is loud but we are glad to be outside and still able to keep dry.