Leaving Atlantic City, the predicted forecast was for 4-5′ waves on our stern as we travel south to Cape May. Normally we wait for 2-3′ waves as 4-5 footers can be uncomfortable especially if they are on your beam. However, if we didn’t get out of AC on this particular day… the Atlantic zone between AC and Cape May will have waves in the 7’+ range which is nothing we wanted to travel in. So… Off we went…

The waves heights turned out to be OK and I grabbed a video of our bow wake as we headed out of Atlantic City.

We made good time heading south down the Jersey Shore. We increased speed to 12kts to add more stability to the boat.

Like most trawlers or motor yachts Simple Life has a square (hard chined) hull when you move aft. This is very common as most boats have a sharp V shape under the water at the bow and those steep V hull sides slowly turn horizontal or flat bottomed as you move from the bow to the stern of the boat. This means that the where the sides of the hull meet the bottom of the hull in the aft (rear) of the boat you have a near 90 degree corner.

Have you ever stuck you flattened out hand into the water moving past you while on a boat? If you have, your hand was thrust up and out of the water by the force of the water hitting your hand. If you try pushing your hand deeper into the water it gets pushed back up even harder. As the boat heels to one side or the other… one side of the boat is forced deeper into the water while the other side is lifted out of the water. The faster the oncoming water is hitting the bottom of the boat on the heeled-side the stronger it feels pushed back up, This has the effect of reducing the heeling motion. Likewise the side of the boat that is being lifted out of the water feels less buoyancy force pushing it up by the smaller section of hull still submerged. The forces work to return the boat to level.

If you take your captains class you will use a diagram like this with metacentric heights and righting moments. It’ll be a more formal discussion like the one found here.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Metacentric_height

Some times I just like to watch the prop wash that pops back to the surface after being pushed down by the boat riding over it.

We were approaching the Cape May inlet and we already knew that we would hit the Cape May Canal as it approached maximum ebb current. Not much we could do about that other than throttle up and push through.

We exited the Cape May Canal and made our way up the Delaware Bay. The ride north up Delaware Bay was uneventful and we passed almost no other boat traffic. Soon we were approaching our chosen anchorage in the Cohansey River. We circled for a bit checking depths before we dropped the hook for the night. We were treated to an amazing red sunset.

Our route for Winter 05 – Leg 006 looked something like this.