Leaving Philadelphia
As we paddled away from Philadelphia's sky scrapers the Delaware River began to widen. Industry lined the river, and the chatter on the VHF radio kept us on the lookout for commercial traffic. The winds were calm and the temperature sky rocketed to 50 degrees! After a few hours of fighting the tidal currents the tide began to ebb and push us towards the ocean. We clipped along at 5.5 miles an hour and life was good.
We spotted a huge tanker heading north and moved a safe distance out of the channel. It was moving at a good clip and a minute or two after it passed we bobbed up in down in the 5 foot rollers created by its bow wake. Sig road them well and we didn't ship a drop. Everything calmed down for a minute and then the tanker's rear wake hit us just as the refracting waves from the bow wake that bounced off the shore hit us. Sig bucked and turned like a bull trying to fling a rider off its back. It only lasted a minute but it was a wild ride. Once again Sig didn't ship a drop and we paddle on as the sunset behind the steaming smoke stacks towering above the industrial landscape.
We paddled into the darkness for several hours before meeting up with Olivia and driving to our friends Jay and Lanie's house. Jay paddled with Amy and I on the Amazon River for 5 weeks back in 2008 and we had not seen him since that trip. It has been fun to reconnect with him and meet his wife Lanie. We have connected with so many wonderful people on this journey. It reaffirms the fact that 99.9 % of people are kind and generous. The media often focuses on the .1% and it can be easy to forget about all the good in the world. The million acts of kindness happening all the time that to often go uncelebrated.
