We have arrived at our destination for this leg of our journey. The bad news, now we have to close up the boat to return home. First item on the to do list is the laundry. This is where the Garmin comes in real handy. Ross punches a few things in and we know every Laundromat in the area!
Once our dirty work was out of the way, we took the rental car for a bit of sightseeing of Cape May, New Jersey. The homes as you get close to the ocean are fantastic!
Built generations ago for vacationing wealthy families, they were restored and many turned in to B&B’s. Many have now returned to being vacation homes for single families! Must be way bigger families than we come from. Most are gigantic.
We stopped for some lunch at a café along the beach. Many people were out enjoying the Jersey shore.
Richard and Carol Nick are Looper Harbor Hosts who graciously invited us to their marina. They live in a condo unit there overlooking the marina. Today is the final day of a half million dollar-fishing tournament and they thought we would enjoy seeing it. They were right!
The marina was filled with boats referred to as sportsfishers. Many are owned by individuals who hire a captain and crew and send them all over to enter fishing tournaments. The owners aren’t even on the boats. Plenty of these boats are worth a million bucks. Some even more.
The deal with the tournament is that it goes on for 5 days. Each boat can only fish a maximum of 3 of those days. These boats go out about 125 miles into the Atlantic to fish. Yep, these boats are fast!
Here is a marlin being weighed off one of the boats. It was small and not even in the running. As soon as it’s weighed they lay it on the dock and slit it open to make certain it was filled with ice or other objects to make it heavier. We’re talking about a lot of prize money and you better believe that people have been known to cheat. Heck, everyone knows how fishermen lie!!
The fish are then taken and cleaned. The meat is donated to food shelves and prisons.
After watching the weigh-ins of several fish, Richard and Carol invited us back to their condo. Why stand in the heat when Richard can bring up the live cam of the weigh in on his laptop and Carol has all these wonderful hors d’oeuvres for us?
There was a casualty on our walk back to the condo though. I was complaining to Carol about the sea gulls over at the marina where the Oddysea was. They must have heard me. GROSS! Although if I had been one half step faster I would have taken a direct hit!
Richard and Carol informed us of the ins and outs of tournament fishing. Each boat coming in flies flags which show what they have caught and if they released it or kept it. They get points for releasing fish too. This boat shows that they caught 8 blue marlin.
The lower flags show a fish with its bill angled down. This means they released it. The top flag show the bill angled up. That means they kept one. There are flags for tuna and other varieties of fish too.
Richard and Carol had two tickets for us to get into the tournament party. It was a large tent with a band and many different vendors. It was fun to look around and to people watch. One of the vendors sold watches and had an $80,0000 watch on display. Well actually it was $79,999.99! You know, even if I had a watch like that I’d still be running late.
Richard and Carol had tickets for the dinner. They went to pick up their plates and we found a table to sit at. When they returned, Richard gave us his plate of food! It was enormous and filled with Lobster, shrimp, chicken wings, crab claws, a slice of prime rib, hush puppies, and crab balls. We couldn’t finish it between the two of us! We didn’t think we were even hungry. But thanks for sharing Richard!!!
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