CAPE MAY – It’s 10 a.m. on a cloud-free Cape May morning, and Captain Jeff Stewart Jr. is ready for another day as a Captain with the Cape May Whale Watcher, a marine-mammal spotting cruise business his family has spent their entire lives building. They have the fastest marine mammal-watching vessel in New Jersey, and Jeff claims that they have the highest spot rate of any whale-watching business in the county. What does it take to make it all happen?
A Worthy Vessel
Jeff took us aboard the Atlantis, a four-engine vessel rescued from the beaches of Puerto Rico. The boat, built in 1998 out of Patterson, Louisiana packs serious power; each of the four Caterpillar 3412 engines produces 1100 horsepower and together bring the boat up to 30 knots.
“The story of this boat is crazy, crazy, crazy,” Jeff told us as the boat left Cape May’s harbor, which skirts the only Coast Guard recruit training center in the nation. Nesting ospreys are a common sight here, too.
The boat was originally built for two seasonal purposes: to serve as a whale watcher in Bar Harbor, Maine part of the year and as a high-speed ferry from Fort Myers, Florida to Key West the rest of the year. It served this purpose for a scant three years, 1998 to 2001, before it was sold to Puerto Rico’s Maritime Transportation Authority in 2001.
“The Authority beat up the boat so badly that in 2011, just ten years later, it was taken out of service by the Coast Guard and beached on the sands near San Juan Harbor.”
A vessel like Atlantis costs about eight million dollars new, not the kind of machine you want to destroy in a decade. Boats this expensive are typically out-of-reach for a small family business like the Cape May Whale Watcher. But Jeff and his team don’t just set sail on boats, they repair and restore them top-to-bottom.
“I was looking at beaches on Google Maps when I saw the boat in 2015 – my father and I decided to pursue it all the way in Puerto Rico. If we didn’t rescue it, the boat was going to be cut up for parts. They might have gotten $100,000 for that,” Jeff said.
Jeff and his father flew out to Puerto Rico, bid on the vessel, and had it towed the entire length of the East Coast to Yank Marine in Tuckahoe, New Jersey. A team of Captains with the Cape May Whale Watcher – Captain Jeff, Captain Scott Wolf, and Captain Bob Francis – spent all of 2017 restoring the sorry vessel. This meant new shafts, new propellers, fixing the four engines, and cutting out 21 different sections of the ship’s bottom and welding new sections on.
The boat took to the seas as the Atlantis in 2018, with a fresh paint job and a new lease on life. Jeff and his team have spent their entire lives around boats, working on them, sailing them. Their ability to restore vessels like the mighty Atlantis lets them punch well above their pay grade.
Saving the Marina
Today, the Atlantis floats proudly at the Miss Chris marina, which sits just over the main bridge into Cape May. This is a district buzzing with nautical activity, but the marina itself was nearly dozed over to make way for condominiums aimed at second homeowners.
“The person who was going to buy the marina, well, their check bounced and we ended up buying it thanks to a last-minute Hail Mary. If we had not bought it, the whole marina would have been torn down and they would have built condos right up to Lucky Bones,” Jeff said.
Out to Sea
Jeff takes four cruises out onto the bay or ocean each day. Cape May’s position at the bottom of the New Jersey peninsula means that ill winds won’t keep a whale-watching cruise away. A strong northeast wind makes the ocean surf extremely choppy, something that a bayside cruise is sheltered from. A hearty northwest wind makes the bay tough to sail, but that means conditions on the ocean will be calmer.
“Our position on the bay lets us be versatile – I’m able to take 400 trips a year because of the way we can shelter from the wind.”
The Cape May Whale Watcher guarantees marine mammal sightings on every cruise. Jeff’s family has been doing this for so long that they have the routine down to a pat; they know what conditions bring dolphins to different locations along the Cape.
The Delaware Bay is especially rife with bottlenose dolphins. Cape May County is close to their northernmost hunting grounds – the same dolphins return to these warm waters year after year. Dolphins feed, mate, and birth here. Jeff said that one time his crew witnessed a group of over 500 bottlenose dolphins gathering in the bay.
On a late June trip, Jeff spotted about 50 dolphins by the WWII concrete bunker near Cape May Point State Park. Jeff said that he thinks he spotted Bubbles, a dolphin defect in its hump, among the pod. The slight recess in Bubbles’ back means that when he exhales he often does so just under the water’s surface, which leaves a trail of bubbles wherever he swims. Bubbles has been coming back to the Cape May bay for 3 years now. Triscuit, a bottlenose dolphin with a distinct fin, has been coming back for at least 7.
Whale-spotting trips are a lot longer than dolphin-spotting trips, at least 3 hours long. The Atlantis’ speed allows the Captains to take guests further out into the ocean.
Naturalists are often on board a cruise with the Cape May Whale Watcher. They carry massive cameras used to photograph, and identify, the dolphins. Cape May Whale Watcher is “Whale Sense” certified; Whale Sense is a NOAA-sponsored education program that operates somewhat like a certification program for whale-watching companies. Whale Sense-certified businesses have their entire staff go through training and evaluation to ensure responsible, non-intrusive marine mammal sighting practices.
Jeff hasn’t spent a summer off the boat since he was 8 years old. Jeff’s father, who goes by the same name, started out on the Big Flamingo boat in Wildwood Crest. Jeff’s mother runs the gift shop. His grandmother ran the main office for many years, a job now mostly handled by Jeff’s sister Bridget. His wife, when she is able, will help with the business when she can.
“It’s in our blood,” Jeff told us as our cruise came to a close. “We don’t just do this for a few months and then bounce off to Florida. A lot of people run their businesses that way, but we’re really in it. It’s in our blood,” he said.
Visit a trip with Cape May Whale Watcher at capemaywhalewatcher.com. They run cruises on one of their two vessels from March to December.
Contact the author, Collin Hall, at 609 886 860 ext. 156 or email him at chall@cmcherald.com
