Back to NYC and up the Hudson River

August 8 was the opening ceremony for the Beijing Olympics and we were able to watch some of it while on the mooring ball back in Port Washington. We were there again to reconnect with Kyle. He came in on the train to begin Part II of his Loop experience. The next day we did the reverse trip from Long Island Sound to NYC via the East River. It was fun having Kyle along on this portion. He enjoyed sailing under the bridges he’s driven over so often and getting a different perspective of other familiar places in Brooklyn and Manhattan. Hell Gate wasn’t “hellish” this time either; the trick is leaving at the right time to have the tide in your favor.


We turned into the Hudson River at the tip of Lower Manhattan with another view of Lady Liberty. This was new territory for us seeing Manhattan from the west side of the island. We got a mooring ball at the West 79th Street Boat Basin for $30. It was a great location right at Riverside Park where there were lots of bikers, joggers and families out for a stroll – great for people watching. This was the first mooring ball in a long time that had a dinghy dock instead of a water taxi so that’s how we got to shore to see some of the Upper West Side of Manhattan.

This is the view looking north toward the George Washington Bridge from our mooring ball. Believe me it wasn’t always this peaceful! The basin is well known for rough water and we did our share of rocking and rolling from the passing tows and other boat traffic. We knew it was only for a night so we weren’t too bothered by it.

We had a great lunch at a place Kyle knew, Niko’s on Broadway at W. 77th Street. Then we walked to a little bakery and had what we thought to be the best cookies in the world! We walked some more and saw part of the west side of Central Park. I’d seen this balloon on TV a few times on the Today Show so I got a kick out of seeing it “in person”. People were out in rowboats on this little lake in the park - one of several. Building such a large park right in the center of Manhattan Island seems like a brilliant idea to me.


Kyle showed us the Dakota Building where John Lennon was killed and where Yoko Ono still lives. It was also the film location for "Rosemary's Baby". We picked up a few groceries at a packed little market and visited a wine store. No celebrities were sighted.

Monday it was time to head north up the Hudson. This is a view of the famed George Washington Bridge between Manhattan and New Jersey.

This was momentous for us as our boat insurance rates drop considerably once we’re under this bridge! We went past Yonkers, another place where Kyle lived during grad school. Just north of there is the northern border of New Jersey. New York is on both sides of the Hudson from here on. The next famous bridge was the Tappan Zee, another name of Dutch heritage. This area is the setting for Washington Irving's "The Legend of Sleepy Hollow". In fact, in 1996, North Tarrytown, NY changed its' name to Sleepy Hollow and the author is buried in the cemetery there. We were able to sail a lot of the way as the river is quite wide – 3 miles at the widest point with high bluffs on either side - beautiful scenery. Water depths reach over 100 feet here.

This is an area familiar to Kyle; he and Lizzie enjoy hiking near here. This is Bear Mountain Bridge where the Appalachian Trail crosses the Hudson River.

We anchored off a county park in Haverstraw Bay near Croton and had a much more peaceful night. Kyle really enjoys the peace and quiet and wide-open spaces. It’s therapeutic for the city dweller who grew up in rural Wisconsin.

It was mainly a motor trip on Tuesday; part of it in some heavy rain. The West Point Military Academy is very impressive from the water. Paul had visited there in the sixties for his Brother Jim’s graduation. It’s no longer possible to dock your boat and tour the academy but we would have loved to do that. Kyle voiced his opinion by yelling "War is not the answer!" while we passed by, but I don't think anyone heard him!

Here are some of the helicopters we saw airlifting cadets in training.

We went about 42 miles to the Hyde Park Marina just past Poughkeepsie. We passed Vasser College on the east bank of the river and saw two of their sculling boats gliding down the river. Capt. Joe was there to greet us. We felt a bit dwarfed docked behind “Blue Sky” at 103 feet!

On Wednesday Capt. Joe (what a character) gave us a ride and we toured FDR’s boyhood home and museum and library just a few miles away. It was all very interesting and informative learning more about his presidency from 1933 to 1945. Here’s part of the front of the home.

We learned that the Dutch pronunciation of Roosevelt would be Roosenvelde which means garden of roses. It's appropriate then that the gravesite of FDR, his wife Eleanor, and favorite dog Fala, contains many varieties of roses, all of them beautiful.

Then it was a last farewell to Kyle. It was fun having him share a few more days of the trip with us. Capt. Joe gave us a lift to the train station in Poughkeepsie and Kyle was off to Grand Central Station in NY, then the subway to Brooklyn.


Here’s the view north from the marina where we stayed two nights. The scenery is gorgeous here.
It was just a half day trip for us to the Hop-O-Nose Marina on Catskill Creek where we’re having the mast taken down for the Erie Canal. The sails are off and bagged and Paul will work on re-building the supports this afternoon. This is where he really envies the Loopers in their trawlers who don’t have all this work taking down their masts; however, we wouldn’t trade them their bills at the fuel dock!

Misc:
It was interesting to be in the NY area when all the Brett Farve hubub was going on. We bought a "Newsday" in Long Island with a full page picture of Brett with “JET FARVE” in huge green letters. TV covered his meeting with Mayor Bloomberg but he wasn’t presented the key to the city – yet! What a strange turn of events.

All for now from Catskill, NY.

Adventures on Long Island

On Tuesday we crossed to the northern side of the Sound. We came up the Norwalk River and tied up at the Visitors Dock in Norwalk, Connecticut. We mainly explored the So No (South Norwalk) part of town and ate at the Brewhouse. When Paul ordered their own microbrewery specialty, we found out they haven’t brewed their own beer in six years – go figure!

The next night we anchored off tiny Charles Island near Milford, CT and the night after we were on a mooring ball in the Thimble Islands near Stony Creek, CT. They’re said to resemble islands off the coast of Maine but they reminded us of the North Channel.


We thought about continuing east and exploring Rhode Island a bit but decided against it. It’s been quite foggy in the mornings and since our radar decided to stop working awhile ago, we didn’t want to chance being out in fog. We headed south back to the New York side of the Sound and got a mooring ball with the Setauket Yacht Club at Port Jefferson. The deal here is the mooring ball is $45 per night and the launch to go to shore is included. Port Jefferson is another town that reminded us of Fish Creek in Door County. It’s a picturesque waterside village with lots of gift shops, art galleries and the best ice cream we’ve had on the whole trip!

Here’s part of the mooring field and one of the three ferries that cross from Bridgeport, CT to Port Jefferson, NY - about a 75-minute trip. We definitely noticed when they were coming and going with the warning horns and wake they created. Thankfully the last run was at 9:30 pm.

Here’s a sculpture on the waterfront designed to honor the shipbuilding past of the area:
The best option for a grocery store here was 2+ miles out of town so we treated ourselves to a taxi ride for that. It was actually kind of fun shopping at Giunta’s Meat Farm. Their produce was mostly local and priced quite low. Also ordering from the deli was a little different from my Festival Foods in Green Bay, WI! It’s times like this that I long for a larger refrigerator. If I buy corn on the cob and too many bulky items it’s quite a challenge to fit everything in. I love melons but I guess they're out for this summer.

We headed back to Oyster Bay again. There was plenty of wind but of course it was coming from the northwest where we were headed so lots of tacking involved. At one point I counted 100 sailboats within view! Here’s a scene from along the shoreline - it’s really a beautiful area.

Here’s where the big adventure begins. As we were motoring in to Oyster Bay to anchor, our alternator light came on (not a good thing). Paul was afraid once we shut the engine down it wouldn’t start again and he was right. We thought it was a similar problem to what happened back in Cambridge, MD but we weren’t able to get it started this time. Long story short: we were anchored here FOUR nights instead of the one we’d planned! Paul called four different marinas/boatyards and they all seemed to be backed up with work. One place sounded promising, lots of calls back and forth, but we finally gave up and called a place nearby in Huntington and they had a mechanic available – yay! We thought we’d get a chance sometime on this trip to take advantage of having Boat U.S. towing insurance and this was it. The tow driver showed up Thursday morning and off we went for the 10-mile ride back to Huntington. The funny thing was he called at midnight the night before (we were asleep) to say he was in the area and did we want to go in 30 min? We declined. It would have been a circus leaving in the dark trying to unwind two anchor lines that had gotten entangled. The tow ride was kind of relaxing; just sit back, steer a little and enjoy being pulled along at 7.4 knots.

This is approaching Huntington Harbor; hundreds and hundreds of boats on moorings. There isn’t dock space available besides the cost is quite high to keep a boat at a slip in this area.

As we came into the harbor, the tow boat came alongside, tied his lines to us and steered us up to the gas dock – pretty slick.

Here’s Mitch and his co-pilot, Jessie. It was funny how Ginger and Jessie barked back and forth to each other. I think Ginger wondered how this other dog just showed up out in the middle of the water!

I don’t want to make this too long but we actually had two problems: a loose wire and a bad alternator. This is the one we had rebuilt back in Savannah, GA in May. It only had about 200 hours on it since the rebuild so this shouldn’t have happened. Now we have a brand new one and the mechanic, Bruce, was fast and very competent. We had the work done at Willis Marine Center, very good work and a fair price. They let us borrow their truck for a West Marine and grocery store run too. We used one of their mooring balls that night and we’ve never seen rain like that. It’s a good thing Ginger is going deaf – the thunder claps were unbelievable. It would let up a little then start pouring again, probably more than an hour total. It hailed for about a minute then sirens started going off. We didn’t see any funnel clouds, not like we could head for the basement, so we stayed put.

So we’re heading out today, back to Port Washington on Manhasset Bay where Kyle plans to come by train and ride back with us on the East River and through Hell Gate again. This has been quite a side trip – more memories for a lifetime and thank you Lord for keeping us safe!

On to Long Island

On Saturday, July 26th we began our first side trip off the official Loop trip. We were told Long Island Sound was a neat place to explore and do some sailing and when I (Em) heard it would be cooler and less humid than the Chesapeake Bay area, I was all for it.

We headed north up the East River and made our way through the commercial and Saturday boat traffic. Here’s one of the four waterfalls that are on display in NY until mid-October.

It was very cool to see the famed Brooklyn Bridge from the water.


In this picture you can see the Brooklyn Bridge, the Manhattan Bridge, the Williamsburg Bridge and another one of the waterfalls.



We went past the Empire State Building, the United Nations, near La Guardia Airport and under the Queensborough and Triborough Bridges. Next was the notorious Hell Gate. It can be quite treacherous if you don’t time it right to be going with the tide, then the currents can run up to 5 knots. Aided by the current, we were motoring along at 11.5 knots at one point. The underwater terrain is very uneven with depths from 34 to 107 ft.; Mill Rock and two islands in the East River contribute to the turbulence and whirlpools. This old R.R. bridge really WAS a “bridge over troubled water!”

After passing under the Throggs Neck Bridge (love these names), we were in Long Island Sound. The Sound is 90 nautical miles long and 20 miles wide at the widest point. At the western end there is an 8 to 10 ft. tidal exchange but less than 3 feet as you travel east. There were an amazing number of sailboats out on this breezy Saturday afternoon. Usually we feel like we’re outnumbered by powerboats but definitely not in this area.


We came into Manhasset Bay near Port Washington. We were able to hook onto one of the town’s mooring balls which is free the first two nights and $25 thereafter. There isn’t a dinghy dock that you can use for more than 15 minutes so the mode of transportation to shore is the water taxi. There are public restrooms but no shower or laundry facilities.

Kyle and Lizzie drove out on Sunday to take a sail but it was a rainy day so that didn’t happen. We took advantage of having a car and did errands and some grocery shopping. There was a hot and heavy game of UNO before dinner onboard. (I don’t have a shot of Kyle sans cap but you might notice he got a major haircut since we saw him a week earlier).

The next day we ended up anchoring in Oyster Bay. It was a motor day as the winds were calm until mid-afternoon when we were nearly at our destination. This seems to be the pattern around here. This was the sunset from our anchor spot.


This is one of the oyster boats we saw in Oyster Bay (imagine that) and a closer view of the workers harvesting the oysters.


We also spent 3 nights on the Connecticut side but more on that later. All for now from the Free Library in Port Jefferson, NY. (that really is the name of the library!)

Sights of New York

After our visit in Brooklyn, it was back to Staten Island where we moved the boat from the mooring ball to a dock at the Great Kills (a Dutch word for creek) Yacht Club. Through a former Looper who is a member there, we were able to stay there for $1/ft. – an unheard of price for the NY area. Thank you again John C! He said about 25 Loopers have visited there but we were the first sailboat! The only down side was it was quite a long drive from Brooklyn for Kyle and it wasn’t exactly convenient to shopping, etc. We did have quite an ethnic adventure shopping at a local Russian market though. I don’t think there was one thing in the deli case I recognized but we managed to get some produce and basic items. Kyle lives in a very Polish neighborhood - interesting shopping there too and hearing so many other languages spoken by people passing by. We hauled laundry to a laundromat on our bikes which was an adventure in itself.

There was a family of mute swans with three little ones in the area. This was what I saw peeping in my galley window the morning we left.


On Friday the 25th we left Staten Island and went under the impressive Verrazano-Narrows Bridge which connects Staten Island to Brooklyn. It's one of the world's largest suspension bridges. I can’t resist taking pictures of impressive bridges and this area has a lot of them.




We entered New York Harbor not knowing exactly what to expect. There was quite a lot of chop with all the boat traffic. Here’s one of the famous orange Staten Island ferries passing by Lady Liberty. We feel somewhat of a connection to these ferries as they’re built in Marinette, WI.

Here’s one of the Circle Line tour boats passing a portion of the famed Manhattan skyline.


Here’s another view of the Statue of Liberty. It’s rather unbelievable to think we’re actually seeing her from our very own boat all the way from Green Bay, WI! I climbed up to the crown with a HS group many years ago but you’re not able to do that anymore.


Here’s Ellis Island where the immigrants were processed for entry into the U.S. I wanted to tour it but it didn’t work out to do that on this trip. Only tour boats are allowed to dock here and at Liberty Island.


We anchored for the night off Liberty State Park on the New Jersey side near Liberty Island with a few other boats. We could see the green lights of the Verrazano Bridge in the distance; they looked like twinkling emeralds – beautiful.

Capt. Paul diligently prepared for the next day’s adventure: a side trip up the East River through Hell Gate!

Getting Kyle Back to New York

As we left Baltimore we passed Fort McHenry. Here's an aerial view of the fort showing why it was known as the star fort. This is the fort that successfully defended Baltimore from a British attack during the War of 1812.

There is a special buoy in Baltimore Harbor painted red, white and blue to mark the spot where Francis Scott Key penned the words to our national anthem. He was being held prisoner on a British barge during the War of 1812 several miles from Fort McHenry. We could see why he would ask "Oh say does that star spangled banner still wave..." it was a long way away! We were lucky enough to see two YP (Yard Patrol) ships from the Naval Academy pass the buoy. The midshipmen were saluting it while the national anthem was playing aboard ship - what timing!

Kyle, being the dedicated professional musician that he is, found a way to get in some practice time while onboard. (the cool hat belongs to his Dad).

The first night was spent anchored in a river near Rock Hall, MD. We spent some time at a free dock but didn't want to risk the $100 fine for overnight docking even though we never saw anyone around. The next night we stopped at Chesapeake City. There's also a free dock there that does allow boats to tie up overnight but it was low tide and we hit bottom on the way in so we decided to anchor in the basin with a few other boats instead.
The C & D Canal was next, it's about a 12-mile long man-made cut from the 18th century that connects Chesapeake Bay to Delaware Bay. It allows ocean liners to go from Baltimore to Philadelphia. No sailing on the canal but we were able to sail some on Delaware Bay. After another shorter canal we were in New Jersey - wow three states in one day! We decided to take a bit of a shortcut into Cape May and go under two 55-ft. bridges (just about our mast height with the vhf radio antenna). It was low tide and we made them both - but barely. The Cap'n felt it was a bit too close for comfort! We got a slip in Cape May at the South Jersey Marina. At $2.95 per foot, it was even pricier than the Keys but it was nice to be in a marina; the weather had turned quite warm and humid.
From Cape May we were out in the Atlantic Ocean. There wasn't really enough wind to sail so we motor-sailed. The ocean swells weren't that pleasant and some of the crew was a bit uncomfortable (we won't mention who but one of them was Ginger). We made it to Atlantic City by late afternoon. I wasn't expecting the skyline to be so impressive but no casino visits for us. The neon light show on the side of one of the high-rise hotels was kind of fun to watch though, also the full moon was gorgeous.

We anchored in the only area allowed in a fairly strong current but had no trouble with our anchor holding. Kyle, Em and Ginger took the dinghy to shore but Paul stayed with the boat. You can see the speed of the current by the effect on this buoy.

We pulled anchor at 6:30 am (early for us) and headed back out into the Atlantic. We decided to make the run to Sandy Hook, NJ - again motor-sailing but the water was smoother and the waves were behind us. After 13 hours and 86 nautical miles, we anchored in a cove just past Sandy Hook. With the Verrazano Bridge at the entrance of New York Harbor in view, Kyle felt as though he was nearly home.

The next day we went an hour or so over to Staten Island and got a mooring ball at the Great Kills Yacht Club. That's where Restless Wind is right now and here's a couple pictures of our visit with Kyle and his girlfriend, Lizzie.

Here they are next to the famous Brooklyn Bridge, completed in 1883, with Manhattan in the background.

We plan to spend a little time in the Long Island Sound - hopefully actually doing some sailing! After that it's on to the Hudson River heading north.

Annapolis and Baltimore

We arrived back at the boat from the trip home on July 10th. To backtrack a bit, we toured the Naval Academy before we drove home and I wanted to include some pictures of that. The midshipmen weren’t on the Yard as classes weren’t in session and the Chapel isn’t open to tours on Friday afternoons, beyond that the tour was very interesting.

The Naval Academy was founded in 1845 by then Secretary of the Navy, George Bancroft. It sits on 338 acres facing the Severn River, grounds of the former US Army Post Fort Severn. It's a beautiful setting. This is part of Bancroft Hall where the approximately 4,200 midshipmen live and have their meals.

This is part of the rotunda in Bancroft Hall. Paintings of historic naval scenes line the walls.

Part of the tour includes the crypt of John Paul Jones, a Scotsman who became a naval hero during the Revolutionary War.

One of the marinas in Annapolis with the Maryland Statehouse in the background.

With a final thank-you to our generous hosts, Chuck and Linda, we were off to Baltimore.

This was the view going under the expansive Chesapeake Bay Bridge.

We anchored one night on the way near Dobbins Island. It was a Friday night and about 13 boats stayed for the night, down from the 26 or so that were there earlier. This home on shore has its’ own lighthouse – rather cool we thought.

Kyle took the train from NY down to Baltimore and we met up with him on Saturday the 12th. Jim and Lou and family were there with their family to visit their son so they were able to pick Kyle up at Penn Station. Kyle enjoyed re-connecting with them until we got to our marina. We all got together for dinner that night at a Mexican restaurant. I didn’t get a picture of the whole group but this is their oldest daughter, Shannon, and her girls, Emily and Mariel, with Ginger.


This is a view of the Inner Harbor at Baltimore with a replica of the USS Constellation.

Another view of the Inner Harbor; it was a beautiful day for a dragon-boat ride.