Month: June 2012

My reading was Wednesday night.  I’m only now writing about this because yesterday was a complicated bummer and I want to get across my real experience of that evening, without the later baggage. We were considering whether to take a ferry over to Midtown and walk to a subway station or take trains the whole way.  That was an easy decision once we got a gander of the space shuttle Atlantis being barged up the Hudson to the Intrepid Museum.  Ferry, definitely. The ferry got us pretty close, but we walked on over to see the last retired remnant of that step in the right direction.  Reusable vehicles that can land under their own control – awesome.  If only they could escape without the rocket.  Well, that will come…or we won’t have a viable space future.  I can’t bring myself to believe that’s a possibility. Falafel was the name of the game. James promised me that you couldn’t turn around without some street vendor handing you a falafel sandwich.  Pita bread, lettuce, tomato, white sauce, and hot sauce, all lovingly wrapped around the best treatment of chick peas I’ve ever experienced. Midtown was a bust, on that level.  We got to the train station without any sign of food other than hot dogs.  The foot traffic flowed and we picked up the rhythm immediately, absorbing energy down 8th Ave.  A brief subway journey later, we were on the Lower East Side and, what do you know, there was falafel on the very corner on which we exited the Delancey Street train station. And it was good. We ate the falafel standing right next to the food cart.  It disappeared so quickly that, within moments of the last swallow, we started talking about getting another one before heading back that night. We[…]

We left Sandy Point before 8am, heading for the big city.  The trip was exciting, partly because it was uneventful.  Here’s a major moment of glee: I really like the little lighthouses that lead from the Atlantic into NY Harbor.  That’s the Ambrose Channel West Bank Range Front Light.  Whew. We had a fine time motoring into the East River.  Fretting at the cost of diesel only took a little shine off the morning, since there was no changing the fact that we were on a schedule and the wind was on the nose. We played “Spot the Landmark”  – oh, I know this one! This schooner, before the Jersey shore, was making great time. And, of course, the Big Apple. I always think “assault and” when I see, hear or say the Battery. The Brooklyn Bridge is particularly effective in the kind of ominous cloud atmosphere we had today. And a nod to our lovely Baltimore friends.  The Baltimore Domino plant is less of an industrial eyesore than this one.  Mmhmm. And this is where the story gets good. We motored up the East River and turned starboard into Newtown Creek.  The creek separates Brooklyn from Long Island City and provides raw sewage dumping in case of heavy rains, scrap metal barge storage, and the foulest smelling water this side of Fells Point. As we traversed the murky waters, James began to wonder whether or not we would fit under the bridge we were approaching.  I had read that we could.  Shrug.  And James agreed.  But…Damn, that bridge was really short! Our mast is about 36′ tall and we have a 3′ antenna on top.  The bridge height at max high tide is 36′ according to the charts, with an additional 4′ in the middle of the span because[…]

I (James) have said to quite a few people in my life that the reason I truly love to live this way, this sailing around the world in a fifty year old boat way, is, it is everything. It is the quintessential moment of beauty in a following sea at sunset and in the same breath it is the feeling of absolute powerlessness when confronted with a lighting storm at sea. We were clipping along perfectly fine, raising Atlantic City for most of the morning doing between 5.5  and 6.1 knots on a broad reach in slicing seas that felt like long, slow radar reflections coming off the shore that was only 2.5 to 3 nautical miles to our port-side beam. After sailing in the Pacific Northwest, where the weather only comes from the Pacific Ocean so you never, I mean fucking never, sail on a lee shore, this took some getting used to. The sun was hot, the clothes were few, and the sailing was perfect… Then the wind died and we started the fucking diesel. We had sailed so well up to that point.  Right outside the Cape May Inlet, we put up the sails.  So when you see “fucking diesel,” as you did above, please know that we appreciate and hate/adore that fucking engine.  But starting it up only 6 hours into the trip…not best case. We didn’t strike the main because the motorsailing was smoother.  The main gave us a little heel, which makes for a longer waterline and faster top speed.  It also gives us a bit of lift over the waves, making the action a comfortable glide rather than a bounce or jiggle.  That only lasted about 45 minutes, though, before the wind came up again and we shut down the engine. Several hours[…]

We started the morning off perfectly with percolated coffee in the Bohemia River.  Got the last blog post written and stowed everything.  In the last blog post, I forgot to say that I went swimming the night before – fresh water baths are rare and precious. Hauled the anchor, laying the line out so that I could clean it before sending it into the anchor locker.  It was pretty muddy, so I felt good about that. We motored out of the Bohemia River and up the Elk River to the C&D Canal.  There was very little traffic because of the weather system that was blowing in.  The one we were to wish we had avoided.  Some great bridges, though. We did get to see a great big Japanese cargo ship, passing port to port in the very tight quarters. Several fishing boats sent their wakes at us as they passed, all going the same direction – Chesapeake to Delaware. We made the Delaware Bay by 1pm and talked about our options.  We could duck in between the peninsula and Reedy Island.  It wouldn’t protect us from wind at all and the chop was coming from the south, so we wouldn’t get much protection there.  People said it was good holding, but that sounded rather nerve wracking.  Besides, it was only 1:30! The other option was the Cohansey River on the northeast shore of the Delaware Bay, right before the bay opens up.  A tricky entrance and a winding river, but plenty of depth inside and good holding.  Since it was winding, we hoped to find shelter from the wind.  We were sure there would be shelter from the chop. We were motoring at 6+ knots and it looked like, “at this pace,” we could make the Cohansey in only an […]