Cape May to Boston
We had a wonderful
visit at home for 2 weeks. We worked ourselves silly in the garden and had a
great barbecue with the kids and friends. Our friends, Kathy and Mark Hanan had
a barbecue on the 4th of July that we enjoyed tremendously. The
night before we left, we went to the wedding of my friend, Cindy’s son and got
to see a lot of friends from work. The
wedding was wonderful and we had a fantastic time. We also found time to have dinner with
friends Bob and Jeanie and with Tammy and Mike and a lunch at Shaggy’s beach
bar in Pass Christian with our Power Squadron crowd while home. Seems like all
we did was EAT. We both gained about 5 pounds. But what else can you expect
from life in New Orleans?
After a hectic last
weekend home, we drove back to New Jersey. On the way I called my friend, Mary Eby who
has been living in Illinois and found out she and her husband were driving to
Virginia to move some stuff to an apartment in Radford, VA where Terry will
begin teaching at the university in the fall. We were driving just past there
the next day so we stopped and were their first visitors (except for the
friends who helped them unload the U-haul the night before)! Such serendipity! So great to see such long-time friends. We did the same thing to them about 28 years
ago when they were just moving into a place in North Carolina. Then we visited
when they lived in Colorado and in Texas. Just never got to Illinois. Maybe one day they will realize they have to
quit moving so we won’t keep dropping in on them.
We made it back to
the boat on the evening of July 14th. We spent the next 2 days loading provisions on
the boat, returning the rental car and fixing a few things we had gotten parts
for: the AIS antenna connector, the staysail roller furling drum, etc. We left on Thursday, July 17 and motor-sailed
to Cape May, NJ. We walked around and saw some of the old historic homes and
then came back to our partially deflated dinghy. We had somehow managed to make
a small tear in one of the tubes. We
made it back to the boat and hauled the dinghy up on deck and stowed it for the
trip up the East Jersey coast until we could make a repair. The next day we motored/sailed to Barnegat Bay
where we anchored for the night. Friday,
we made it to Sandy Hook, NJ where we took on fuel and water. We anchored in a nice cove, had a great dinner
and spent the evening planning our trip up to the Battery (at the southern tip
of Manhattan) and through the East River in NYC.
Some of the beautiful homes in Cape May, New Jersey:
According to the
tides and currents, we figured we had to be at the Battery by 11:00a.m. to ride
the current East in the East River and pass through Hell Gate at the right time
in order to not get tossed around by the opposing currents. We had checked in
with the Coast Guard the night before to make sure there would be no problem
going through but as we neared the Verrazzano-Narrows bridge, the Vessel
Traffic Service(VTS) came on the radio with an announcement that the East River
between the Brooklyn and Manhattan bridges would be closed to all traffic from
11:00 until 2:00 for a swim event! That
is not far from the Battery, but we had to put the engine on full throttle
(partially to fight the current which was still going against us at the time)
and get past the Battery and through the bridges before 11:00a.m. We made it with about 10 minutes to
spare. Although we were a bit concerned
that this would throw off our timing to pass through Hell Gate, we had a smooth
ride with no problems. I don’t know what all the fuss is about. The bridges were really beautiful and we saw
the Empire State building, Chrysler building and the United Nations building. We passed the infamous Riker’s Island and made
it to the west end of Long Island Sound and picked up a mooring at City Island
Yacht Club. The weather was perfect so
we made time to patch the dinghy and kept our fingers crossed that it would
hold. Couldn’t put air in it for 24
hours. Some friends from The Bahamas,
Frank and Diane(S/V Utopia) met us for dinner on the island. They are staying
on their boat in the New Rochelle area for the summer.
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| Approaching the Verrazano-Narrows bridge south of Manhattan |
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| Passing the Statue of Liberty |
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| Southern tip of Manhattan |
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| Brooklyn Bridge |
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| East River scenery |
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| Manhattan Bridge | | |
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| Empire State Building from the East River |
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| United Nations Building |
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| Riker's Island |
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| Throg's Neck Bridge |
We got a late start
the next morning and had rainy weather with the wind (when we had some) on our nose
so it was mainly a motoring day but we made it to Onset Island in Buzzard’s
Bay, just west of the Cape Cod Canal. There are so many amazing houses on and
around the island. The Massachusetts Maritime Academy (Merchant Marines) is at
the beginning of the canal and the USCG Eagle (tall ship) as well as the
Maritime Academy’s training ship, Kennedy were docked here. They are
celebrating the centennial of the Canal next Tuesday and have a big fireworks
display planned. Too bad we had to move on. This was another place where we had
to time the trip through the Canal to coincide with a favorable tide. We got up
at 5:00a.m.on the 25
th to get to the Canal and time our trip through
for a favorable current heading East. We were lucky and didn’t have any barge traffic
to contend with in the Canal and had a pleasant sunrise trip through.
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| Sunset at Onset Island |
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| Massachusetts Maritime Academy ship |
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| U.S. Coast Guard Barque, Eagle at the Cape Cod Canal |
