08/30/2008 Staten Island back to Staten Island

08/25/2008 On Monday we hailed for the yacht club launch and set out for Manhattan. We walked the block from the yacht club to the main drag with a pocket full of quarters and caught the local bus to the Staten Island ferry. The bus is a very economical form of transportation. It was only $2.00 to the ferry and the ferry is free. We passed by the Statue of Liberty on the ferry trip. We arrived in Lower Manhattan at Battery Park and set off for a day of sight-seeing. We first looked into the going to the Statue of Liberty. It has been a goal of mine for a long time to go there and go up in her. I have heard that they have reopened her up to climb the stairs. We were in-line to buy tickets, when they announced all trips for the day were full. We decided to stop back later in the day to find out if we could get tickets for the next day.

From there we walked to the financial district, saw NYSE Building and the Bull. We then trotted off to the site of World Trade center and had a street lunch of Italian Sausage. I did not see much there but a lot of construction for the new buildings. We then hiked over to the South Seaport to see the tall ships and the four waterfalls New York has built for the summer. There was one built under the Brooklyn Bridge. From there we moseyed up to Mid-Town for trip up the Empire State Building. There was a lot of hiking from Battery Park to the Empire State Building and we weren’t finished. I was able to go up to the Observation Deck and see over the city. This has been my second excursion to the top of a large lookout in about 2 months with my trip with Amanda to Seattle on going up the Space Needle.

From there we worked our way to the Time Square and the theatre district. We both put in a lot of miles to have a ruben and pastrami (The Woody Allen) very large sandwich that we split and cut of New York Cheese Cake at the infamous Carnegie Deli. From there we caught a cross-town bus back to the ferry and then back to the boat.

The next day we started it all over. We tried a different bus, the 1x, that took us right into Mid-town through Brooklyn. This ride only cost us $5.00. We found a kiosk that made a bus card that we could put a credit on and this was easier than having a pocket full of change for the bus. After we arrived, we took off for Grand Central Station and the United Nations facility. The station is really impressive from its size and the design. From there we headed to the UN. I learned I need a different pack when I am traveling. Most security is concerned about back-pack like devices, but don’t worry about any size of fanny packs. We walked inside and saw an art show from pictures created by children around the world based on different activities. It was inspiring. Greg went there to see the art garden, but unfortunately it was closed for remodel.

We then had lunch again on the street and listened to a couple of guys doing a small concert for the lunch time crowd in a park. Today was gyros. We made a quick stop in St. Patrick’s Cathedral and walked up 5th avenue to Central Park. This was a couple of brutal days of hiking and Greg’s shoes started to give him some issues and a few blisters. I walked around the park a little and checked out some of the sights. This is my second time to New York City and I have determined I might never get here enough times to see it all.

We left the park and hiked to the subway to Yankee Stadium. It would be a long shot to get in and see the game, but it was something I really wanted to do while I was here. We caught the sub and it dropped us right off in front of the stadium. There are no tickets to be had. This is the last season in Yankee Stadium and this was the last weekend for the Boston Red Sox to play. I eventually paid $30.00 for a $14.00 bleacher seat and caught the game. Greg was not interested and he headed back to the boat. It was cool to be there and get a feel of the stadium, but I am sure New York fans will be happy with the new stadium. After watching games at Coors Field in Denver, the facilities do make it a much more pleasant event. I eventually worked my way from the Bronx and find the bus route back to the boat.

The next day we cleaned up around the boat and took our time. We were catching a 2:00pm tide to Liberty Island to anchor for the night. The yacht club allowed us to tie up at their dock and wash off the boat and fill up the water tank again. We met a couple of the local racers and started chatting with them. One of them has a Corsair 31 that we sails and races with his family. As us trimaran racers in Colorado, he has a hard time finding many multihulls to race with in the area.
After lunch, we left and headed up the New York Harbor to Liberty Island. We sailed under the Verrazano Bridge and dodged the shipping traffic coming in and out of the harbor. It is good there is a lot water for moving with the traffic. I then was able to complete another long time dream/goal of mine. That was to sail past the Statue of Liberty. We had good winds and current. We were sailing with the spinnaker and had a great view of her. We anchored for the night between Liberty and Ellis Islands for the night. The chopped eventually lightened up and we had another good night of sleep.

The next day we took off at 5:30am to catch the remaining current through the East River. It was quiet and smooth. We motored as there wasn’t much wind and practically had the river to ourselves. We traveled along Manhattan under the different bridges. It was different seeing the city quiet and from the water. One area I was concerned about was Hell’s Gate. It is on the river where the Harlem River enters the East River. I had read about the wicked currents. We had no problems. We also went past La Guardia airport and Riker’s Island that appears to have a lot of the local prisons. It was interesting having planes flying low over you at the airport as it’s one runway goes into the river. The chart indicated that boats with masts above 120’ needed to contact the control tower if they needed to be in an area close to the airport.

We popped out of the river into Long Island Sound. There were light winds so we put up the sails and turned off the motors and started enjoying a pleasant day of sailing. We were sailing along nicely tacking up the Sound towards New England. We were coming into a shore and I did one of the stupid things. As we were coming into a point, I was mesmerized by the boat as it lifted on the wind (turning in a positive direction towards the wind) and it appeared we could hold the same tack into the bay and carry the tack for another mile. Just as we were off the point, the boat came to a grinding holt as we ran aground on some rocks. I lowered the engines and had Greg checking the forward hulls for any leaks or worse. I dropped the sails and we were able to motor off of the rocks. It appeared that the were no hull issues. (A really good thing).

We put the sails back up and and sailed on towards Norwalk, CT for our planned stop for the day. I read about the city dock and that there was a shopping mart across the street from the dock. We decided to motor up the river and tie at the dock and hopefully get a few provisions. We came in at the far inlet and it took about 45 minutes of slow motoring to get to the dock. When we arrived, the attendant told me it would cost $33.00 to tie up for longer than 20 minutes. We only planned on walking into town if needed to do some shopping. He told me we could stay for an hour at no charge. We hurried up and went over to the mart. We were severely disappointed as they had no fresh food . I got an ice cream and we got on the boat and headed out of Norwalk.

That evening, after we anchored, I put on the diving mask and made it around the boat and determined the damage. The good news was the damage was on the keel, not the hulls. The bad news is that I took out a 2-3” gash around 20” across. Needless to say, I wasn’t feeling too good after finding that out. After running through many options such as having the boat pulled there, or beaching the boat to determine all damage, I decided to head back to Annapolis. The final decisions were based on that it is Labor Day Weekend and nobody will be able to look at the boat until Tuesday, and I know the area in Annapolis where I picked up the boat.

Greg decided to get off of the boat when we came back into New York as it is an easy place for him to catch a train back to his car at his sister’s in VA. We motored back down the Sound and started out with the slack tide on the east River. I decided to commit and get back to Staten Island and we then needed to beat against the flooding current on the East River. With all of the Friday afternoon traffic and opposing current, it was quite a ride that took a lot of concentration. I wanted to stay closer to the shore line to stay out of the way of the barge traffic, but needed to aware of the current and where it was pushing. We got as low as 2.8 knots of boat speed over the ground going “up” the river. We made it back Staten island at 7:30 that night. It was a long day listening to the motors. That was the most amount of gas we used during this trip. We burned close to 8 gallons. We only used 6 gallons the whole way up the New Jersey coast.

Today I dropped Greg off at the gas dock, filled up the tanks and headed across the harbor to the other marina to use the pump out. It was needed. I will stay here for the rest of the day as they are calling for thunderstorms. Sunday and Monday are to be beautiful days with winds out of the north that should push me down the coast.

Now you can understand the title for the day (Staten Island to Staten Island).

08/23/2008 Cape May to Staten Island

08/21/2008 We ended staying around Cape May for an extra day. The reasons were from a weather report was that the winds would be out of the north and we did not get any projects worked on the day before. It takes a lot longer to run around town to sight see, grocery shop, find a library with wifi, etc. without a car. We ended up walking about 6 miles the day before and two miles back to the boat with our grocery shopping. It is a different way of life, but as long as we stay flexible, it will work out as it has so far.

08/22/2008 We left Cape May at 5:30 to catch the tide before it started coming in at the inlet. We had a welcome from some porpoises as we raised the sails. It was a pleasant sail up to Atlantic City. We had 5-12kot winds from the southeast. This had us tacking up the coast. This does make travel longer with the extra miles being put on. The sail up the coast was interesting from all the beach towns including Wildwood, Ocean City and Atlantic City. They all have some sort of a boardwalk, beaches and plenty of people. The towns have a rich history and the beaches appear to be beautiful from the water.

We made it into Atlantic City at 4:30pm with an out-going tide and in-going wind. It made for 4+ feet of choppy seas. I decided to hand steer through these waters as I did not believe the self steering would hold up. It was an exciting finish to a good day of sailing. We made our way up a creek off of the main inlet. We would not be able to go into the main area of town with the casinos and boardwalk as we would have made quite a journey across the large inlet. I do not feel that comfortable with the outboard on the dinghy. I brought the engine from Denver and it has had problems at high rpms. We believe it needs to be re-jetted for the lower altitude as the carburetor is being choked of fuel.

08/23/2008 We did not stay in Atlantic City after our evening on anchor. We left gain at 5:00am to catch the tail end of the out-going tide as to hopefully not have to deal with the heavy chop again. The chop was there, but much less (that we could detect as we were motoring in the dark). We are working our way to NYC. We expect to anchor off of Staten Island. With the head winds we have, I expect it will take another 2-3 days as long as the weather holds up.
As the day went on, the winds clocked into our favor. We made it to Barnegat Bay and there the coast cut more northward and made it easy for us to make it to Manasquan Inlet without a tack. We covered the 20 miles in about four hours and arrived at the inlet at about 9:00pm. We lowered the sails and motored in. There was chop there and an ingoing tide as we were pushed through. When we arrived inside we started looking for an anchorage. The cruising guide indicated that anchorages were thin, but I usually don’t need much and I was tired enough after starting at 5:00am for the second day that I did not think anything on the river would be an issue for wake. There was supposed to be a yacht club with an anchorage up the river. We worked our way the river until abridge that we could not pass under and two different creeks. Outside of the channel on all of these water ways the water shallowed so fast, there was no way to anchor and not wake up on a mud flat. We decided to head back out into the ocean and make an all night run to New York.

At night time we are always in our PFDs (life jackets) and even though we decided to take one hour shifts, we both stayed in the salon/cock pit area for safety. No one was allowed on the forward deck unless both people were awake. We have not installed jack lines yet as we had not expected any night sailing.

We set sail and noticed that the power was lower in the battery banks and had concerns about losing our instruments or not being able to start the motors if the power went to low. One new appliance I added to the boat while putting it together for this trip was a Honda 1000 generator. I went back and forth about whether to get the 1000 or 2000. It was decided by two items, (1) the 1000 watts was plenty for charging the batteries using the three bank battery charger in as it cannot draw more than 250 watts and (2) the 2000 would not fit in any of the storage areas I wanted to use to store the generator when not in use. Outfitting a boat is always about compromises as I am learning. If it isn’t a size issue, it is usually a financial issue or a power requirement issue. You just can’t plug in another device when you are living off of the grid. The generator gave plenty of power for the batteries as were going along and it did not interfere with our sleep during off-shift either.

There were three memorable sites coming up the coast at night time. An impressive moon rising at about 11:30. The moon rose out of the east horizon. It was a half moon with a deep red color until it broke higher in the star studded night sky. The next was how light up the New Jersey coat was almost all the way until we made it to Sandy Hook and the third high light was seeing the Verrazano Bridge outlined in green lights and in the forefront the sky line of Brooklyn and in the back ground Manhattan. One of my long time dreams has been to sail or boat past the Statue of Liberty and now I can see that finally coming together. We sailed and motored into the New York harbor around Sandy Point on the north end of New Jersey and anchored off the Coast Guard station on the inside of Sandy Hook. We dropped the anchor at 4:15am. I was then awoken by reveille from the base at 7:00am. The minor cost of anchoring off of a military base. I felt very grateful that we had an incoming tide with us. I could feel it pushing us sideways when we were entering the harbor and have looked over the tide/current guides for New York and they are somewhat complicated and strong. After a long day and night, I was happy that it all worked out in our favor.

08/24 This morning we awoke after our short nap and set out to finish our plan to stay in Great Kills Harbor on the southeast end of Staten Island. This harbor came highly recommended by every cruiser we talked with in the last three weeks. There are several options staying here including trying to get a slip from one of the marinas, anchoring for free and paying a marina to tie up your dinghy or, if you are a yacht club member, the Richmond County Yacht Club will provide a mooring buoy for $35. This also includes free access to launch service from 8:00am until 11:00pm, showers and privileges at the yacht club. What they really provided that was desperately needed was water. We were down to our last few gallons and needed the water. It was good to take a full shower again.

We found our buoy, cleaned up and decided to go see the area we were in and see about buses to town, grocery stores and local eateries. The area was pretty quiet being late Sunday afternoon, but we found a bar with low cost beer and free hamburgers. Sounds like a hamburger in paradise. After a little exercise we found the info needed to get into Manhattan tomorrow and sat down to watch the closing ceremonies of the Olympics on my laptop/tv and call it a night.

08/19/2008 Maurice to Cape May

08/19/2008 We bummed around on the boat Tuesday morning working on repairs from the day before. I had worn an area of the main sail that rubbed against the stay when it was reefed. I put some sail tape on there for the time being until I can put a permanent fix on it. We also checked and cleaned up the harness I built for the dinghy and other small work. The boat really handled well for those conditions. For all of the pounding we gave her, I only found a couple of items on the floor in my office that I did not put aware properly. There were books stack horizontally instead on vertically on the book shelf. I was waiting until the tide had fully came in the river until we left. I figured this would give us a favorable tide and current for heading down to Cape May. We made a stop for fuel. Since our stop in Annapolis we went through 18 gallons of fuel. We have learned that running only one engine is twice as economical as running two because we don’t get twice the speed or even more. I was also happy to see fuel prices on the water for mid-grade at $3.88/gal.

We started out sailing down the bay to Cape May. Cape May is the southern point of New Jersey and sits on the Atlantic. As we hit the second way point, the wind was on our nose and pretty light. I decided again to motor-sail. With the favorable tide we traveled 5-6 kts with barely running the motor above idle. It was a relaxing day that I caught up on some reading and we did some laundry in the galley sink.

At 5:00PM we passed the cape on No Rush got her first taste of the Atlantic Ocean. When we turned the point we were able to sail with no motor and sailed all the way in the bay to our anchorage. We anchored west of the Coast Guard station in an area with four other cat’s. The cat next to us is owned by a couple of guys from Denver. Small world. It is a nice looking area and we are going to spend at least an extra day here.

08/17/2008 Baltimore to Maurice River

08/17/2008 We left early Monday morning from the inner harbor. We wanted to beat out any traffic in the harbor and river. We motored back down to the bay and headed north. It started out a light air day so we kept motoring for about five miles until the wind picked up. We had a nice following breeze so we flew the spinnaker the rest of the day jibing back and forth across the bay. We really are moving at a pace to say we are in No Rush. We made to John cabin’s Creek and stopped for the night.

With the assistance of the Eldridge Tide and Pilot Guide, I determined it would be best to hit the entrance of the Chesapeake and Delaware Canal at 6:00AM to get a favorable current through the canal. With that in mind, we needed to leave at 5:00AM. We motored under a full moon to the canal and entered it at the planned time. We had a 1 to 1.5 kt current pushing us through. We made it to the Delaware side at 8:00AM, 15 minutes ahead of schedule.

From there, I had not really planned anything. We decided that with the clear weather we would head down the Delaware Bay to a Cohansey River. When we started we had light winds and a favorable tide. As the morning went on the tide swung against us and the wind was non-existent. We passed a nuclear power plant three times, once under sail going forward, a second time under sail going backwards and a third time going forward under motor. We motored until after lunch and the wind picked up. We were having such a good time we decided to push on even further and passed the Cohansey and head to the Maurice River. As the day went on, the winds picked up to true 20kts with an incoming tide and wind against the tide. (For those of you in Colorado, the air pressure at sea level is a lot heavier than in Colorado. 20kts at sea level is 25 to 28kts in Colorado.) We put in a double reef on the main and were still hitting 8-9knots of boat speed generating 29kts of apparent wind speed. I have to say it was a little nerve racking for the boat owner today pushing the boat as we were. Greg helped keep pushing forward and I know I need to push the boat in the heavier weather to determine how she will react and also how to use the systems on the boat, such as reefing the main. I will need to learn how to do this by myself when I am sailing alone. The other thing I didn’t mention was that we were mostly in shallow water. It was sort of like sailing in the Bahamas, but without being able to see the bottom. We were mostly in 6-12 feet of water. We made it into the Maurice River about 7:00PM and anchored for the night on a nice river. It was a long day starting at 5:00AM and the weather we came upon. The Maurice is an Oyster center. I am not sure of the condition of the business of oystering, but the area was fairly run down.

08/16/2008 Annapolis to Baltimore

08/16/2008 Today we sailed out of Annapolis after a reville call from the cadets doing calisthenics on the practice field next to the sea wall that we anchored off last night. I finally made it far enough to pass under the Chesapeake Bridge. I have looked at the bridge since I bought the boat and in never seemed like I was going to have enough wind or time to make it to the bridge. We tacked up the bay all morning into the afternoon until we made it to the Patapsco River.

We motored up the river as there was an out-going tide and minimal wind. This took us to Baltimore. I had read that there was an anchorage in the inner-harbor. We kept going until it seemed were at the end of the bay in the middle of downtown Baltimore. There it was. A tiny designated anchorage with three sailboats on the hook and 50 paddle boats cruising the area. We headed into the area and had to slowly “push” our way through the paddle boats and drop the hook. It was exciting sitting right in the heart of the downtown area with all of the people and activities. I had been to this same area in 2004 with my daughter Sara on a whirl wind tour during a stay in Pittsburgh showing her the reader’s digest version of early American history. On our way in we past the area that Francis Scott Key wrote the Star Spangle Banner and Ft McHenry that was under siege to inspire our National Anthem. We went ashore and had a good crab cake dinner and people watched along the water front.

08/13/2008 West River

08/13/2008 Today we had another trip scheduled to West Marine. We were roused out of the bunk a little earlier than expected by a local fisherman. He set out a crab line Tuesday after we were anchored real close to the boat. During the night between a wind shift and tide change, the boat was parked on top of the line marker and he pulled in next to my hull and allowed diesel fumes to drift into my open hatch at 5:20 AM. With that we pulled anchor and headed down the Miles River using the chart plotter through the dark. It worked out great. We had calm weather and motored all the way over to Deale to pick up the replacement antenna.

When I brought the antenna back to the boat, we found another crack in the new antenna at the same area as the shipping package was damaged. West Marine is trying to get a new antenna in for me by tomorrow possibly. There was no good local anchoring areas in Deale so we headed north again to the West River to spend the night and will head back down to Deale if the antenna is available. We looked for anchoring south as something to do, but it appears that there is no areas until you get to Salomon Island.

As for entertainment in the evening we have been able to watch PBS for news and the Olympics. We are using my laptop with a Pinnacle TV Tuner that plugs into an usb port. We have played with different antenna options including a set of rabbit ears, the vhf antenna for the marina radio and the best option so far has been to hook a piece of antenna cable to the mast using an alligator clip. I am picking up both analog (old style) and digital TV stations.

The boat does feel like it is all coming together and we look forward to heading north. The projects are again getting smaller and it is more about fine tuning.

08/12/2008 St Michael's, MD

08/12/2008 St Michael’s, MD (Eastern Shore) Yesterday we sailed from Annapolis after a few hours of running around. I have been biking all around now. I needed to get back to West Marine to exchange a part and made a stop at the local Safeway for fresh vegetables. Food shopping is interesting now as I can only pack what I can carry. When I am biking I can only carry what fits in my book bag. We pulled anchor and headed into the harbor at Annapolis and pick up water. We needed to take the boat into a wharf area known as “Ego Alley”. It is a narrow area with a turnaround at the end of the water area. We needed to wait there for a large power cruiser to pull out.

We then took off across the bay with an overhead dark cloud that was generating about 18 knots of wind. It was mostly a downwind run the whole across the bay to the East River. We worked up the river on a tight reach and turned the point into the Miles River. The wind was slowly dying down so we set the spinnaker for the first time. It worked out fantastically.

We spent this morning working on a few small projects on the boat. It is wonderful that it appears that the major projects are behind us. We spent the afternoon walking around the town. It is a small historical town with a good waterfront. We ate at the Crab Claw for some local crab cakes and then off to the grocery store. We should be loaded up for food for a good time now.

Amanda’s Senior Adventure (Seattle to Home)

06/30/2008 We arrived the night before on our flight from Anchorage. We spent the night at a KOA in southern Seattle and went off to complete another goal of this trip, to make it to the top of the Seattle Space Needle. We arrived at 10:00 and made our way to the Needle. It was a beautiful day for viewing the city from the top. The excitement started after we came down and were waiting to meet a colleague of mine from Cisco for lunch. While we waiting, I headed back to the truck to drop off my camera. When I arrived I found that my truck had been broke into. The thief had taken all of my electronics, including laptop computer, iPod and all the contents in my computer bag including back-up hard drive and Palm Pilot. With this I lost all of my data except for back-ups at home, my cell phone and all of the pictures from Alaska. They also stole my electronic key for the truck and I had to have AAA tow me to a local Ford dealer to re-cut a new key. It took me about 5 hours after all was done until I just said, “it is done. Leave it behind you and do not ruin the rest of our trip”. Side note: I have lost computers and data before. I may seem to be a great loss, but there are only a few personal items that I am really concerned about. The number one is photos, then personal contacts, iTunes, financial records and then not much more.

We drove across Washington and spent the night at a campground just in Idaho. The next day was a beautiful drive through Idaho past Coure de Lane and western Montana. When we got off of the Interstate and started heading south to my friend’s cabin just outside of West Yellowstone, we drove through a beautiful valley with a river running through it. I just loved it as I could picture running cattle through it in the open range days. We arrived at Mark and Debbie’s cabin that evening and it felt good to get out of the truck for a while. We planned on being there for three days.

7/2 Next day we planned on just hanging out with Mark and Debbie. They had plenty to do there at the cabin. We took the ATVs out for a couple of rides and Amanda had a blast riding them. She was the crazy driver. When we rode together she took off once. As I came around the turns I would look for her and could not find her. I thought maybe she got off of the main road. When I finally caught her, I asked how fast she was going. She told me she was driving 50 MPH. Crazy girl.

7/3 We drove into Yellowstone for the day. There are two basic loops in Yellowstone, one in the north and one in the south with a common road in the middle. We decided to drive a continuous loop around both north and south. We started out seeing buffalo, mud pots, geysers, waterfalls, bears, elk and wolves. We spent 12 hours driving around the park that day. I used to think that Yellowstone was just about Old Faithful and buffalo. I was so mistaken. The geology in the park is just incredible. There are so many different sites that we saw just from the road.
We stopped at two large areas with mud pots and small geysers. There were board walks to keep you safe and also cut down on the damage caused by so many visitors. Due to lack of knowledge, people in the past would walk on the heat ground and fall through into very hot spots and be severely injured. Also people would drop things in geysers and that can clog a geyser and cause it react differently. Speaking of which, the national park is a nature site, the geysers and mud pots to change over the years and sometimes the time of the year.
We had lunch at the Old Lodge on the second floor deck and waited for the Old Faithful. She came right on schedule. The Lodge is a beautiful structure. It was nearly lost during the large fire back in the eighties. The growth since the fire is fairly spectacular. Nature does know how to recover.

We then drove on and saw Yellowstone Lake and more animals. We then came upon The Grand Canyon of Yellowstone. This was my favorite area. The water falls were very grand and the canyon cut was incredible. We hiked down a pathway and several hundred steps to view the lower falls. We then saw bears in the fields and another waterfall, Tower Falls. From there we headed to the north loop and saw Mammoth Springs. This was another structure that is changing. The original springs have dried up, but new springs are forming. From there as you drive, te road climbs to a high plateau within the park. It was mostly open grass fields. It was here that we saw the wolves. They were eating something out in the fields.
We then finished the loop and headed back to the cabin. We talked about what we saw and Debbie indicated that she has never seen a wolf and they have been traveling there since she was a kid.







On July 4th, we hung around the cabin and took
out the ATVs again. During the late morning, Mark brought out his guns and the four of us went to an out of the way area and shot different guns that Mark has collected. Amanda turns out to be a good shot. She was very consistent with the .22. We also shot clay pigeons and I learned how to hit them. We then went down to Idaho Falls for the fourth of July. They had a $1,000,000.00 display the was in-sync with a local radio station. We ate chicken on the lawn while watching the display.
07/05/2008 We drove back to Denver from the cabin. Amanda needed to be back for work the next morning. I consider the trip a very good success. We had a good time and tried many different ways of lodging and transportation. It was a learning experience for Amanda and me.