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.