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).