Thursday, May 31, 2012

What a beautiful day!  The morning started with us leaving the mooring field at 6:45A.M.  We cruised up the Hudson River all the way to Waterford, NY.  There is a free dock at the Visitor's Center at Waterford.  When we arrived, there was no space on the dock.  We needed a pump out since the one was broken at the last marina we stayed in.  We pulled up to the dock in front of the pump out and John went into the building to ask about getting pumped out and the man told him that he is customer #1.  The pump out is brand new because of the hurricane last year that wiped out the old one.  The man working here came out to watch it work because it is new and it did not work.  The good news is that he let us stay there at the dock since they can't pump out anyone else's boat.  It's a double edged sword.

 There is a delightful couple docked behind us.  They are from Canada, but originally from Scotland.  Their names are Cathy and Duncan.  They came and visited on our aft deck after dinner.  We had a great time swapping stories, mostly about our boating experiences. 

I think the Hudson River is one of my favorite places on this trip.  It's wide, deep, and scenic.  The only bad part is that the marinas are so expensive.  We went through the Troy Lock today.  It's different from any we have seen before.  Instead of a bollard to tie up to, there is a pipe that runs vertically and is recessed into the wall.  You loop your rope behind the pipe and back to the cleat at midship on the boat.  We were the only boat in the lock at the time.  It worked pretty slick.  Here are some of the pictures we took today:

This is the view early this morning as we cruised up the Hudson.  The water was so calm, you could see the reflection of the clouds in it.

The next three pictures are of lighthouses on the Hudson River:



This is looking at the first lock on the Erie Canal from the free dock at Waterford.  It looks so small compared to the ones on the Ohio River.

Wednesday, May30, 2012

Last night around 8:00, the sky became very dark and the wind picked up significantly.  Then the rains came.  The marina has a breakwater, but we were rocking and rolling until the rain finally subsided.


This morning, the mechanic at Westerly Marina visited our boat shortly after 9:00.  He had it fixed before lunch.  So, we ate lunch and then headed out.  We expected to only go about 20 miles, but the anchorage we had chosen ahead of time was really rough.  We called Rogers Point Boat Club and asked if they had room for us and they said they did.  The guy told us to dock anywhere along the long dock.  There was no one there by the time we arrived (5:45) and after we were tied, we decided we were not comfortable docking there.  The docks are right on the Hudson River and they are floating docks, but very low to the water.  We were afraid that if a big commercial boat passed us that the wake would put us up on the dock.  So, we did not stay there.  We went a little farther to Hyde Park Landing to a mooring field.  John called the place and the man told him which mooring ball to use.  He rowed out to get his money ($1 a foot) and it was a good thing because something was holding the lead and the eye under the water.  None of us could lift it up to put our line through it.  The man from the "marina" had to feed it through with his hands under the water.  We got here at 7:00 P.M. We had cruised 47 miles. We were hungry and tired.  We expect to leave fairly early tomorrow morning.

 The dark clouds from last night.

 The boat next to us during the storm.

 Bear Mountain Bridge.

The tunnel is for the train.  The tracks are right on the edge of the bank. 

 West Point.

We were only about 25 feet from shore here and the water was over 100 feet deep.

Tuesday, May 29, 2012

One thing we've learned on this trip is that you have to be flexible.  We had every intention of moving on today, but when John went into the engine room this morning to do his engine room check, he noticed a bolt laying on the floor.  After looking around a bit, he figured out that it had broken off of the shaft.  It went through the shaft and held it onto the transmission flange.  So, this marina is closed on Tuesdays and John went online to see if he could find a car parts  or hardware store close enough to walk to.  He found a car parts store and called them to see if they had the type and size bolt and nut to fix the boat.  They did and John asked them how far away they were from Westerly Marina.  The  guy said less than a mile, but it's all uphill.  John told him we came by boat and did not have access to a car.  He said he'd send his worker down to the marina with the bolt right away.  When John asked what we owed him, he said, "Nothing".  I immediately walked up to the parking lot and just as I entered the lot, the delivery guy pulled in.  John and I gave him $5 just because he was so nice.  The bad part of this story is that John did not have the proper tools on board to do the repair and so, we are here another night and the marina owners told us they would do the work tomorrow.  It's always something.  I think it is really a good thing that John noticed the bolt on the floor and figured out where it came from. 

These are a few more pictures from yesterday when we came through New York City:

The hot weather has reached the east coast.  Yesterday and today were close to 90 degrees.  We ate at The Boathouse next door to the marina tonight.  It was nice to not have to cook in the heat.  We are running the air conditioner in the staterooms, but not in the galley and salon. 

Memorial Day, 2012

This is this morning's sunrise.

The day started out with a gorgeous sunrise.  "Red sky at night, sailors' delight. Red sky at morn, sailors be warned.  What happens if the sky is red at night and in the morning?  Well, it was a beautiful day today.  It got a lot warmer today than it had so far. It was in the upper 80s.  What an exciting day!  When we were passing the Statue of Liberty, I was taking pictures and singing the Star Spangled Banner and America the Beautiful.  Then I said a prayer for all of the veterans and our nephew Andy who is in the Navy and deployed at this time.  It all gave me goose bumps.  Then we passed Ellis Island. 

We were going against the current on the Hudson River and only doing 5.5 mph and at a higher rpm than we normally travel.  John turned around and we were going 13.6 mph with the current.  Unfortunately, we wanted to go north against the current.  Instead of arriving here at Westerly Marina at 11:00, we didn't get here until 1:15 and the Marina was closing today at 2:00.  Whew!  Marinas in this area are a lot more expensive than we are used to paying.  This one is less than most at $2.00 a foot plus $5 extra for one 30 amp cord.  We spent the rest of the afternoon trying to clean the boat, but there is no water on this dock.  Apparently, they are refurbishing the docks and they haven't gotten around to putting the water back on the dock we were assigned.  It's hard to wash your boat without water, but we did the best we could with Fantastic.  We thought we would walk to a restaurant next door to the marina for dinner, but we were too pooped and just ate on the boat instead. 

 Statue of Liberty.

 Ellis Island.

 New York Skyline.

How did this happen?

  Bad docking job or building collapse?

George Washington Bridge.

Sunday, May 27, 2012

We woke up early this morning, thinking we would move to the Hudson River.  However, it was pretty foggy and then it rained until after noon.  So, we decided to stay put until tomorrow.  We have a reservation at a marina for tomorrow night.  We've got some housekeeping to do.  It's so much easier at a marina where you have access to water to wash the boat and a dumpster for trash and a pump out.  It's only about 70 degrees today.  Tomorrow it is supposed to get up to 88 degrees, 5 mph winds, and 30% chance of rain.  This has been a nice anchorage.  We only wish that we could have gone exploring in the dinghy.  Until tomorrow.......

Saturday, May 26, 2012

You can certainly tell that it's a holiday weekend.  There are boats everywhere, zooming by.  The people on the boat Brandy IV, came over by dinghy yesterday.  Their names are Rita and John and they are from Toronto.  They came over to say that they are celebrating that they are finished with the ocean.  Funny, but we felt exactly the same way!  They started to leave the anchorage this morning, and after a brief while, they were back.  They said some friends of theirs had called and said they are coming to visit.

We decide to put the dinghy in the water and go exploring.  It's been a long time since it's been in the water.  First, John's shoulder was bothering him and it aggravated it to drive the dinghy.  Then, we've had so many health issues that this is the first time in a year that we thought it would be comfortable to both of us to ride.  We put the updated registration numbers and seals on the dinghy and it started pretty easily considering it had been so long.  John had Sta-bil in the gas, so he's certain that helped.  Then he noticed that the bulb on the gas line was leaking.  Here it had dry rotted from the sun.  So, we ran the gas out of the line and put the dinghy back on the roof.  As soon as we get somewhere that sells boat equipment, we'll have to replace it.  We feel lucky that we discovered this before we really needed to use the dinghy.

We grilled chicken for dinner tonight and John called a couple of people at our harbor at home.  They were all celebrating the holiday.  It's lots hotter there than here  (95 degrees as opposed to 72 degrees).  It was nice to talk to them.  We miss them all, especially on a long weekend.  I took a few pictures of the anchorage where we are currently, for Donna.  Here they are:

 This is Brandy IV, right behind us.

 This is the sandy beach to the southeast of us.

 These are a couple more boats anchored near us.

This is John talking to you on the back deck.  Notice that nice haircut I just gave him this morning.  

Friday, May 25, 2012

We woke up this morning to fog at 5:00 A.M., so we went back to bed for awhile.  We got up again at 7:00 A.M. and there was still lots of fog.  At 9:30, the fog lifted and we left our anchorage.  This section is the last part we have to do out in the open water.  We were cruising along for 6 or 7 miles, when the fog rolled back in.  John maneuvered the boat strictly with the instruments.  It made us quite uncomfortable, but John did a great job and we are currently anchored at Sandy Hook.  We are both glad that the ocean part of this trip is completed.  No more saltwater.  Yea!!  We are close to the city and we have yet to see a skyscraper because of the fog.

Thursday, May 24, 2012

Last night before retiring to the boat for the evening, John noticed the casinos lit up.  I suppose the fog kept them hidden the night before.  We both thought they looked neat, so here is a picture:

Doesn't that look awesome?

We left Atlantic City this morning at 5:45 A.M., opting to run outside because the winds were supposed to be from the southwest.  There were 3 to 4 foot beam seas which made for an uncomfortable ride.  We were wishing that we had opted for the ICW again.  Oh well, we made it.  There wasn't much to look at except gray water.  We came in at Manasquan Bay and found an anchorage at Glimmer Glass Bay.  We had to pass a 9 foot bridge.  The bridge tender opened the bridge right away, but it worked very slowly.  The traffic was backed up pretty good by the time the bridge was lowered back into place.  We are settled in and hope to leave early tomorrow morning, providing the weather is conducive to cruising outside in the ocean to New York Harbor. 

This is a boat that was sunken right behind where we are anchored.  They marked it with buoys instead of removing it.   

 This is how close we are to the homes and docks.  This bay is pretty small.

In the distance, you can see the bridge still coming down and we are already anchored.  It's very narrow passing through the lifted bridge.  I was glad John was in control and not me.

Wednesday, May 23, 2012

This morning we had bacon and eggs on the boat.  After cleaning up the dishes, we took the jitney to the Boardwalk.  We wandered into Trump's, Caesar's and Bally's.  Caesar's was the only place we gambled.  John played Texas Hold 'em and I played slots.  We walked the Boardwalk and went down to the beach. We had a dough pretzel for lunch.  It started drizzling ever so slightly, so we caught the jitney and went back to the boat.


After we got back to the boat, I went to the Aquarium.  It's not as big as the Newport Aquarium at home, but it still was nice.  Because we are docked at the Aquarium, we got to visit there for free.  There are also some little shops here which I looked in on.  No room in the boat to buy anything, but it was still fun to look.

The plan is to leave here early in the morning.  Hopefully, it won't be foggy like this morning.

The beach.  It was really foggy and rough out there.

 The Boardwalk.

 New Jersey Korean War Memorial

Seahorse at the Aquarium.  They are my favorite. 



 Jelly fish at the Aquarium.

  Statue of Poseidon out by the bus stop.

Tuesday, May 22, 2012

John had a hard time sleeping from about 4:00 on.  So, he went online and read about two different boats who just did the intracoastal from Cape May on, yesterday and had no problem with the water levels.  This encouraged John and we left Cape May just before 6:00 A.M.  We cruised along as the tide was rising and we stopped at Atlantic City when it became low tide.  We had no problems with the water levels today.  We are docked at the Atlantic City Aquarium and plan on staying 2 nights.  Tomorrow we hope to catch the jitney and go to the Boardwalk.  We are allowed to tour the aquarium for free because we are docked here.

The cruise today was really hazy, but no rain.  So, the 70% won out.  Woo Hoo!  We are really glad that we came this way because the scenery is interesting.  John commented that he felt like he was in Venice, Italy.  There are lots of houses really close to one another along this route and lots of bridges.  Many of the bridges are very low and had to be opened for us to pass through.  The one railroad bridge is only 4 feet off of the water.  We really didn't have much of a wait at any of the bridges.  I am including 3 pictures today.  Hope you like them.

 This is how the water looked at 6:00 A.M. when we left.  Visability was not optimum.

 

See how narrow the water is and how close to the water the houses are built.

 

The houses are sooo close together, but they look cool.  I like that they are different from one another.

Monday, May 21, 2012

The car had to be returned today.  Boo hoo.  We cleaned the inside and outside of the boat, pumped out the head, filled the water tank, and added chain to our anchor.  We got fuel on Saturday, so now we are all set to go.  We plan on leaving early tomorrow morning and heading for the intracoastal.  There's a 30% chance of rain, but that means a 70% chance it won't rain.  It's still too cool for May, but that's better than sweating to death, especially when we anchor out and don't run the air conditioning.  We have enjoyed Cape May and Jerry that works here at Miss Chris has been very helpful.  That's all I know for now.  Until tomorrow.....

Sunday, May 20, 2012

This morning we went to Church at St. John Neuman Church.  The name of the Church made us think of home, but that is where the similarities ended.  The building was big and really pretty in a 1980 kind of way.  However, there were only 4 people in the whole Church under 50 years old.  The only music was a flute and they didn't sing any of the prayers.  All of the people sat on the ends of the pews and the centers were all wide open.  It was most unusual.  After Mass, we went out for breakfast at a pancake house and then drove around Cape May seeing the sights.  Our favorite thing we saw was Sunset Beach.  I took a couple of pictures there that I am including.

Now we are watching to see if Alberto becomes a Tropical Storm or Hurricane and just how close it will be to where we currently are docked.  We may be here a day or two longer if we get bad storms.  Other than that, everything is hunky dory.

Carcass of the SS Atlantus, a concrete boat that became grounded during a storm.  They were never able to move it and so it remains.

This is a World War II Lookout Tower near Sunset Beach.

 

Saturday, May 19, 2012

Things have changed since I posted yesterday.  We have decided to take the inside passage (Intracoastal) and only do about 20 miles in the open water instead of doing about 150 miles in the open water.  The reason for our change of heart is that the weather forecast indicates that we would be sitting here for at least a week and from our research, a boat that drafts 4 feet or less, which we draft less than 4 feet, should have no problem as long as we pay attention to the charts and red and green markers.  It will take longer, but it beats just sitting here waiting.

We rented a car for today and tomorrow and went to the grocery store and laundromat.  John was drooling at the grocery store.  He says that's the size and kind of store he would have loved to own.  It was really busy too.  So, our chores are complete and we can go to Church tomorrow and then investigate the city of Cape May, New Jersey. 

 This picture is for Norm and Sue Mayer.  This tavern is directly across the street from the marina.

It's hard to see, but those are dollar bills decorating the ship.

I am putting a couple of pictures up tonight.  The second one is blurry, but it's pretty cool.  It's a model of a ship inside of something like a trophy case.  It has a slot at the top for you to drop money in and at the end of the year, The Lobster House donates the money to the Michael J. Fox Research Fund for Parkinson's Research.  Last year the donation was over $10,000.  Pretty nice, huh?

Friday, May 18, 2012

This morning we left Chesapeake City, MD at 6:30 A.M. The forecast was for 1 foot to 2 foot seas until afternoon and then 3 foot to 5 foot seas and 20 knot winds.  We debated about whether or not to leave.  The city dock where we were staying is for 24 hours only.  So, we left and it was pretty cool this morning.  Even John had long pants and gloves on.  It wasn't too rough until we got to the wide part of Delaware Bay.  We laid everything down that we thought would get knocked over.  We cruised 71.6 miles and we arrived at 2:30 P.M.  We are at Miss Chris Marina in Cape May, New Jersey.  We will stay here until we get our weather window to cross the ocean to New York, about 150 miles.  So far the weather report doesn't sound good for almost a week.  So, we'll wait and see what happens. 

Sorry, but I didn't take any pictures today.  I didn't even have my camera on the bridge with me. What's up with that? 

2nd post for Thurs., May 17th

Quaint buildings in Chesapeake City

Once the shops opened up at 11:00 A.M., I walked the  town again and went into every available shop.  I met a lot of really nice shop owners.  What a nice quaint town!  There were many nice things to purchase, but there is only so much room on a boat.  Therefore, if I brought something new to the boat, I'd have to get rid of something of equal size.  Hmm..... I wonder what that could be. Oh, well.  The biggest temptation was a scented candle, but no open flames are allowed on our boat.  So, I bought a lid for John's large Tervis tumbler and some fudge.  Woo hoo!

At dinner time, we walked to the Chesapeake Inn for dinner.  We can see the outside restaurant from our boat.  They were busy all day long.  We sat at the bar and thoroughly enjoyed our dinner.  After we came back, a sailboat docked in front of us.  John went out to lend him a hand.  He asked about somewhere to eat and John told him we had enjoyed the Chesapeake Inn.  A local couple also recommended the Chesapeake Inn.  So, I guess we chose well. 

We were sitting on the boat when we heard a strange sound.  I thought it came from our aft deck, but John thought it came from the dock.  He went out to investigate and found that a man had tried to pull out of a parking spot with his fiberglass trailer attached.  He got hung up on a post made of a cut off telephone pole.  John went out and helped him by taking the trailer off the car and pushing it away from the post by hand.  The man was grateful, but there was some damage to his trailer.

We are not sure what we are going to do tomorrow.  It all depends on the weather.  I'll let you know tomorrow night what we decided to do.  Til then.....

Thursday, May 17, 2012

Some of the ships waiting in front of the bridge at Annapolis.

 Route 50 Bridge at Annapolis.  We could drive from this bridge on Rt. 50 all the way home to Cincinnati.

 This is the view from our anchorage on Cabin John Creeek looking out to the Elk River.

Yesterday we left Breezy Point, Maryland and continued north on the Chesapeake at 6:30 A.M.  I think John was a little sad to leave this harbor.  He and the owner Mike really hit it off.  They had a lot in common and enjoyed talking to one another.  But, it was time to move on.  We saw 11 ships on the south side of the bridge at Annapolis.  Only 2 of them were moving; the rest were waiting for a pilot to guide them in to Baltimore Harbor.  We had only 1 foot seas and little wind. which never happened. It was hazy all day with the threat of thunderstorms which never happened.  We decided to anchor out in Cabin John Creek off of the Elk River.  We had to change anchors from a plow to a Danforth which took care of our anchoring issue.  What a lovely place to anchor.  We only had about 6 feet of water, but that is enough, and we were the only people in the whole creek.  The water was calm in the creek all night long.  That's the best John has slept at anchor in a long time.  This morning, when we got out to the Elk River, there was a fair amount of wind and 2 foot seas. 

We only traveled as far as Chesapeake City free dock.  We arrived here at 8:30 this morning and walked into town.  We had breakfast at the Cafe and stopped to talk to a very friendly lady who lives here.  She wanted us to buy the house a couple of doors from hers.  She said there is plenty of room for your grandchildren to come visit.  The area is beautiful. 

Last night we had no cell or Internet service, but here we are good to go.

 Our boat at the Chesapeake City Free Dock.

 Chesapeake City

 This sign reminded us of home.

This stained glass is for sale at the Cafe where we ate breakfast at a cost

 of $295.  Beautiful!