Back on the Boat Again

     We're back on the boat again after a week and a half away. I usually only write after a passage or two but the boat is still on land in Pasadena, MD.

     The paint job turned into a sand blasting paint removal job which turned into a grind off inches of epoxy from a poor repair job done by the original boat builder about 10 years, and several owners, ago. Boooooo!

     The boat had more than an inch of epoxy filler removed in some places. Putting that much on is an improper repair procedure and we're paying the price now. 5 figures. To the left of the decimal point.

   
   We were away from the boat to go "home" to empty and prepare our house for a closing.There were several last minute issues which cost money and stress but now it's done. We are without a house. Our only home floats. Yay!

     Frankenstorm is heading our way or to New Jersey or to New England in the next few days. We should still be on land and therefor reasonably safe. We'll see.

Pasadena

    We are now on land for annual service to the boat. It's going to be a very expensive stop. We've been having issues the last few years with peeling bottom (anti-fouling) paint. It's going to cost a lot to have the bottom soda-blasted, barrier coated and painted.

     To make things more hectic we have been negotiating (now finished) our house sale and repairs and are waiting for financing confirmation, then the closing.

      Getting here was interesting. My last post was written while underway off the coast of New Jersey. We had a good sail until we got to Atlantic City right around sunset. The course change put us more into the wind and seas. The bigger chop only lasted about an hour before the seas dropped to under a foot again. Not bad.

     We had to go around Cape May in the dark through a very narrow passage in the reefs. We came pretty close to a 6 foot shoal before making it through the most dangerous areas. Then we aimed for the main shipping channel. I went to bed for two hours just before we reached the channel and woke up for my shift to find us a mile or more off course on the wrong side of Ship John Shoal. Scary. Took me a while to get back on track. Fortunately daylight came and all was well.

     We started through the C & D Canal about 0800 and passed by Chessapeake City and its free dock to go on to the Sassafras River off Chessapeake Bay. The last segment from the Canal to the Sassafras was nasty, bashing into a very big, nasty chop. Pounding is no fun. It was a nice quiet anchorage, however. We'd never been there before. All in all it was a 30.5 hour passage.

     The next day we went to 'our' spot in Worton Creek. It was only two hours away so even though it wasn't a great day to be on the Bay again, it was short.

     After that we went to Bodkin Creek where Pleasure Cove Marina is.

     And that's where we are now. Not knowing when we will leave or how much it's going to cost us.

Southbound Sailing

     Southbound! And sailing! Wow!

     We are off the coast of New Jersey as I write this. Close enough to get a wi-fi signal. And we're sailing.

     We had a slightly rough first few days after leaving Mystic. Big head seas to Mattituck and then way bigger following seas to Oyster Bay. Decent speed however.

     From Oyster Bay we went through New York Harbor to Atlantic Highlands, NJ. NYC and the East River - Hell Gate passage was mostly uneventfull for a change. only one stop to avoid a ferry and one log that went between the hulls without contact, or even being seen.

      

     Freedom Tower under construction. We had a great view of it from the anchorage at Atlantic Highlands. This isn't that view.

     We stayed a few extra days there because of offshore head wimds and pretty big seas. There was also a major front forecast with storms. The storms just missed us but the winds didn't. Heather took advantage of this delay to take a ferry from Manhattan to stay with us for the weekend. Yay!

     Now we have relatively small waves but they'll likely get bigger later. The wind will shift to on the nose later, too. We are on a very long passage. It's one we haven't done before at all at once. We are going (hopefully) from Atlantic Highlands all the way to the C & D Canal in one shot. It's at least a 30 hour trip, maybe more. We'll be going around Cape May in the dark. Risky? Maybe a little. We'll write if we don't make it. Errr... maybe not.

    

     Roosevelt Island Tram over the East River.

End of Summer

     Wow! It's September and I haven't updated this blog since May. A little bit has happened since then.

     We did a lot of work on the house and listed it for sale as mentioned in the previous blog but we also spent all summer continuously updating, repairing and replacing stuff. Major $$$. The good news is that less than a week before our departure for winter we are getting an offer we can accept. That's also bad news because, as I said, it's less than a week before departure.

     We got a little bit of cruising in this summer since the trip to Hamburg Cove for Memorial Day. We went to Coecles Harbor, Shelter Island for a rendezvous with the squadron. We did a one week cruise of the Buzzard's Bay area with Heather and Luca aboard. There was a solo long weekend at Montauk and then the season finale at Watch Hill, RI for Labor Day weekend. Above is a photo of a Portuguese Man O War jellyfish off one of the Elizabeth Islands (Cape Cod). We've never seen one this far north. Actually we had never seen one until we cruised to Florida. This big one could be fatal if you got up close and personal with it.

     That's it! Not much traditional boating. Being liveaboards makes it all different.

     I will be updating this blog on a more regular basis after we get underway and head south.

     Until then...

Back in Connecticut

     I'm writing this off of someones unprotected wi-fi in Hamburg Cove, Old Lyme, CT. Hamburg Cove is on the 8-Mile River which is off the Conn. River which is off Long Island Sound which is off the Atlantic Ocean which is off, off, uh, nevermind.

     We have been back for more than three weeks but we are now at a squadron rendezvous for the Memorial Day Holiday. It has been a pretty rough three weeks. We got back to our house to begin preparing to re-list the house for sale, again. Cutting up trees, painting walls, moving furniture, redesigning the layout, new lighting fixtures and much more made for a lot of work in a short period of time. But we have had visitors looking at the house. First traffic in quite a while. This is good.

     Our trip from Annapolis was good (at the start) then fairly miserable... rainy and cold. Nice passage from the C & D Canal to Cape May, NJ but after that: not so good. The overnight to New York City started okay but after midnight it got a little rough, then rainy, then thunderstormy. Our batteries were overheating and it was foggy so we ducked into Atlantic Highlands behind Sandy Hook for a short while before heading through the city. This wasn't bad. Visibility wasn't great but it didn't need to be. We made it to Port Washington, Long Island fine and it was nice for a while but the next few days weren't quite so nice. Our trip to Port Jefferson was cut short at Eaton's Neck by a nasty chop so we went into Huntington Bay. It was Mattituck the next day and Mystic after that.

     So ended this season's round trip south to the Keys and Cays of the Caribbean. If we sell the house we won't need to come home so soon next year. We can wait for the warmer weather we've become used to.

Probably a while before a new blog.

Annapolis

     We are in Annapolis, MD. We got here after spending several days in Solomons, MD. We had a dock thanks to Jack and Kathy Locher. We were far ahead of schedule and the winds were pretty high for several days so we stuck around and did some bike and dinghy touring. We also met up with our friends Mike and Carol there. They were on their migration back north to Meriden by car.

     We had an easy trip on the remainder of the ICW but Chesapeake Bay was a little rough, more each day until we decided to wait out the conditions in Solomons.

     Now we are on a Navy mooring in Weems Creek, West Annapolis. It's free, paid for by the taxpayers. Oh, wait, that means it's not free. They put them in to have a protected place to put their sailboats if there is a hurricane and locals and transients can use them if there is no storm approaching.

     We are waiting in Annapolis because Carol is off working in Detroit. Once these two weeks are over we will be back on the 'schedule' we were on last season. This will put us back in Connecticut by the second week of May. Sitting here lets the other snowbird boaters start catching up with us. A trickle are starting to show up in Annapolis.

     Next up: the C & D Canal, Delaware Bay, the coast of New Jersey, New York City and Long Island Sound. Delaware Bay has the potential to be nasty and going offshore also has the chance of being rough. Once underway we are about a week from home but we may have to wait for weather windows. Spring weather is unstable as I'm sure you know.

Coinjock

     We are now in Coinjock, NC. It's a little town that, for us, is two small marinas on the ICW. It's only 50 miles from the start of the ICW in Norfolk, VA.

     We have had a rough time since we left Charleston. The first day was fine but the passage up towards the NC-SC border was very slow because we were always against the current. It seems even though there wasn't much snow this winter the hills are draining the rain and snow falls into the waterways to the ocean. All that water was coming right at us.

     We had to stop short of our plans at a small marina in Myrtle Beach because it was getting dark AND we wanted to watch the UConn women's basketball Final Four game. The promised wi-fi at the marina was on the fritz so the owner drove us to a restaurant where we could watch the game on TV. Unfortunately we lost and the $120 we spent on the marina, food and cab home was wasted. Oh well. Next year.

     After that stop we went to a new-to-us anchorage a little west of Southport, NC. Pipeline Canal. Another long day to get there because of adverse current. Then we went up the Cape Fear River v-e-r-y slowly against the current and along the Carolina Beach and Wrightsville Beach areas. We ended up at Camp LeJeune very late in the evening. It was our longest passage time-wise on the ICW. Underway 12 hours. To make matters worse the Marines were up until 11pm flying their Osprey aircraft just a few hundred yards away from us practicing VTOL and air support. Very noisy! Can't complain though. The Marines own the anchorage and we civilians are lucky if and when we can use it. The long day made up most of the time lost the previous 2 days due to current.

     We had another decent day going past Morehead City and Beaufort (Bo-fert) to Cedar Creek. Things went downhill after that.

     The Neuse River was our next passage and it was awful. Strong wind and current on the nose. No sailing. A two hour passage took us more than five hours. Four miserable hours. This was followed by the Pungo River which was okay, but only by comparison. It was not quite miserable. Just rough. We ended up at Belhaven to buy some very expensive fuel. We kept tripping out the breakers on their fuel pump. Ended up burning out their electrical circuits so they loaned us a golf cart to drive more than a mile on main roads to a gas station. Scary. But the fuel was cheaper there.

     From Belhaven it wasn't too bad as we were mostly in canals, protected from winds and seas. Of course we managed to go aground three times. Once for me, twice for Carol. When we reached the Alligator River things went crazy! Extremely rough water and wind on the nose. For the first time ever  we turned around and headed BACK to shelter three hours before our normal anchoring time.

     In the morning it seemed better and we headed back to the open water portion of the Alligator River. It WAS better but not by much. Instead of 4 foot seas it was only 1-2 ft. After five hours we got to Albemarle Sound. We had hoped to be able to sail but the wind direction failed us again! Two hours of awful followed by one hour of not too awful. A ten hour day got us to here in Coinjock.

     We will cross into Virginia tomorrow and we'll see if we get back to Chesapeake Bay in the next two days. Better weather coming... or so they say.