Our first real practice at waiting for a weather window appears to have paid off, or at least that is our impression of being underway for 45 minutes. The strong winds, big seas, rain and clouds of the last few days have been replaced by sunshine and what we hope will be favorable winds and waves.
It was fortunate though, that since we had planned to depart today, that our friend Christian from NYC was able to drive to Staten Island to pick us up and take us to the city for a visit. Christian is a very cool guy who runs a MMA gym in Manhattan so not only were we able to have a whirlwind tour of the area, we were also able to visit his gym and train a bit.
Thanks very much, Christian. Hopefully we can repay the hospitality when we reach someplace tropical. For the moment though our sights are set on Cape May. Today’s traveling may take us to Manasquan, Barneget Inlet, Atlantic City or all the way to Cape May. We’ll let the weather decide that for us.
We decided to anchor for free in Great Kills instead of paying for a mooring for a forth night.
Rebecca and Christian seeing how may rules they can break in one shot.
Our first stop in Manhattan, The King’s Head Tavern (I think that’s what it was called).
Yup, this is what a city looks like.
Walking down Broadway.
Is this what they mean by “The Big Apple?”
Taking pictures of the tourists taking pictures.
Training at Christian’s gym.
He talked me into teaching a bit, as payment for the margaritas at the tavern
The warnings about pirates are all valid. Christian even has some in his gym!
A coupe of weeks ago, when we first cleared into the US via video phone, the biggest concern of the immigration officer I spoke with was that we didn’t have a telephone. She just couldn’t get her head around that and especially because I didn’t have a Canadian land line number to give her (we haven’t had a land line phone at our residence in years).
Now, although we didn’t have a phone at that very minute, we had very much intended on acquiring one. Sadly the iPhones that we each had prior to leaving were on Canadian contracts so we had to give them up (find someone to assume the contract) or pay a stupid cancellation fee to break the contract ($#^% you Rogers). Having a phone is a necessity for us though which is why we were so happy to get a tip from our marina friends Marilyn and Neil about Tracfone.
At their suggestion, we went to the nearest drugstore and found a Tracfone for… get this… $9.95! We then purchased a prepaid minute card for the phone (There are various cards available. We bought 200 minutes for 39 bucks). That phone now lets us call all over the US with no long distance charges. Not only that but we can call Canada with no long distance. NOT ONLY THAT but our friends in Canada can call an Ottawa number (we had to pick a city) and get us with no international charges!!! How can you beat that?
Still on the communications topic, we have managed to acquire a nice fast Wi-fi connection while moored in Great Kills Harbour, courtesy of Staten Island Yacht Sales (in this case “courtesy” does mean free). This was after the Richmond County Yacht Club refused to give us the password to their network (they don’t give it to guests apparently). When will people learn… the internet is cheap and (bad) press is expensive! Anyway, with said fast connection, I was able to upload a hundred or so pics to the Zero To Cruising Facebook Page and also upload the following video of us in New York Harbor. Enjoy. 
As heard on the VHF radio…
Tug Boat Captain (TBC) to Power Boater (PB): Power Boater… where did you go?
PB: I am well clear of you, Captain.
TBC: Power Boater, I have lost sight of you.
PB: I am about 50 feet off your starboard bow.
TBC: That is exactly the point I am trying to make! I suggest you give greater distance to commercial vessels.
PB: Thank you for the advice, Captain. I will take that under advisement.
Us: You’ve been told! LOL
Not the tug involved in that conversation, but one very similar to it.
After getting bashed around in the Liberty State Park anchorage, and with our sights already focused on our passage south to Cape May, we decided to up anchor yesterday and move to Great Kills Harbor on Staten Island. The only thing holding us back from doing so though was the weather. The rain was coming down intermittently and the wind was blowing a good 20-25 knots. During one of the breaks in the rain, we took the opportunity to reinstall the dodger on our boat. Because of the nice weather we had had up to that point, we hadn’t required it, but once on the open water, there is no doubt that we would (an amazing bit of foresight here as you will read in a moment).
Anchored by Liberty State Park with Lady Liberty in the background.
Required “cheesecake” poses.
Follow that red line all around the perimeter. That is how far we walked to find a water taxi.
A small break in the dark clouds eventually appeared so we quickly retrieved our anchor and headed out into the harbor. Even though it was a Sunday morning, the traffic in the harbor was intense. There were water taxis, ferries, tour boats, freighters, tugs and other pleasure boats, all competing for a space on the water. And virtually every one of these vessels was going a lot faster than us!
Goodbye New York.
A tug, pushing a barge which is tied to a tanker.
It’s interesting for us to see just how long it takes to get somewhere in a sailboat. For example, the Verrazano-Narrows Bridge, which we could see from our anchorage, and see very clearly once we were in the harbor, still took what seemed like an hour to reach. By the time we crossed under that bridge we could really see just how ugly the water was becoming. The sky all around us was getting darker by the minute and the coast guard was passing on weather updates about fast-moving thunderstorms and gusts to 30 knots. Our run to Great Kills, which on a map looked like a pretty short run down the coast, would still take us about 2 hours. During that time, the east winds were helping the waves to build and build. At one point I said to Rebecca “Hey, look at these waves.” By the time I realized just how big they were (we were heading into them at this point) and reached for the throttles to power down a bit, the waves went completely over the boat! If we hadn’t had that dodger up, the inside of our boat would have been completely swamped (we had our sliding hatch open at this time too).
I will admit that both Rebecca and I took some time to get used to the big waves. Channel 16 on the VHF radio was non-stop with reports of overturned sailboats with people in the water and other vessels in distress, all very near us, so no doubt, that didn’t help. At one point, we were on a beam reach, motor sailing with just our jib up but we decided to even douse that when we could see dark lines of clouds just ahead of us.
Our route from Liberty Island to Great Kills.
Not pleasant looking clouds!
Because I am writing this now, you can correctly assume that yes, we did make it to Great Kills. We are safe here on a mooring, courtesy of the Richmond County Yacht Club. Don’t take my use of the word courtesy to imply that the mooring is free though. Of course it’s not. The mooring is 35 bucks per night but it does include a cool launch service. If we want to go in to shore to shop, shower or whatever, we just hail them on the VHF and they come right out. In fact, we already did that once yesterday, eager to re-provision with some fresh veggies before the next leg of our trip. We don’t want to be getting scurvy now!
A tiny portion of the mooring field at Great Kills.
Given the crappy weather, we were sure glad to able to get a mooring at the Richmond County Yacht Club.
And this little sailor went to the market…
Sadly, the weather here is bad right now, with high winds and big waves occurring and also forecasted to continue for the next several days. We might just have to hold up here for a while.
As we are now anchored behind Liberty Island in NYC, with the Hudson River portion of our trip largely behind us, I thought I’d post a couple of additions to the info contained in the Skipper Bob guidebook.
1. With respect to the free dock at Mariners on the Hudson restaurant, I have one word to add… FORGETABOUTIT!
2. With respect to the Pollepel Island anchorage… we don’t know if the weeds thing was a one-off occurrence or it happens regularly. The police officer who boarded us at Croton Point told us that they actually cut those weeds from creeks (Esopus Creek for example) to make the waterway passable. Perhaps they had just done some trimming nearby. Regardless, I would keep my eyes open and watch for it.
3. With respect to the West 79 St. Boat Basin mooring balls… here is a biggy: THEY DON’T ALLOW MULTIHULLS ON THEIR MOORINGS! We were told this by the harbor master there as we approached. This is a PRETTY HUGE detail! Good thing we had a Plan B.
4. With respect to the anchorage behind Liberty Island… I have two things to add here. First, although the anchorage is fairly protected from all winds except SE (the wind is blowing from the SE right now but we can’t blame anyone for that, can we?), it is not protected from the wakes of #$%#^% fishing boats which are zooming by us every 10 minutes. I’m sure many of them are waking us on purpose and the remainder are just ignorant. Secondly, and equally as important, it is a one hour walk (and we walk quite quickly) to the water taxi which can take you to Manhattan. The ticket was 7 bucks one way. After walking the hour to the taxi stand, and viewing the schedule which showed we would have to turn around and come back 2.5 hours later, we bailed on the trip and walked (one hour) back to the boat.
Sadly Rebecca had to listen to me bitch about this from the 30 minute mark onward. Sorry Rebecca!
Note: Smart me decided we should take a short cut around the back of the park because it looked shorter on the map. It might have been a bit shorter but it is through an industrial area with lots of fast moving cars and no sidewalks. Stick to the boardwalk; it is much nicer.
Also, Skipper Bob recommends against leaving your dinghy unattended on the dock here for long periods. Because of that warning, and our own initial recon, we decided to remove our engine, stow it inside ZTC and row over (our thoughts were that it would be a less valuable target like this and also, if it was stolen, at least we wouldn’t lose both the dink and the motor). Well, it wasn’t stolen and perhaps it wouldn’t have been regardless. We were prepared to swim back to the boat if necessary though.
Yesterday I wrote about how we thought the Pollepel Island anchorage was peachy keen. I have to put a huge disclaimer on that post and say that I wrote it early in the morning before ever leaving the salon. Had I ventured out on deck, the post might have had a slightly different slant.
What do you think TowBoat US would have said if we called them and said that we were stuck in weeds, in 12′ of water? Over the course of the night our boat was covered, wrapped up, surrounded and just about encased in weeds. Thick, need-to-be-cut-with-a-large-serrated-knife type weeds (we were doing just that). We took a bunch of pics but I swear there is no way on earth they could do this justice. It took us at least 2 hours of hard work to free ourselves and in my mind, the situation bordered on dangerous. Our engines, which we left down for the evening, were covered and thus inoperable. Had we actually been able to move (we couldn’t) and our anchor had dragged (it couldn’t) we might have ended up on the shallow ruins around the island. All in all, NOT a fun experience. As our friends Susan and Jeff might say, that was not what we signed up for.
But, it does give us a fun story to tell. Doesn’t it?
Below the pics would be my dialogue…
First sight, looking aft: Oh, this is sort of gross.
Second sight: Oh my god. haha
Third sight: OH MY GOD!
Fourth sight (looking under boat from bow towards stern: REBECCA!!!! Come and see this!!!!
%#^&%^#^!
We’re going to be stuck here forever. The haunted castle has entrapped us!
That’s right Rebecca… do it just like that. Now I’m going to go have some breakfast.
We ultimately did escape, what I now think is haunted, Bannerman’s Island. We headed off to Havershaw and anchored behind Croton’s Point. While we were chilling a bit (this means that I was enjoying a beer, playing on the computer while Rebecca was doing a TRX workout – psycho) we were visited by the Rockland County Sheriff’s Dept. A routine check of paperwork and safety stuff, we received their stamp of approval. They did tell us though that we need to be calling in to the Dept. of Homeland Security at each port to let them know our whereabouts. I had heard this before but because we weren’t told this officially when we checked into the states, we didn’t push it. Now that we have been officially informed though, we’ll have to play along.
Today we’re up early and off to New York City. We have both the West 79th St. Boat Basin and an anchorage near Liberty Island programmed in our plotter. The weather looks good for the trip so unless we’re surrounded by weeds again, it should be a good day.
As we mentioned yesterday, our plans had us heading towards Poughkeepsie. Specifically we had intended on staying at a free dock provided by the Mariners on the Hudson restaurant and then meeting up with a couple more of our blog readers, Ray, Julie and their daughter Kendra.
It was a great day for sailing and the traditional wind on the nose didn’t slow us down too much. We arrived at the restaurant just after 11:00 AM and after scaring away the numerous seagulls who had laid claim to the dock, tied up ZTC without issue. As this is the first time we would have to tie up in tidal waters, we had been thinking through our strategy with dock lines. The first clue that something was amiss was when I went to wrap a line around one of the cleats and it moved. A lot. In fact, it was only secured by one bolt. A number of the other posts were missing pieces too. No worries, we figured it out and got the boat “secure.”
Some of these light houses are very cool.
Hard at work. Yesterday’s blog post was completed while underway.
Just to pretend we were sailing, we unfurled the jib.
I’m sure we’ll see more and more of these as we head further south.
Before we called Ray to tell him that we had arrived we wanted to ensure that we could stay there the night. The young staff we initially met were less than friendly (who can blame them I guess) but they did direct us to the manager. She informed us that as long as we patronized the restaurant, we could stay the evening. I also asked if we were free to move our boat to the inside of the dock where it would we less exposed and she agreed.
With that good news we called Ray on the phone and made plans to meet up a bit later in the day. Rebecca and I untied the boat and then backed it into a slip where we felt it would be safer. Almost immediately some power boat went by and created such a wake that our fenders almost ended up on the dock. I jumped off the boat and was literally hanging off of it, trying to stop it from getting smashed. At that very instant we pulled the plug on the free dock. The restaurant looked great but free wouldn’t be so good if we ended up with $20,000 in damage from some inconsiderate power boater.
Sadly, leaving there would mean that we couldn’t meet up with our new friends. Even worse, just as we were untying the boat, Kenny, the bartender from yesterday’s post pulled up in his car. He actually drove down to see us. He was such a cool guy that we hated to take off just then. By the way, if we ever need an agent, Kenny will be our man!
OK, plan B then.
Plan B had us traveling a few more hours and anchoring behind Pollepel Island. The good weather continued and the trip took less time than we expected. Pollepel Island is probably best known for having the ruins of Bannerman’s Castle on it. Although Skipper Bob’s guide says that we aren’t permitted to go exploring on the island, being anchored just behind a castle is pretty cool. Our friend Tom told us he had some misgivings about this anchorage but to tell the truth, it’s pretty good. Although from time to time there is a bit of a wake, the holding seems good, the scenery is nice and I’ve even been able to pick up Wi-Fi (with our long-range antenna). This is also the first place we have anchored since the Troy Lock where we have had the foresight to give conscious thought to the tides when determining our anchor rode scope. See, we are learning!
Pollepel Island, looking at it from the west.
Skipper Bob got this one right: Loud, frequent train noise!
You can see the current by the flow of the weeds we have attracted.
Picturesque.
I wonder what adventure awaits today?
Just two and a half weeks ago we set sail from our home port of Kingston, Ontario. Because of this, it was almost a necessity for us to visit Kingston, NY and we’re definitely glad we did. After departing Catskill Creek as a sailboat (yeah!) under power (boo!) we made our way to Rondout Creek, where following Skipper Bob’s directions, we anchored at the far end of it.
The trip to Kingston started off with glass-like water but as has become tradition here in the Hudson, the south winds gradually built until at one point they were gusting over 15 knots. This had the effect of turning our glassy water into some wind-induced chop but now traveling as a sailboat, it didn’t concern us at all.
Glassy water and blue skies!
We saw several of these.
Not sure what this was for exactly, but it looked cool.
The chop was starting to build.
The trip was interesting as we passed a number of ships/barges being maneuvered by tug boats. Our AIS beeped at us on each occasion, letting us know where they were and where they were heading. Forced to remain in a tight section of the channel, one tug (shown in the pics below) came nearer than we would have liked, but it did afford us the opportunity to get some close-up pics.
The bridge worker waving at Rebecca.
That ship behind Rebecca is making ground on us.
He is pretty close!
Before arriving at the recommended anchorage in Rondout Creek, one has to pass under 3 fixed bridges. The first of the three could be a deal-breaker for some sailboats as it has a height of only 56 feet. Knowing that we would be heading here, we twice measured our air draft to see if we would fit. Having calculated this at around 52 feet, we knew (hoped!) we should be good to go. One thing we hadn’t considered though, as it is not yet part of our thinking process, is the effect of the tide on this. We are told the bridges are measured at high tide and without any planning on our part, we arrived at the bridge at low tide. In spite of this added safety buffer, it is still very hard to tell if you are going to hit. We were happy when the captain of a nearby docked ship stuck his head out the door and with the aide of a megaphone, yelled at us that we had plenty of room. Phew!
The entrance to Rondout Creek.
How much room would you say we had?
Several miles down the creek we came across our planned anchorage. Setting the hook amongst the mooring balls took two attempts before we were happy with our location and swing room. Although no doubt much noisier on weekends, the area was pretty quiet for us.
An added treat for this particular location was the opportunity to meet up with a couple of our blog readers, Tim and Diane. Apparently they live just a few miles from where we were anchored so they suggested that we meet at the Anchorage Bar, just a short dinghy ride away. The company was great and we had a lot of fun talking boats and traveling (they are sailors too) and the bartender Kenny was a riot too!
Anchored near the end of the creek.
Tim, Diane, Kenny and then us.
Nice morning view from the cockpit.
The trip to that bar unfortunately revealed that our dinghy outboard engine was once again, “playing hard to get.” This, and a list of some other boat chores, prompted us to decide to spend another evening at Rondout.
Wednesday morning was spent doing said chores. After several hours of coaxing and sweet talking, the outboard appears happy again. I also scrubbed the ugly waterline stain off ZTC, making her look pretty and white again. Getting all this done in the morning gave us the afternoon to explore the nearby waterfall. We had intended on swimming right beside it but the abundant crabs scared us into swimming from the dinghy a bit farther away. If only we had something to catch the little buggers we could have had some free dinner!
No, I’m not going to jump.
Pretty!
Not so pretty!
All cooled off.
Today we’re heading towards Poughkeepsie, possibly meeting up with a couple more blog readers. Hopefully our planned stopping spot will be available for us.
Note: When blogging in areas with crappy Wi-Fi connections, write posts offline as opposed to with the online interface. This is the second time I had to write this post as the first time, it disappeared into the ether. 
What should one do when their anchor is fouled (can’t be retrieved) and they need to “get out of dodge” quickly, perhaps due to bad weather? Well, the anchor line could be cut of course, but as both anchors and the attached rode are expensive, no one is going to be too happy with that solution.
What about cutting the rode and attaching it to a float for later retrieval? That sounds like a much better solution. But let’s assume that you are using all chain for your anchor rode, or a big, beefy anchor line. Neither of those two would be too easy to cut, especially if time is of the essence. An alternative I have read about is to have the bitter end of your anchor rode (line or chain) attached to the boat by a smaller sacrificial piece of line that could be more easily cut (the bitter end is attached to the boat, right?). I can’t see any reason to ever (intentionally) pay out every inch of our rode, so that piece of line shouldn’t have to be able to bear much force.
I recently read about what I think is an even more elegant solution though. On our boat we now have that short piece of line connected to a snap shackle which is then attached to the boat. Now, in the event that we need to disengage from our anchor, we can reach into the anchor locker, release the snap shackle and reattach that small line to a float which we have at the ready. The float only needs to suspend some line so I would “think” that it wouldn’t need to be huge (I have yet to test this though). Like our Epirb, this is hopefully one of those things that we don’t ever have to really use.
We had this little fender on our boat for some reason so I decided to dress it up a bit with a marker and some reflective tape to have on hand as a float. It’s possible we might just use our big orange ball instead though if we were ever forced to try this out.
Although the canal trip was awesome, and we’re very happy to have had that experience, I can’t express how great we feel to have a SAILboat once again! After getting totally beat up by some waves the last two days (more on that in a moment), we crawled into Catskill Creek Monday and took a dock at Hop-O-Nose Marina. There are two marinas in this area that will step a mast for you but only Hop-O-Nose could handle our boats beam (width) of 16 feet. The marina owner Shawn was very helpful and with minimal drama, our mast was lifted from our battle-tested racks and fixed onto the mast step where it belongs.
Working to untangle a shroud.
Following that, Rebecca and I quickly went to work to re-rig the boat, only being slowed down by two unscheduled repair jobs. When reconnecting the wires at the base of the mast I found that our VHF antenna cable had ripped itself out of the connector. That required fixing. Also, while raising our main sail we found a hole in one of the batten pockets. Rebecca set to work to mend it and before too long, we had our PDQ put back together.
Good-bye mast racks…
…Hello Sailboat!
On the subject of those waves, I think we have learned our lesson about wind opposing current/tide. Everyone was telling us how we wanted to catch the ebbing tide but no one seemed to take note of the 20 knot winds opposing that. As the tide began to ebb more the waves built up to a very uncomfortable state. I’m not sure how often they get southerly winds around here but we’ll certainly be taking this factor into account next time!
