Thursday, May 27th - Day 43 (Start of week 7)
Storms and rain kept us awake a bit in the night but the big winds never made it into our very protected anchorage. Autumn Borne left at first light and sent us this nice picture of Second Wind still sleeping at anchor.
We were up a short while later and pulled the anchor at 7:15am. It was a calm morning as we motored out of the Severn River onto Chesapeake Bay. Annapolis Harbor looked "normal" again after the thousands of boats anchored for the airshow when we came in. Compare this picture to the one I posted a few days ago.
Windfinder.com showed light NW winds which should have been a little help to us motor-sailing up the bay. But, the winds were actually closer to the bow so we really never got any help. Instead, we motored on a calm Chesapeake with a little tidal current helping for the first couple hours.
We turned east into the Sassafras River just after 2pm. Check out how calm the water was.
It is 9 miles from Chesapeake Bay to Georgetown, MD up the Sassafras River which we took at a normal leisurely pace. We had never stayed at Sailing Associates before and looked forward to checking out a new (to us) marina. We have stayed at Georgetown Yacht Basin - across the river - but heard they were closed. Afterwards, we found out that the Yacht Basin was not closed and there were many boats at their docks.
It was a hot, humid day with almost no breeze as we motored here from Annapolis. I had our custom sun-shade canvas up to keep me out of the Sun while running the boat but was still soaked with sweat by time we docked. At one point, I checked the weather app and it said, "88 degrees - feels like 103". Yikes!
Good news is the marina had a nice pool. We wore our bathing-suits to check-in and spent a very nice couple hours in and around the pool later in the afternoon. Here is Laura in the pool with the marina office to the right and their bathrooms over to the left.
The marina manager, Pam, was very nice. I paid for 3 nights thinking we might leave Sunday if the nasty weather was over by then. The reason we decided to stay at the marina was storms predicted for Friday night, Saturday and Sunday.
Very colorful sunset at Sailing Associates Marina in Georgetown, MD
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Marina WiFi was excellent and we watched a few shows on Disney+ and Netflix before hitting the sack early.
45nm today, 1,256.5 total trip miles
Friday, May 28th - Day 44
Last night the temps outside only went down to mid-70s and the boat was very warm because of the hot engine room. We turned on our air-conditioning which dried out the boat and make it much more comfortable for sleeping.
Mid-morning we decided to go for a walk and loosen up our legs a bit. It is hilly around here so it would be a good workout after spending several months in the flat coastal areas of the south. The Sun was out when we left but clouds built in so we decided to make a loop of about 2.5 miles and not go too far from the boat which was opened up for fresh air. As we were walking, the winds shifted to the north and you could feel the temperature drop. It was nice for walking but felt cool when we got back to the boat.
Later in the afternoon we had a few showers then heavy rain and storms overnight. No pool today but we did work on a few boat projects. Our friend Lee had built me a wooden stand for the Captain's chair I purchased for motoring up and down the ICW. It wasn't great for sailing but excellent for just driving the boat on calm waters. After painting the decks and cockpit last Winter, the stand Lee made was making big marks on the softer, non-skid deck paint. Laura had tried putting some rubber shelf-liner on the wooden stand so protect the decks. Unfortunately, it didn't last and came off over the past couple weeks.
Today we tried a new fix - boat blanket. We had purchased several yards of boat-blanket (a thicker material than canvas) for covering our new fenders. We had a bit left so Laura cut some strips and we screwed them into the stand. It looked pretty good and will still let me move the chair around for comfort but hopefully not slide or scratch the paint. Now we just have to fix where the paint is all scratched. That will have to wait for some nicer days.
There is a nice restaurant nearby called The Granary and we planned on going there for happy-hour today. Unfortunately, after checking on the Internet, their happy-hour was only Tuesday to Thursday. Plus the weather was turning nasty so we decided to stay on the boat for cocktails and dinner.
Saturday, May 29th - Day 45
Not much going on today. Storms and rain almost all day kept us in the boat puttering around. The rain did let up for a bit in the late afternoon so I walked up to the office and paid for Sunday night too. The weather forecast for Sunday showed clearing and winds out of the north which might have been nice for just going down the river a few miles and anchoring. But, the temps were going to stay in the 50s so we decided to stay here where we would have heat while plugged into the dock.
I did practice the flute in the afternoon and have been working on some new, very challenging music with come complicated fingering in the higher register. Since I was playing inside the closed-up boat, while I was collecting my flute and music, I also grabbed the ear-defenders I use while working in the engine room with a running diesel. I handed them to Laura saying she might need them because I was working on some new music. She smiled and put them on. 'nuff said......
Laura cooked some boneless chicken breasts in the Insta-Pot and made Chicken chow mein for dinner. We've found that cooking chicken in the Insta-Pot makes it very flavorful and juicy. It was excellent.
Sunday, May 30th - Day 46
It looks like we have an excellent weather window for motor-sailing up the NJ coast on Tuesday and Wednesday. Plans are to leave here early tomorrow and travel the 40 or so nautical miles to Reedy Island on the north end of Delaware Bay. There is a nice anchorage there and we could catch the early morning ebb tide Tuesday morning for the run down the bay and up the coast. Current forecast shows winds from a helping direction the whole way and seas in the 2 foot range. Excellent!
Last night the temps went down to the high-40s and we kept our central heat on all night. The boat stayed comfortable and I had turned the heat down so it stayed cool in our cabin (but not cold). Only one day from air-conditioning to heat. Are we becoming wussies or is this crazy weather? Probably a little of both...
This morning Laura went up and coordinated with the manager Pam for a ride to the local grocery store. We were getting a little low on fresh veggies which we eat quite a bit of. I eat them every day for lunch with 1/2 a chicken or ham sandwich. This grocery run will stock us up for the next week or so. We'll probably be in Atlantic Highlands area on Wednesday but nasty weather is coming again on Thursday and Friday so we might not leave the boat for many days. Oh well... we like it here.
Catching up on laundry is next on the list. I'm going to help Laura carry the laundry basket the 1/4 mile or so to the coin laundry at the next marina over. There isn't laundry at this marina but they have a deal with the Sassafras Harbor Marina so we can use their laundry. Maybe I'll practice the challenging music on my flute while Laura is gone with the laundry.... Do you want to know what the songs are? One is Mozart's "Eine Kleine Nachtmusik - IV Rondo". It's a doozy on the flute.
We finished our laundry and a few other boat projects to get underway again tomorrow. Since we would be probably motoring for over 30 hours, I was especially critical during my engine checks. I topped off the oil and water / antifreeze then tightened the alternator belts just a bit. I think we are ready!
Monday, May 31st to Tuesday Jun1st - Days 47 & 48
We were up early and off the dock at 6:50am. I like leaving early on travel days which gives us more options for where to stop at night. No problems getting away from the dock and the weather was sunny and clear as we slowly motored out of Georgetown. I had thought about getting fuel before we left but the fuel dock at the next marina didn't open until 8am. We had enough fuel on-board to motor about 500 miles but diesel is usually cheaper here than Atlantic Highlands or Catskill. If we fill up here, we can go all the way to Catskill and back to here in the Fall on the same tank. Diesel here was $2.74 / gallon but we motored right by as they were closed.
Winds were about 10 knots on our nose as we motored the 9 miles out of the Sassafras River to Chesapeake Bay. Once we turned up the bay toward the Chesapeake & Delaware Canal, winds were on the beam so we rolled out our jib and mainsail. Not quite enough wind to sail over 5 knots so we kept the motor running at low RPMs.
A couple hours later we turned east into the C&D canal and rolled in the sails. We had the currents with us and we motored at 7-8 knots the 15 miles to Delaware Bay at the other end of the canal. Only interesting thing that happened was I noticed the free dock in Chesapeake City was open. We've only seen room at that dock once in the 10 years since they built it. Figures it would be open when we didn't need it.
Dean and Sue on Autumn Borne were about an hour ahead of us. They had been anchored on the Sassafras River while we were at the dock in Georgetown. Dean and I texted each other during the morning and he said it was very nice out on Delaware Bay. They were catching the last part of the ebb tide so had currents helping for a bit so decided to press on to the Harbor of Refuge anchorage at Cape Henlopen. This got Laura and I thinking about if we should keep going past our planned anchorage at Reedy Island and maybe do the coastal trip tonight.
I checked all my weather apps and it didn't seem to make much difference in terms of winds or seas if we did the NJ coast tonight or tomorrow. We would have the Delaware Bay currents against us for several hours but it would change to helping about 1/2 way down the bay.
The two items that helped us decide to keep going were Dean said the winds were help them and I thought we could get around Cape May before dark. It's great traveling this time of year when it doesn't get dark until 9pm. We exited the canal, turned south on Delaware Bay and put out our big sails with 10 knots of wind just behind the beam (broad-reach).
The trip down Delaware Bay was very pleasant. Light winds made only a little chop on the water coming from behind us and they kept our boat speed over 5 knots against the flood current. 4 hours later when the current changed, we ran 7-8 knots all the way to Cape May.
This 50 miles run down Delaware Bay can be very nasty so we carefully choose our weather. It's almost impossible for us to make this run with the winds on the nose or any seas on the bow. Without helping winds, we don't have enough horsepower in our little Perkins diesel to push us through waves and winds on the nose. But, today was excellent until an hour before Cape May. The winds turned to the south and picked up to mid-teens. We were traveling SE so there was just enough wind angle for our mainsail to help the boat speed and calm the movement in the growing sea.
The Cape May ferry passed in front of us a little while later.
We rounded Cape May through the Prissywick Channel about an hour before sunset. It was nice to have the currents with us for a change. Typically we leave the C&D with the currents helping and, by time we get to Cape May, they have changed to against us. Today was a different story as we ran 7 knots all the way around Cape May and headed up the coast of NJ.
Here was our colorful sunset over Cape May a little while later. I worked hard to get the flag in the picture to help celebrate Memorial Day!
Laura decided to try sleeping just after sunset since it had been a long day for us. Unfortunately, the seas were off the starboard quarter and just high enough to roll the boat in a corkscrew motion when the bigger ones came by. The boat would be nice and stable for maybe a minute then a set of larger waves would rock us 10 degrees to each beam. It was not a fun ride. I had the main and jib configured for a broad-reach which puts them way out from the boat to catch the winds behind us. This let us run lower RPMs and keep our speed over 6 knots. But, it was not a nice ride.
A little while later, I pulled the mainsail in tight for roll-control. This helped immensely to calm down the roll on the higher seas. We only lost about 1/2 knot which I made up by increasing the engine RPMs slightly. Now it should be calm enough for Laura to sleep a bit.
As we passed Atlantic City a few hours later, we were able to turn a little more north which put the close swell more behind us. Now the ride was much better and I was able to let the mainsheet out a bit to help with the boat speed.
When on our night watches, each of us tries to let the other sleep as much as possible. Laura went down at 9pm for an expected 4 hours off. I was going to let her sleep until 2am as I was able to stay awake by watching the stars and 1am moonrise. She came up and relieved me at 1:30am and I was happy to go down for a snooze.
Sometimes when we are at sea overnight, we don't sleep at all - especially the first night. It depends on the motion of the boat. If the roll is too much on the larger waves, it wakes you up every couple minutes. But, we've seen in the past on multi-night trips that the second night you can sleep through just about anything.
Tonight was just a slow "rock-a-bye-baby" kind of motion. I think I slept 4 hours straight before waking up. Even then I rolled back over and slept for another hour. By then it was light out so I got dressed and went to relieve Laura from her watch. Our agreement is that if the person on watch is too tired to stay awake, they wake up the other person immediately. I guess she was doing OK because she was still wide awake when I came up into the cockpit.
By this time we were passed Barnegate Bay and approaching Manasquan Inlet. The winds had moved from the west so I put out the full main and jib. Once again not enough wind to sail over 5 knots but the ride was nice. I think Laura slept soundly for 2-3 hours. Our ride the rest of the day was fairly calm.
At 3pm we motored behind the breakwater at Atlantic Highlands. Since we really didn't know where we were going next, since the winds were light I decided to head to the fuel dock for diesel and water. We took on 72 gallons of diesel (from Norfolk) and a little water. I knew the fuel would be more expensive here but still lots cheaper than Catskill. Diesel was $3.50 / gallon here (compared to $2.49 in Georgetown). 1/2 hour later we were anchored behind the breakwater and relaxing with a cocktail to celebrate another successful overnight passage.
Laura had taken Filet Mignon's out of the freezer that she had purchased at Aldi's in New Bern when we were in Oriental. I grilled them up for dinner and we ate in the cockpit enjoying the New York City skyline in the distance. No pictures because it was very hazy. Sorry.
I think we hit the sack at 9pm and slept for 10 hours. We both needed it!
203nm in the past two days, 1,459.5 total trip miles
Wednesday, June 2nd - Day 49 (end of week 7)
We relaxed in the morning with really no plans for today. As tired as we were yesterday, I had thought of staying here anchored for 2-3 days with maybe a couple excursions into town with the dinghy. But... our plans change all the time.
While not at a dock or mooring, our lives are very dependent on the weather. Where we go and what we do are almost always a direct result of the weather forecasts. Today our plans changed completely because of the forecasts.
Today was supposed to be nice with showers and thunderstorms coming later in the day. Then tomorrow was nasty but by Friday things would calm down for several days. On our way up the coast, we had talked about staying in this protected anchorage a couple days then taking the boat up through NYC and out into Long Island Sound for a week or two. I had looked at the weather and wind forecast and it looked pretty nice for the next week or so.
But, this morning I checked out the sea forecast on WindFinder.com and PredictWind.com. Even though the winds were light, seas in Long Island Sound were going to be 4-5 feet for several days. What's up with that? The winds were going to be out of the south to southwest for several days so you would think the seas on the northern Long Island shore would be low. But no. I checked two different spots along the northern LI coast and they said 3-5 foot seas. Yuck! It was not going to be a nice sail around Long Island Sound. Change of plans....
Autumn Borne had stayed a night at Cape Henlopen then motor-sailed up the coast about 12 hours behind us. They had stopped this morning just before the Verrazano Bridge at a fairly open anchorage called Graves End. They were waiting for the flood tide to begin in a couple hours then they were heading up the Hudson to Haverstraw today then our docks at Catskill tomorrow.
We checked the tide and current tables for NYC and saw that about 2 hours from now the flood current would start. It would take us 2 hours to get there. Time to boogie!
In about 15 minutes we stowed everything away, I did my engine checks, started the engine and set up all my instruments. We pulled the muddy chain and anchor (typical for here. That's why the holding is so good!) and were underway heading north at 11am. I had computed we could make the Haverstraw anchorages by around 6pm which were about 50 miles away. The tidal currents should be adding 1-2 knots to our speed almost the whole way.
An hour later we were motor-sailing under the Verrazano Bridge.
Another hour to the Statue of Liberty.
And then entering the Hudson River at Manhattan.
There is a new park that was built over the past few years over the water on the Manhattan Side of the river. It is called Little Island and was funded by billionaire Barry Diller. It consists of 132 "mushrooms" planted into the Hudson with a park on top for the public to enjoy and smaller concerts / attractions. Here is a link to more information - Little Island. I took this neat picture as we motored by.
We averaged over 7 knots for the day and were in the 9s several times with the wind helping on our big sails. It was an excellent day on the Hudson.
Autumn Borne had anchored in Halfmoon Bay (part of Haverstraw Bay) and I was planning on anchoring over there too. But, the forecast for tomorrow didn't look too good so I thought we might be sitting for a couple days. That anchorage is open the wakes from powerboats so I instead decided to motor into Haverstraw Cove where we would have great protection from storms and wakes.
No problems getting in through the shallow inlet since we were at high tide. I could see that we would have been close to grounding if the tide had been low. We had 3 feet of tide under us and I saw 8.5 feet on the depth sounder. Our keel would have been "rubbing" at low tide.
We anchored in the northern end because there was a 25' power boat anchored on the south side with several young persons partying and blasting music. There was also a jetski zooming around (not near us thankfully) and a dance party in the park. This has always been the quietest place when anchoring here in the past. What happened? By sundown, all the noisy folks had left and we had the calm anchorage all to ourselves.
Just before bedtime, I checked the weather forecast again. Things had changed with storms moving to later in the day tomorrow. Laura and I discussed then decided to head out at first light to catch the end of the flood current up the river. We would try for Catskill tomorrow and the end of our trip north.
50nm today, 1,509.5 total trip miles
Thursday, June 3rd - Day 50
We both slept really well as I think we were still a little sleep-deprived after our overnight up the coast. I woke up around 4:45am and decided to get going. This happens more often than not. I had set the alarm for 5am and woke up 15 minutes early. I must have a pretty good internal clock!
No problems out of the anchorage and we again turned the boat north up the Hudson. I tried to see if Autumn Borne had left their anchorage and I couldn't see any masts in that direction so assumed they were ahead of us. I didn't want to text Dean in case he decided to sleep in today. It was only 5:30am...
Winds helped a little as we ran the jib out on either port or starboard as required to keep it full motoring up the river. A few hours later I saw this beautiful scene on the western shore and turned the boat around to take a picture. How pretty is this?
We made it almost to Poughkeepsie before the current changed to against us and slowed to 5 knots. There was just enough helping wind that the boat never dropped below 5 knots and we made pretty good time the rest of the day.
In the late afternoon around Saugerties the winds picked up to almost 20 knots from the south and I had to take a reef in the jib so the winds were not blowing us down the waves so bad. We were only about 10 miles from Catskill so we just ran with the waves and winds.
Laura and I got the boat ready for her first dock in several days by dropping the solar panels and cleaning up the decks a bit. As we turned into Catskill Creek, Laura setup our docklines and pulled our starboard jib sheet and jib roller line to the lifelines to get them out of the way. We'd done this about 200 times during our charters here so it was like she was on autopilot.
At 4:15pm we pulled into our slip at Catskill Marina with a few locals on the dock to help. We were tied up a short while later and enjoying a cocktail with the marina manager Mike.
Here is our great boat Second Wind at the dock in Catskill. Looks like I have a lot of cleaning to do....
Autumn Borne ended up being a little behind us and came in around 6pm. We had a nice reunion and ordered takeout from J&Js Smokehouse for dinner together on the marina lawn where we reminisced about out trip.
It was a very nice, relaxing trip from Marathon to Catskill. We didn't push ourselves or the boat other than my trying to rush through Georgia where I just wanted to make the miles because of the twisty-turny ICW and shallow water in many spots. Once we were in South Carolina, we slowed down and took our time. We did visit a few new places and different anchorages which is always nice.
Lots of projects on my plate for this summer including rebuilding my whole instrument panel in the cockpit with more up-to-date electronics and a new RADAR plus replacing our old cockpit table which is not worth trying to save. I'm also going to look into having the boat hauled and replacing the propeller shaft. It's been "throbbing" the whole trip north and seemed much worse the last week or so. I don't think it's to the point where it would not last another 1,000 miles but i would rather not take the chance.
And! Guest what! For only the 2nd time in 31 trips, I DIDN'T RUN AGROUND! Woo Hoo!
65.5nm today, 1,575 total trip nautical miles.
Trip Stats -
Anchored 20 nights
Mooring 8 nights
Marina 20 nights
Overnight at sea 1 night
As I've said in the past, I really write this blog for myself. I enjoy going back through and reminding myself of the places we've been and things we've done. I hope you've enjoyed it too!
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