067: Hudson River Part One, or "We love the Hudson River"

After three magnificent days of hospitality from Nancy's sister Judy and her husband Will, we left Brooklyn Heights at around noon on May 18th to head up the Hudson River for the thirty-three n/m trip to Half Moon Bay Marina in Croton-On-Hudson, NY ("COH").   On the way we passed Jack's old office building when he worked between Tulane and Michigan Law:

And Grant's Tomb:

The Hudson River past Manhattan is very busy, so not too many pictures taken as we were "on our toes" driving the boat.

It takes awhile for the New York side of the Hudson River ("HR") to get scenic. this is Yonkers:

Not so the New Jersey side, this is across from Yonkers:

We made it up to COH soon enough, and the next two days were the busiest on the trip so far.

On the 19th we got a rental car and drove to Storm King Art Center, a huge sculpture park.  You got your Calder's:

 

Your Maya Lin (landscape sculpture):

Your Lichtenstein:

Your "others:

1/2 mile long stone wall:

Mirrored Fence:

 Your movable art:

Then we zipped over to West Point.  Since WP is an active military base, unlike Annapolis, you are restricted to a bus tour with a few stops.    

Sherman tank:

Part of the chain that went across the HR to stop the British from getting down the HR, ordered up by General Washington:

View up and down the HR from West Point:

From West Point we ran over to Bear Mountain on the Appalachian Trail:

From the top of Bear Mountain:

The next day was even "more busy."    First stop, bucket list item for me, the Old Rhinebeck Aerodrome.  Home to actual WW1 fighter planes and other planes from aviation's early days.  Each picture is an original plane.  The video is a reproduction.

Reproduction, built to spec, only with a modern engine:

Then we flew over to Hyde Park to see Franklin Roosevelt's home and Library.  Super impressive visit:

"The Man:"

Side view of the house:

Carved from the Berlin Wall:

After Hyde Park we went over to the Walkway over the Hudson, a repurposed railroad bridge.  We walked the full three miles roundtrip.

View from the Walkway:

And finally, we stopped in at Croton on Hudson Gorge Park.  Amazing.

From the top:

From the bottom:

We grabbed a late dinner in COH, we were "knackered."

Dave

Odometer:  4,071 n/m's

066: The Big Apple

On Monday, May 13th, we left the slip at Captain Bill's Landing at the Manasquan Inlet at 6:00 a.m. for the thirty-nine n/m trip out in the Atlantic Ocean to NYC.

Before leaving the slip, we checked out the status of the inlet:

Long-time readers of this blog will note that we had a bit of rough crossing of the Gulf of Mexico back in November.   Now some would say that rough crossing was the result of imperfect decision making on the part of "The Captain," but that was not the case.  The real reason was my failure to appease the gods by playing "The Wreck of the Edmund Fitzgerald" by Gordon Lightfoot on the way out of the harbor.  You see Gentle Reader, every crossing of Lake Michigan that I made dating back to the 1980's, I played that song on the way out of the harbor.  I had forgotten to do that prior to crossing the Gulf, and the god's punished me.   This time however, I not only played it, but had it on the outside speakers as well, just so the gods could hear.   (I got a "thumb's up" from a fisherman as we cleared the inlet).   As my reward, we had a very nice crossing.   Basically just large gentle swells on the starboard quarter.   Moral of the story: respect the superstitions. 

As we  came to the Verrazzano-Narrows Bridge we stayed outside the marked channel (it was plenty deep) to keep out of the way of the "big boys" as in large container ships and tows.   After we cleared the bridge, it got a bit crazy with all the traffic.   This video was taken later, but it gives you a good idea of the challenges of the NYC Harbor and rivers:  lots of different kinds of traffic, moving fast:

We got the iconic Statue of Liberty shot, unfortunately we had gone ahead of KatMat when Matt got delayed so we weren't able to trade shots of our boats in the foreground (KatMat leapfrogged ahead of us and they are pulling the boat out for the summer and heading back to Illinois/Michigan.  Thanks for everything KatMat, it was a nice 3,836 n/m's.

View from the water, not all on the same day:

Empire State Building:

The "Vessel"

Lower Manhattan:

A Concorde at the Intrepid Museum:

Another "Looper" got a shot of us!

Traffic:

We pulled into a marina at Brooklyn Heights, very close to Nancy's sister Judy's home.  As nice as this view is, we accepted Judy's offer to stay at her house.  Judy and her husband, Will, were extremely gracious hosts and we enjoyed sleeping on beds that didn't rock for three nights.

A fleet of solo Trans-Atlantic racing boats came into the marina:

When we arrived at the marina, Judy came over to see the boat and "marvel" at our modest accommodations.   We have officially lived on the boat for one year as of this writing.  Then we walked over to her amazing home for a nice visit and later dinner out.

The next day Nancy and walked around Brooklyn Heights and the waterfront, Nancy has hundreds of pictures, but you get a flavor with these:

Iconic shot of the Empire State Building through a bridge, it is there, but it was hazy:

Supposed to look like this (stock photo):

Deli near Judy's home:

Our Jack's home for the summer (he has a job in NYC, staying at a friend's home):

Video of the view from a hotel in Brooklyn Heights:

Later we borrowed Judy's car (THANKS JUDY!) to drive out to Islip Terrace to visit with my Aunt Marie and Uncle Paul, the last of my father and mother's generation in our family.  We had a lovely visit with my cousins Nancy and Karen joining us for dinner.    Chicagoans: you think Chicago traffic is bad?  NY's is crazy.  Check out this exchange, thank goodness for google maps:

The next day, Nancy and Judy went to visit their parents' grave out on "The Island" and I did work-work and lazed about.   That night Judy, Will and Nancy went out to dinner, but I had a board meeting call so Judy kindly ordered in Sushi for me.   

All in all it was wonderful visit and we only regret that our plans couldn't have included more visits with my cousins and a trip by boat out around Long Island.

Dave

Odometer: 4,038 n/m's

065: Badlands

 

As noted in the last post, on May 9^th we anchored just off the Cost Guard Station at Cape May, NJ.  In fact, about 140’ upwind/up-current from the Coast Guard's jetty.   Not a ton of margin for error if the anchor dragged, but plenty with a good anchor set.

 Ahh the Jersey Shore, Bruce Springsteen Country, Asbury Park:  “The flag of piracy flew from my mast, My sails were set wing to wing, I had a jukebox graduate for first mate, She couldn't sail but she sure could sing.”   Maybe we’d even have time to go to the Stone Pony!

 

We dropped the hook in eight feet of water at near low tide.  Noting that the tidal range is six feet, taking us to fourteen feet at high tide, I set out a just over 100’ of scope (anchor chain and line) giving us a bit over a 7:1 ratio of scope to depth, more than sufficient.   By 5:00 pm, as predicted, the wind was blowing pretty well with the forecast showing it would settle down a bit overnight but start up with a vengeance at about 4:30 a.m. the next morning.   I set our anchor alarm (measures your distance and compass bearing relative to the where you dropped the anchor, an Iphone app) and looked at our position on our chart plotter and took visual reference to a building on the shore.   I dutifully logged our bearing and distances as the boat swung in the wind and tidal currents.   (I don’t recall ever being so anal retentive on this whole trip about noting our position.)  The jetty looked closer and closer in my imagination but from 2:00 p.m to to 9:00 p.m. the data indicated that we hadn’t moved at all.  Still 123.5’ give or take from where we dropped the hook.   At 4:30 a.m. when the winds were predicted to build, we’d be at low tide, which would increase our scope ratio to 12.5 to 1, that is hurricane level scope.  Still, I was anxious, so I made sure the engine key was on top of the helm station, that my Iphone was fully charged and plugged in, and I even slept in the cabin salon instead of the v-berth, just in case.   At 9:00 p.m. I told myself to quit worrying and went to sleep in the salon.

 

At 5:00 a.m. I got up, checked the anchor app, still 123.5’ feet.  Great!  We wanted an early start (6:00 a.m.) so Nancy was up as well.  At 5:20 a.m. as I was sipping coffee and Nancy was getting dressed, the anchor alarm started blaring.  I looked, we were now 176’ from where we set the hook, and subsequently 50’ closer to the jetty and disaster.   I looked back at the jetty; it was definitely closer and not in my imagination this time!  I started up the engine and yelled down to Nancy that I needed her, and now!   I put the engine in gear just enough to stabilize the situation.    I resisted the temptation to plow forward, doing so would have risked going over the anchor line and getting it caught in the prop.  That would have made a bad situation catastrophic.   Line around the prop = no engine = we crash into the jetty and then who knows?  

 

It didn’t take long for Nancy to get up and take over helm-duties, while I went to the bow to assess the situation.  The anchor line was taught, so maybe it had caught again, or was just slowly dragging. Regardless, we went into our anchor retrieval routine but with the wind and current were so strong it took way longer than usual to get the anchor up.    We then slowly motored out into the main channel.   How close a call was it?  Given that we’d done all the right things, perhaps not as close as it seemed at the time, but still, any one thing not prepared for (now where is that damn engine key? Iphone out of juice, etc.) could have met us with disaster.

 

The wind was gusting over 30 mph, not the best day to be traveling, but we were traveling the “inside” route through the marshland on the Jersey ICW which is only dredged to approximately six feet and is known for shoaling.  Tow Boat US has boats stationed all around the Jersey Shore as boats constantly ground there.   The guidance is that if you draft under 5’, take the inside route unless the Atlantic Ocean is very calm, 5’ and over, wait until the Atlantic Ocean is calm, which could take a while.  We only draft thirty inches, so I wasn’t that worried about it, but in this weather, who knows?   If it hadn’t been 5:35 a.m. with no ability to call a marina and get a slip for the day, we’d have probably pulled into one.  Re-anchoring was not high on my priority list.   It was still dark, but we didn’t have much choice, we needed to begin our trip north to Atlantic City and find some calmer waters to get ourselves sorted out.  (Going the “outside route” on the Atlantic Ocean was not an option with this wind, the seas out there were four to six fee, small craft advisory being in effect.)

 

We did find some calmer spots were the JICW wound through residential areas, but for the most part it was like this:

 

We don’t have any pictures because we both spent the next eight hours at the helm making sure we stayed in the narrow channel between the red and green buoys.  Not a lot of margin for error, especially in these conditions.

We did have one brief tricky moment due to my hubris.  See the picture.  Instead of following the yellow path along the JICW around the back of an island, I thought it would a good idea to take a shortcut through an inlet (dashed line above the arrow with "Bridge") to the ocean “to save some time.”  As we approached the bridge to the inlet, it was clear that this was a no-go as the waves were roaring through the inlet and were a good four to five feet on what would have been a beam sea.  With my tail between my legs, I reversed course and went back around the island.  What did the lady in the Donner Party famously say?  “Don’t take no shortcuts.”

 

The last few miles wound through a residential area, the waters were calm, being protected by the buildings on the shore.  The only minor challenge was that we had to go through three bridges that needed to be lifted.   No problem at all, in fact I think the bridge tenders were happy to break the boredom as we only saw two other boats out the whole day. (Note the next day’s write up.) 

 After eight hours of travel, we pulled into the Golden Nugget marina in Atlantic City and the mood was very Bruce Springsteen: “Oh, everything dies, baby, that's a fact, But maybe everything that dies some day comes back, Put your makeup on, fix your hair up pretty, And meet me tonight in Atlantic City.”

 

I took a long hot shower and then both Nancy and I took a walk through the casino.  Ehh, definitely not the Bellagio in Vegas.   We spent the rest of the afternoon watching a Great Loop documentary.   We were just knackered, and dinner consisted of yogurt and granola.  

May 11^th was Nancy’s birthday and as a present I ordered up sun and less wind, but forget to order up warmth, it was pretty cold; but a sunny day does much to lighten the mood.  We decided to make it an easier day, so instead of going to the full sixty two n/m to the Manasquan Inlet, we only went forty six miles, stopping at a marina in Pine Beach, N.J.   We’d been warned to avoid traveling on the “inside route” on the weekends, and I can see why.   Luckily it was too early in the season, and too cold, for that many people to be out, but the fishermen were out with a vengeance.   Worse than Florida boaters, these guys just roar through the narrow channels at full speed: other boats be dammed.   We just took it slow.  Did have a bit of a chuckle with this exchange: 

 

“Coast Guard, Coast Guard this is the vessel (name withheld, call it the Minnow)”

CG: “Vessel Minnow how can we help?”

Minnow: “We are coming to the Tom’s River is there anything going on?”

CG: “Captain, please switch to 22 alpha”

CG: “Captain of the Minnow what issues are you concerned about?”

Minnow: Well, shoaling around the Tom’s River entrance.”

CG: “Captain what is your vessel’s draft?”

Minnow: “18 inches”

CG: “uhh Captain stay between the channel markers and you’ll be fine.”

 

After tying up in the slip, I rinsed the boat and got caught up with this blog and did laundry.  That night Nancy and I walked about a mile and half to an Italian restaurant for her birthday dinner and we took an Uber back to the boat.

 On the 12^th, Mother’s Day, we took an Uber to a breakfast place and then walked about a ½ mile to the grocery store to get provisions.  Back at the boat we were on way Captain Bill’s Landing marina (six slips and a fuel dock) by 10:00 a.m. for the short fifteen n/m run.  It was a dreary, rainy and cold day so not too many boats were out.   Of course, there was a 37’ center consol boat fishing in the middle the channel at a tight bend as we approached from the south with a 62' charter fishing boat approaching the bend from the north.   I just stopped Hygge and waited for the two of them to sort it out, even though I had the right of way.   Fisherman, what can I say?

Along the way:

We went through the Point Pleasant Canal, a one-mile canal to the Manasquan River.  Straight forward, no wake zone, subject to tidal current.   Well, I guess we lucked out because later Nancy say blog posts about how this was the most dangerous part of the entire Great Loop trip due to idiots who don’t abide by no wake zones.   Thank God she saw the posts after we went through the Canal, or it might have caused way too much anxiety.  

 

We pulled into Captain Bill’s landing by 1:00 p.m. and then went over for other Mother’s Day lunch at the restaurant next door.    

We then strolled over to the boardwalk, and all I can say is this place must be a zoo on weekends in the summer.  It was busy on this cold, wet and windy day!

A fake stern wheeler passing by:

The boardwalk:

Clowns creep me out, I'm not going in there:

A memorial to fishermen from this area lost at sea:

After our stroll we sat down with Captain Bill himself about advice on the trip to NYC the next day.  Super interesting guy:  lawyer, fisherman, marina owner, and treasure hunter.  To wit, one of his companies: “Depth Charge's endeavors include: underwater search, rescue and recovery, sonar and video documentation of new and old shipwrecks.”   Anyhow, he looked at the forecast with us and gave us the thumb’s up for the trip the next day, “as long as we left early, as the winds are predicted to build.”  So, the plan was set: cast off the lines at 6:00 a.m. the next morning and head to the “Big Apple.”

That night we watched the shrimp boats come and go and went to be early.

Dave

Odometer: 3,999 n/m