10-15-2015 - Sailing South, Again!

We are on our way south again, aboard Summer Wind! This year we are planning to travel the east coast of the US and the ICW (Intracoastal Waterway), and spend some time in Florida, the Florida Keys (for scuba diving), the West coast of Florida (lots of friends to visit there!) and the Dry Tortugas (70 miles west of Key West, to see what’s there – nothing. It’s supposed to be beautiful, though.)

We left late by cruiser’s standards this year, because my son’s wedding was October 10. We wouldn’t have missed it for anything, even though we were afraid we might be traveling in very cold or rough weather. (We packed all of our ski clothes, including goggles!) So far, our weather has been pretty good, and we missed traveling though the worst of the flooding and debris from Hurricane Joachin.

Our yard, in early October, almost too pretty to leave…

My son's wedding

We left on Wednesday, 10-14-15 at 4:50 AM. (Crazy!! Never again!!) It was dark and cold and no fun at all. The sun comes up at 6:30 AM now and sets about 6:30 PM, so we spent a miserable hour and a half in the dark.  We had very high seas (6+ foot waves, very close together) and wind “on the nose” (straight toward the front of the boat, no good for sailing), so it was a rough day. But on the bright side, we sailed through a pod of dolphins, which is always a delight.

We had planned to go to Port Jefferson, NY for the night, but with the wind from the west, the NY side of Long Island Sound was rougher, so we finally moved over to the CT side and anchored at Charles Island, outside of Milford, CT. What a comfortable little anchorage! We had a quick dinner (my “goto” one-pot, 6-minute, no-wasted-water, pressure cooker pasta with sausage) and went to sleep early. The best sleep we’ve had in weeks!

Charles Island

Thursday, October 15, 2015. Up at 6:15 AM, and with the anchor up at 6:30, we headed west, toward NYC with the fishing fleet. Thursday was an outstandingly clear and beautiful day, with southwest wind. We had planned to anchor at Little Bay, just outside the Throgs Neck Bridge, but when we reached there close to the 1:00 PM high tide, we decided we should ride the perfect conditions through the city. We passed a few huge commercial vessels but saw very few pleasure craft this time of year. We looked for the Green Point Loft in Brooklyn, where the wedding was held, but couldn’t recognize it from the outside, even though I do know where it is now, and we recognized the two nearby water towers. We were lucky to get through the East River (at times doing over 10 knots) and down to Sandy Hook, NJ by 6 PM to anchor for the night, with a half hour of daylight to spare.

Leaving Charles Island in the early morning

The first thrilling glimpse of New York City on the horizon

Through the Throgs Neck Bridge – committed now to the transit through the East River 

NYC buildings come into view as we change course from west to south

Bridges

Buildings

More buildings

Our wedding venue is here somewhere, in Green Point, Brooklyn

Manhattan in the rear view

The Statue of Liberty

Passing a very large container ship 

(each of those blocks is the size of a large truck on the highway)

Leaving NYC, and sailing toward New Jersey

So, I know it’s not too exciting to read where we started and stopped, or even what we ate.  You want to know what went wrong, right? Well, a few things already. If this luck keeps up we won’t have a boat left by the time we get to FL.

1.       We have a brand new MFD, Multi-Function Display, formerly known as chart plotter. It has a touch screen and also a remote keypad. Somehow the screen was locked and we couldn’t unlock it. As a result we couldn’t manage to dim the bright screen to be able to see what we were doing, and use it. All of the book instructions seemed to start from a menu place that I couldn’t manage to get to… argh! Chuck finally got it working. In the meantime, the backup Garmin was working just fine, fortunately. Smarter people would have dimmed the display before leaving the slip, but we were preoccupied with unplugging the water hose and electric cord, and removing our lines from the pilings. We are so rusty after a summer of all maintenance and no sailing!

2.      When we did try to use our jib, a mis-fed and loose sheet was beating against our dodger (windshield) and made two nice holes in the plastic window panes. There was a lot of salt spray on our first day, and the bow of the boat was buried in a couple of waves (sending a small stream of water toward the cockpit), so the dodger needed to perform! I patched it with a transparent flexible plastic cutting board and clear packing tape. It will do for a while, even though it looks like one of those signs you see on the windshield of a bus, with the route destination. I want to write on it “FLORIDA”!

Patched dodger

3.    That same jib looked a little ragged when it was furled yesterday, and today I realized that is because the leech has come apart and the leech line is exposed. The loop at the head of the sail looked a little worn when we put it up, I should have had it looked at over the summer but never got to it. I was so busy with other boat maintenance, and with buying, returning, accessorizing, and altering wedding outfits for myself and my family. (I miss shopping...) I’m hoping the jib sail will last as far as Oriental, NC, so I can get it fixed at Hodges St. Sailmakers. They fixed our main sail last spring and did a beautiful job. Maybe they can fix the dodger too.

Our jib, beginning to come apart

Tomorrow we plan to sail offshore along the coast of New Jersey. Hoping we get the west wind that NOAA promised us!

We need to move as fast as we can now. Late October can get very cold really suddenly. Does anyone ever remember “Trick or Treating” in nice weather? Not me, I remember walking around on crunchy frozen grass, with winter coats covering our costumes.

Sandy & Chuck on Summer Wind

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