07/09/2011, Port Jefferson, NY

We returned to the boat on the 7th... by the time we had settled everything it was late, maybe 5 pm and because it was hot, we let go of the mooring sailed in the 5 knot breeze down the harbor to the end of the mooring field and dropped the anchor.

Shortly after we arrived this Swan came to the boat. Isobel had a great time chatting with him and feeding him stale crackers. Both Lara and I have separate memories of Swans chasing us when we were little so we were happy that the Little Girl was on deck, well out of the reach of the long necked swan! Lara was a little uncomfortable working in the aft cabin as she was eye to eye with the swan through the open port!

40 57.743'n 073 04.857'w

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07/09/2011, Miller Place, NY

The girl can spot a playground at a mile.

She is sometimes so good at spotting a playground that she will be yelling and pointing and we don't see it without binoculars! There are several cruising guide type web sites (such as ActiveCaptain.com)... we feel they should add a feature that would high-light such things as playgrounds, libraries with kids sections, children's theaters, etc... we would make anchoring selections based on these criteria!

Of course when visiting Nana, she knows where all the local playgrounds are!

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07/08/2011, Jeffery's House

Here we should really have a photo of Kelly and Isobel in the pool... and the camera ran out of batteries!

Isobel spent a bunch of time at Kelly's house, either in the pool, or eating Jeff's grilled food, or reading books. Kelly, who is apparently quite the Lacrosse star, also showed Isobel all about Lacrosse... In this photo, I think Isobel was thinking, "Ok, that is pretty cool, Kelly.... but, lets go back in the pool!"

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Bill
07/02/2011, Port Washington, NY

Although we have been through the East River enough times to not worry too much about current (although we do pay attention to when it runs which direction)... and we don't worry too much about the amount of traffic... although we are always impressed by the amount of stuff going on. This photo is off the end of the runway for LaGuardia Airport.

The busiest place on the water is off the South Street Sea Port which is just east of the Battery. At one time, there are at least three helicopters in the air, two float planes making landings, the Staten Island Ferry coming in, several high speed taxi boats, several high speed East River Ferries, a 100' classic tour boat, several "cigarette" Boats doing at least 40 mph, and three or four locals out in their little sailboats plinking along.

Of course, this is with the backdrop of Manhattan on the west, Brooklyn to the East with all the associated car traffic, bikers, walkers and people hanging out on their porches or lounging in one of the parks along the water. Oh, and there was the Caribbean Princess, a 951' long cruise ship that was getting underway.

Our regret was that we didn't leave up a sail to steady us when the wakes rolled us as all these boats passed us on all sides going all directions...

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Lara
07/01/2011, off the Jersey shore

It's been 2 years yesterday that my Dad (Robert) is gone. I thought of him often as we sailed up the Jersey coast. He was probably happiest when he was flying, and on summer weekends he'd most likely be found at the Brookhaven glider field or towing banners along the beach shores. We saw several small planes towing banners including a huge Geico insurance gecko.
The sun had set as a huge firey red ball definitively ending the day as it disappeared.
I went up on the bow and had a conversation with my Dad, asked him to visit me sometime, somehow, and set a little bit of his ashes floating off on our bow wave in a little leaf.
Civil twilight passed, dark came as dark as dark can come 3 miles off New Jersey. After some failed attempts at sleep I spelled Bill around 12:30. The wind was light and I had no luck using the wind vane to steer so I hand steered trying to maintain anything near our intended 22` course. My nickname being "snake wake," this wasn't an easy task so I kept trying to find something off in the horizon to aim for.
For a good while there was a great bright target to guide me until I realized it was actually an AIS target on our chart plotter. Commercial vessels larger than a certain size must transmit information about themselves such as length, beam, name, speed, etc. So when I clicked on the little triangle on our monitor I found out my bright guide was actually a vessel coming at me at 10.4 kts. What was it's name? ROBERT. I tried to hail ROBERT a few times with no luck and later realized it was a tug boat by it's dimensions and when we were closer , by it's light configuration. Our CPA (closest point of approach) was around half a mile so it wasn't dire, but as we neared the wind dropped so low I was losing steerage and another sailboat also making the overnight passage was checking in on the radio. I found myself standing in front of the wheel, steering behind me (which often makes me confuse left with right) with one arm, the radio in the other trying to have a half intelligent conversation, watching the chart plotter spin as our boat went severely off course in one direction then the other, and watching ROBERT's course... way more multitasking than I had in me at 1:30 am. I got off the radio abruptly and tried to right things.
We passed, 2 ships in the night, never making contact. What a bizarre thing, beyond coincidence for me. I've never seen another boat named Robert and tugs usually have a first and last name like Robert McAllister, and it was the only ship we passed on my 3 hour watch. Thanks for the visit Dad.

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clear, warm, dry
07/01/2011, Gravesland Bay

Isobel looks for traffic as we approach Raritan Bay.

We had almost perfect weather for a trip up the NJ coast. Although the wind was forecast to be NE and light... it started out SE 15 to 20. We left about 11 am and sailed the rest of the day, most of it wing and wing with the swells behind us. As evening came on, the wind shifted off-shore so we broad reached. Both of these points of sail provided a very nice ride and allowed for lots of rest... Lara sailed through the darkest part of the night, made harder by light winds... she had to hand steer as the wind vane doesn't do well in light air...

Only when we were 7 miles from Sandy Hook did the wind clock around to the North which forced us to turn on the engine for the first time since we pulled the anchor.

Now we are in Gravesland Bay, near Coney Island, waiting for the current to change so we can go up the East River and into LI Sound.

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06/29/2011, Cape May, NJ

Isobel hangs out in her berth with some of here library. Note some books are in spanish!

We have been asked several times by people who we chat with about living aboard, "Who educates the little girl?"

We know one thing, she is not educated by a TV or a daycare center! She has learned to ID birds of all sorts. Of course her vocabulary include many nautical terms. She is learning about diesel engines and small engines, she is learning to read in books as well as on charts. She is learning to help out in all sorts of jobs on board. I will add to this as I think of other items.

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06/29/2011, Cape May, NJ

I tried to put out everything I could... was able to put a little jib out to keep the spinnaker full, which was flown to windward...

We had a great day sailing down wind on the Delaware Bay. We flew the cruising spinnaker with the whisker pole wing and wing with the main. When we were 7 or 8 miles from Cape May, we turned on the motor as the current had turned against us

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06/28/2011, Cheasapeake City, De

We were trying to catch a photo of this Great Blue Heron on top of the red nun... the photo is still pretty good!

We left Annapolis early sailed some... then motored... stopping along the way to wait out the current. We had slowed to 4.9 knots. After a couple hours we were back underway and our speed went from 6.5 and rose slowly until we were doing 8.2 in the C&D Canal

39 31.558'n 075 48.500'w

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06/27/2011, Annapolis MD

Lara and Isobel visit another boat in Spa Creek to share a little of the fresh Key Lime Tort we bought at the farmer's market.

Can you believe it? We sat on the boat while an Irish Parade was going on... and if we hadn't been their we could have been at the children's theater... We walked around town to find all this out... after the fact. We did have a very good early diner at Galloway Pub, an Irish place that we have been to before.

Thanks to Uncle Readie for checking our coordinates. BTW, we do have two primary GPS-WAAS in the cockpit. One is incorporated into our chartplotter-radar. The chartplotter provides an electronic version of the charts with our location show on it, acurate to 0.6 feet. We can also turn on the Radar which helps us "see" ships, bouys, and squalls at night or in the fog. The other GPS is a very simple unit that uses very little power. It is accurate to 6 feet.

We always have paper charts in the cockpit. And we do have two hand held GPS units as backups to our back-ups. Sometimes I miss the old days when you had to work a little to figure out where you were. In the next month or so we are going to train Lara on using a hand-bearing compass, depth sounder and chart, something she has not learned, "growing up" with the chart-plotter.

38 58.385'n:076 29.499'w

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