Mon 30 Jul 2012
Anchored in Horseshoe Cove, Sandy Hook, NJ

[photo: Clyde is being trained to take over for Diane]

We were able to leave this morning at the civilized hour of 0700 for our run through the W end of Long Island Sound, through the East River, and then down the bay to Sandy Hook. With the strong currents in our favor (can't do it any other way in a slow boat), we traveled almost 42 miles in 5.5 hours.

We had surprisingly little boat traffic of any kind until we reached the lower portion of the East River where we were being passed by large ferries and some mega-yachts in both directions. The collisions of their massive wakes made for an uncomfortable 20 minutes. The weather was not exactly clear, but it wasn't misty like the last time we came through here. More importantly, we did not motor through a major thunderstorm in the bay like last time, either.

It would have been nice to have the sails up for most of the trip, but the wind only allowed it for a small portion and we'll just have to be grateful for that. The only incident of the passage was that the snap-ring I had installed on the steering wheel shaft broke again. I had bought a spare, so that is good, but the question is why.

Diane had noted that our schedule for the past 4 days since leaving Block Island was rather uncomfortable. I agree in that we had to delay our departure due to current considerations and that put us into our anchorage rather late on 2 occasions. Also, we did total 170 miles in 4 straight days of running, and that is a lot of hours (at least for us). Since I am keeping statistics, we have only run longer than 4 days in a row one time and that was quite early in our trip.

So, getting here early in the day with decent weather and nice sun for the beach will help rejuvenate my first mate for tomorrow's run to the dreaded Manasquan Inlet. Our friends on Aurora (Dennis and Shirla) also disliked Manasquan and elected to make a very long run to bypass it, but we can't bring ourselves to go that far in one day.

We got the dinghy down off the davits and headed to the beach around 1330. With another couple on one side of a rock wall, we took to the other side to give each of us some privacy. It was a mistake for us because it was low tide and after just 1.5 hours, the rising tide was threatening the last bit of beach on our side. Diane took the high road over the rocks, which turned out to be the hard way. I needed to move the dinghy so I walked it along the edge of the surf around the rock jetty.

Unlike our previous visit here in late Jun, the water was very brown and full of green seaweed. It may not have been dirty in the true sense, but it was very unappealing to wade in. The beach sand itself, however, was quite nice and the sun, breeze, temperature and humidity were all decidedly in the very pleasant category. We read our books and sipped our beverages on the beach and life was good.

Supper was the delicious linguini with while clam sauce that we got as take-out yesterday, along with some fresh snow peas. What a difference it makes being here on a non-weekend day. The last time, there were incessant boat wakes rocking us until dark. Today, it is the rare wake that we notice.

We are still close enough to NYC that the television signals are pretty good, even with our old rabbit ears, so we watched a few hours of the Olympics. It was nice to be able to do that. The sunset was very pretty and we expect a very comfortable night.