The first leg of Wednesday’s journey ran from Block Island to “The Race,” so named because the water that empties out of the east end of Long Island Sound has to squeeze through a rather narrow opening, causing the current to “race” through. Our mission was to get past this narrow opening and into Long Island Sound before the tide turned against us.

7:15 am: No traffic except for a lone and large fishing boat, trawling with both trawling arms fully extended. Nothing else as far as the eye can see and we're on a collision course! They are part of the "No fish left behind" program, no doubt. There's got to be a better way than scooping up everything in the water, killing it all, and keeping only a fraction for the dinner table. End of sermon.

The forecast for today was 5-10 mph of wind out of the west, upgraded to 10 knots (11.5 mph) this morning. We now have 15 knots of wind, right on the nose. Once again, we have no chance of sailing. Since we left Baltimore on July 6, we have been able to sail a little less than two days out of our ten days underway! Not much advantage in having a sailboat! End of rant.

Good thing we got an early start! It looks like we'll be traveling 14 hours today, from sunrise to sunset, to get within striking distance of NYC. (Don't tell Homeland Security!) The problem we've had today is the one we hope to avoid tomorrow: a shockingly adverse current. In addition to the pull of the tide, we had copious volumes of water being driven from the west to the east end of Long Island Sound by strong west winds. For several agonizing hours, we felt like we were on a treadmill: We had both engines at full throttle going against current and wind and were making a scant 3.5 knots (4 mph)! We had to abandon our original destination, Port Jefferson, near the middle of Long Island, and yield to the wind.

Now we're headed to Milford, about halfway along the Connecticut coast. Before we gave up on Port Jefferson, we had raised the mainsail and altered our course just enough to harness the wind's power--we needed all the help that we could get! I went inside to study the charts, looking for a protected harbor that was as close to NYC as we could reach before sunset. I came back out and plugged our new destination into the chart plotter. It was meant to be: Options was already exactly on course!

We didn’t exactly paint the town of Milford: We pulled into the outer harbor and anchored before sunset, grilled steaks and enjoyed a good dinner on board as the sun went down. Then we cleaned up the dishes, took showers, watched a little TV (I fell asleep as the first photons struck my eyeball), and slept as fast as we could. The anchorage was blessedly quiet and uncrowded, so no need to worry about going bump in the night.

I awoke around 4:30, checked the weather, made the coffee and prepped the boat for departure. We were out of the harbor by 5:40, bound for NYC, this time with the tide on our side. We ran both engines to keep up with the tide, knowing it would pay big dividends later. Sure enough, we skied through the dreaded Hell Gate with the vicious currents propelling us forward at light speed! Well, maybe that’s a slight exaggeration. At its maximum, the current added 5.2 knots to our speed. I watched as our boat speed climbed past 11 knots, past 12 knots and edged up ever so close to 13 knots. Alas, in spite of my shouting and jumping around, Options would not go faster than 12.9 knots.

We tied up in the afternoon at a marina on the north edge of Jersey (or “Joisey”) City, within sight of the Statue of Liberty. It was nice to get off the boat and stretch our legs. After a 3-mile walk through the nastiest part of town (to avoid paying $1 each for a 1-minute ferry ride—hands up of everyone who can guess whose idea that was--we reached the Jersey City boardwalk and went for a run (me) and walk (Brooke). We took a cab back to the boat. We had a pleasant evening dining al fresco at a little restaurant in the nice part of town.

“The Race” was not quite over: As we went to bed, about 7:30 pm (Brooke exaggerates), we knew we had to be underway at first light to beat a storm coming up from the south.

P.S. The picture is at first light as we left the next morning.