Mike and Kathy-A little rain must fall
09/14/2007, Great Kills Harbor, NY

September 10 and 11, Monday and Tuesday Great Kills, New York

Monday dawned hot and cloudy with a little fog. We followed "Restless" out of Liberty Harbor a little after high tide to hit the narrows with a little push behind us. At max. the tide here runs at five knots with standing waves so attention to tides is critical. They won't be all that important to us again until Cape May where there are two bridges with 55 feet clearance... plus we want to ride the tide up the Delaware Bay, so a departure a little after low tide is important.

After dodging anchored ships in the upper harbor we ran into some very dense fog just beyond the Verrazano Narrows Bridge. We have not put the radar reflector back up since the mast stepping and although Mike had checked our radar in the morning, when we turned it on it was not working. So, we followed closely behind "Restless", listening to the ship horns and fog horns. It remained foggy and gray for the rest of the day. We arrived at Great Kills Harbor which is packed with mooring balls, and anchored on the north end in front of a park. It was a short day but the forecast for the next few days looks iffy for our first open ocean run.

We have developed alternator problems and spent the rest of the day testing and diagnosing. Voltages seem to be fine except for the out-put so the alternator need to be pulled and fixed. Bummer.

Tuesday.

So, we have turned off any non-essential electrical items and run the generator on occasion. We woke to rain on Tuesday, but when it stopped for a minute, Mike headed for town to look for a new regulator, even though we are quite sure that is not the problem. He came back with ice and a regulator and an attitude. At the first place he stopped, he explained his problem and he was told no one could tie a dinghy up unless they were a member of the club. He was told the same thing at the next place, but the guy let him tie up because it was Tuesday, and not much was going on. He says it's not much of a town anyway, but they certainly are not very friendly!

We had thunderstorms in the afternoon and lots of wind and rain. Steve and Carol from "Restless" called and invited us over for cocktails. We are trying to figure out a good time to head out for the next leg of the trip. During our conversation, Steve mentioned that he wished he had hooked up his radar before our trip yesterday! We were following him closely because we assumed he had his radar on-good thing we didn't know any better. We made it here safely, so it all worked out.

Wednesday

Too windy to travel today. We got restless and decided to go to shore for a walk. We stopped by to see if Steve and Carol wanted to go along, and we all walked into town to pick up a few things. Their dinghy is on their foredeck partially inflated, so we pick them up and visit their boat because our dinghy is easy to lower and raise. Hmm, reminds me of a certain Canadian couple who never had to get their dinghy off their foredeck on the ICW...clever ploy...

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Kathy-Beautiful day
09/14/2007, New York, New York

September 9, Sunday New York, New York

Can you believe that they actually CLOSE the Hudson River for a power boat race?? We got here and the river was closed from 11 a.m. to 4 p.m.. We pulled over and anchored to wait. They actually called about 2 and said the river was open again. We decided to try 79th Street Boat Basin for a mooring ball, but the ones we could fit on were taken so we continued on down to anchor behind the Statue of Liberty at Liberty State Park. It is quite calm in here after all the wakes, waves, tide and current in the river. There is really nowhere to go on shore here, except to Liberty Park, so there will be no walk in Central Park on this trip. We can see the Verrazano Narrows Bridge from here. At night it is all lit up with lights and is very pretty. The "Narrows" can be a tough spot to get through, due to tide and wind, so we will choose our time to go with those factors in mind.

Once again, our trip was crowded with history on the way down from Haverstraw Bay. We passed Sing Sing, Sleepy Hollow Cemetery, more mansions, and historic sites. We were surprised that across the river from Yonkers and the Bronx are the Palisades, which are tall rock cliffs and are quite beautiful.

Today was the kind of day that made me think of great sails on Lake Michigan-hope someone did that!

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Mostly Mike
09/14/2007, Haverstraw Bay, NY

Saturday September 8th...... Hudson River

It was apparent early on today that even at 6 miles an hour we were going way too fast to deal with the history that was racing by on each shore. Thanks to Kurt (and his dad) we had in the cockpit, a mile by mile guide to the Hudson River complete with a description of all the castles, mansions and other cool stuff. It was a long day motoring and not without excitement. On our way out of the Creek our engine started racing plus or minus 300rpms .... it turned out to be a primary filter so I switched to the back up and ran smoothly all day. Then, with our anchorage in sight a few miles away, our bilge pump went off and wouldn't stop which is a real bad sign...I checked all the thru-hulls and everything was fine. The only thing left was the packing gland on our drive shaft which is located in the basement of our boat.... and boat basements are not the easiest places to operate a wrench. After emptying the area under the cockpit, I slid down...did I mention that it has been about 90 degrees the last week....and found a steady spray instead of the one drip per minute that is normal. So the good news was that we were not going to sink... the bad news was that as soon as we were anchored I had a nasty job with which to deal.

Anyway, it was a great day. Hot, long and loud with the motor running all the time and tons of traffic. Even better when Ellie called with football scores... we won and THEY didn't for the second week in a row. We passed West Point today and there looked to be tailgaters everywhere. The roof of one of the building said "Beat Air Force" so I assume they had a home game as well. By the way, West Point looks a lot like Hogwarts from the water... but with the haze, photography was tough today.

We are about 30 miles north of New York City and hope to anchor at the Statue of Liberty tomorrow afternoon. It looks like we may be there for a couple of days. Our next run will be in the Atlantic and we would like to dispense with New Jersey in one fell swoop... 120 miles to Cape May. We'll see. There are lots of places to bail if we decide to, but if we leave at about dusk and sail all night, we'll be there with good light.

We met some folks last night in Catskill who are heading the same direction as we..... their boat is a Valiant 42 that is not only beautiful but equipped as a cruising boat should be. We were moored next to them in Put in Bay but never spoke. We saw their boat in Waterford as we were leaving but never had the chance to chat until last night.

Later....

I would like to add that we drove through mountains all day and they were beautiful, reminding us of the Smokies. It has been HOT and humid. We have sunshine every day and have had unbelievable weather.

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