Beautiful fall weather; cool evenings and sunny warm days.
What was supposed to be a 3-day stop to wait for a weather window to transit the Jersey coast has turned into longer stay.
We
anchored in behind the Statue of Liberty on Thursday. Took a day to tour Time Square, Broadway and have lunch at the Hard Rock Cafe. When we went to start up on Monday morning the engine would not catch. Concerned that we had picked up some bad fuel at our last stop, we changed the filter and bled the system - but no joy. Called TowBoat US and within the hour we were towed to Liberty Landing Marina.
Yesterday a technician went over the entire system and finally declared the problem is with the injector pump.
I was with him the entire time and he was great explaining his elimination process. I called Hanson Marine in Marblehead, MA (the distributor for Westerbeke Engines) and they said they could take care of the repair right away, so we have overnighted the pump to them. So here we sit. Our weather window for the Jersey coast extends to Sunday and then the small tropical cyclone that is forming in the Gulf of Mexico may cause us to have to stay in the NY area until next Wednesday. That too is part of cruising.
Yesterday, Mary and Matthew (who has joined us for a few weeks) travelled by ferry to the 911 monument while I stayed and worked with the tech and then cleaned up the diesel smell to make Sojourn habitable again.
We have a few other projects we are working on. One of them is completing both the Basic and Intermediate Cruising standards with Matthew. Now we have not said much about Matthew. Matthew is an instructor at the yacht club and is on track to get his Basic Cruising Instructor certification in the spring. He and his family have become our friends and with Mathew having the fall of school, we invited him to spend a few weeks cruising with us to gain more big boat experience.
Matthew joined us in Catskill, taking the train from Toronto to Hudson, NY. He is great to have on board and instantly became a full fledged member of our adventure.
We also have some a few projects to complete, like linking the new nav system with the AIS enabled VHF radio.
Big excitement on Sunday was the arrival of President Trump to the Presidents' Cup golf tournament. We were anchored about half way between the golf and the Statue of Liberty. We were aware he would be attending the tournament, but Sunday morning 5 coast guard boats complete with high powered bow-mounted weapons showed up in the anchorage and check to make sure who were were and that we did not plan on travelling any where during the President's stay at the tournament.
The VIP ferries were shuttling spectators from all over the NY/NJ area to the dock just beside us. Just before 2pm, 2 MV22 Marine Osprey aircraft landed in the park between the anchorage and the statue of liberty. That was probably the ground troops. Then 2 Marine helicopters landed - one would have been Marine 1 with the President on board.
As the motorcade travelled down the road adjacent to the anchorage, the Coast Guard boats kept pace. Just before that, they had halted all marine traffic in the anchorage as the police had done on the roadways.
For the next 3 hours, there was at least 1 CG boat within a few hundred yards/meters of us at all times. We felt very safe and protected.
We are currently docked at
Liberty Landing Marina with full repair services and abundance of yachts around us. For those of you in Cobourg Marina - these are truly yachts - 65 to 100 feet of shiny fibreglass, professional crews and multimillion-dollar price tags.
So while we wait for our injector pump, we will enjoy our amenities, get caught up on our blogs, get some projects done and hope that little weather disturbance in the Gulf of Mexico behaves itself. If it does not, its name will be Nate.
Since we are on our adventure for 9 months, we are not in a hurry and we take this as part of our cruising adventure.
All the best,
Mary, Rob and Matthew