New York to Cape May

After enjoying a wonderful Thanksgiving holiday with most of the family, George and I headed back to City Island, ready to tackle the Jersey coast!  We made excellent time returning, so were back at Barron's Boatyard by 2:00pm.  This meant that the staff would be able to get the boat in the water, which in turn meant that we would be able to make an early start the next morning.  After running into a few minor glitches which took us in to the following day, we were, at last, ready to head out!

The next morning, at 0900, we slipped our lines and headed in to the New York waterway under sunny skies and a brisk, northwesterly wind!  We had a lovely, and lively, trip down the East River, past La Guardia Airport, Riker's Island and its prison, and finally, the impressive Manhattan skyline, spotting both the Chrysler building and the Empire State building in the mix!  We were also able to text my cousin Patricia, and she came out to the water as we made our way past her apartment to wave us good-bye!  The current carried us through Hell Gate, past Manhattan, all the way to the Financial District and finally to the Statue of Liberty, a distance of about 30 miles all told, starting at City Island, but with the current, we averaged 8 knots, so arrived at New York Harbour at about 1:00pm!!  The water was wild; very fast current, lots of wind, and lots of river traffic....mostly ferries and police boats with very few pleasure boats, causing big wakes in the narrow passages between Manhattan and Brooklyn that would hit us after the boat passed, and then bounce off the sides of the river walls and hit us again!!  Very exciting, but also impressive to see the city from the water!  I have included some photos for you, but as usual, I fear they don't do the scene justice, but will give you an idea of this somewhat unique perspective of The Big Apple!!

UN Building

Chrysler Building

Empire State Building

Brooklyn Bridge

Lower Manhattan from New York Harbour

and of course; the Statue of Liberty

Once out of New York harbour, we quickly and easily decided to carry on past Sandy Hook and take advantage of how quickly we had moved through New York, and the great west winds we were experiencing...10-15 knots with gusts to 25.  We started out with one reef in the main and a full jib, but decided, with the gusts, that might be too much, so pulled in most of the jib and raised our staysail.  This combination kept us at about 5-6 knots, so we knew we would be able to make Cape May by tomorrow noon, maybe even earlier!  We also were finally able to put the hydrovane to work again!  This was great, because although we were enjoying perfect winds for where we wanted to go, the water was fairly sloppy, so took a lot of energy to move around and hold our balance, so sitting and watching the hydrovane do the work was a nice break!!




Ooops!  Somehow managed to mess this up, so now there are two exactly the same videos...hope at least one of them works!!

The beautiful, sunny day made way for a clear, night with a full moon, so lots of 'natural' light as we made our way down the Jersey coast in the North Atlantic!!  About 2:00 in the morning we saw the 'glow' of Atlantic City, and about 5:00 am we passed it.  As we were still making good time, although at this point the wind had died down to virtually nothing, we decided to continue on to Cape May, as the North Atlantic Coast is very volatile here, and we knew the weather was going to worsen by the afternoon.

Atlantic City by night!

Sunrise on the North Atlantic

Sure enough, the clouds started to move in shortly after sunrise, and the wind picked up and swung around to the southwest, so was now on our port beam.  As we neared Cape May, the seas also started to pick up, so by the time we were at the entrance, things were pretty rough outside, and just to make it exciting, the river we had to go up for the harbour was ebbing, so we had the whole 'wind over current' situation too, which made for heavy water as we passed through the breakwaters!!  George handled it all with his usual aplomb, and before we knew it we were quietly making our way up the river toward the South Jersey Marina!  Despite the high current, we were able to dock quietly with no great drama, and were celebrating our latest accomplishment with a libation and some snacks about 2:00pm!!  In total, 140 miles and 27 hours of travel, with about 100 miles and 17 hours of sailing!!

We have been pleasantly surprised by the little village of Cape May!!  The marina itself is great, with good people and WONDERFUL showers and bathrooms!!  Whoo hoo!!  The laundry room even has a giant TV in it!!  The day we landed ended up being a fairly drizzly day, so we had a shower, ate a small supper, had a game of scrabble (I lost AGAIN!), and hit the hay about 9:00pm!

the view from our dock at South Jersey Marina, Cape May

The next day dawned sunny and cold, so after a relaxing morning of coffee and an easy breakfast, we headed off to the local marine store to see if we could pick up a few supplies.  This is a real 'big fish' fishing town!!  Lots of big fish boats in the harbour that take people out for sport fishing, coming back with mahi-mahi, sailfish, marlin, and tuna...some reaching 300 lbs!

We then headed back to the boat for a quick lunch, which included smoked tuna..delicious!!..and I headed in to town while George supervised the moving of our boat so we could make an early departure the next morning, as once again, we are moving with the weather window that was opening again overnight and would give us southwesterlys to push us up the Delaware Bay toward the Chesapeake.

Walking in to town, I was able to enjoy the victorian architecture that so many of the houses have here, and so many decorated for the upcoming Halloween, which is appropriate not only because 'tis the season, but Cape May is famous for it's haunted houses and ghosts!  I also watched the  local Halloween parade!!  A couple of school bands, three or four Cape May beauty queens and princesses, and LOTS of local goblins, zombies, witches and the like!!  George met me and we wandered around the little outdoor mall, which was about 3 blocks long, lined with victorian buildings and lots of fudge and candy shops, along with a healthy smattering of gift and t-shirt shops.

the Emlen Physick Estate (Cape May's original haunted house!!); complete with scarecrows

Sea Hag scarecrow

Lots of Halloween decorations!!

Oh No!  Is that the baby she is cooking? Or a lobster?

I've heard high school kids can be scary, but these guys take the cake!!

What the....?

Now THIS guy was spooky!!

This area was missed last year by Hurricane Sandy, so fortunately the town had nothing worse than some minor flooding in some buildings right on the water...the famous Lobster House had knee height water in it....and about a foot of sand left behind on the streets.  Nothing that a good snow-plow couldn't handle!  We are realizing that we are in the area almost exactly one year after Sandy struck!  Most of the damage was done on the North Jersey shore, near Sandy Hook, which we ended up giving a miss.  Even City Island was relatively unscathed, so we haven't seen any damage on this trip as a result of the storm.

Washington St. mall

Fall decorations on the mall

Thanksgiving!!

Much has happened since my last blog!!  After getting the boat looked after at Barron's Boatyard, our plan was to put her back in the water on the following Monday and begin our journey south along the Jersey Atlantic coast.  However, Monday there was a tornado warning in New York Harbour, so decided to stay on the hard one more night, and then head out the following morning to try and take advantage of a small weather window and at least get to Sandy Hook, south of New York Harbour, which marks the beginning of the Jersey coastline, a distance of about 30 miles from City Island.  George's check on the weather at 0400 hrs confirmed the weather had not changed, so at about 8:00am we were preparing the boat to be put back in the water when a fellow sailor mentioned that the weather forecast had changed for the worse.  We went back to our weather system, and sure enough, the weather was forecast to be high winds, high seas for the next five days at least!!!  We quickly decided that even if we could get as far as Coney Island or Sandy Hook, we would then be stuck there for quite a while anyway, so we might as well stay where we were.  We really like City Island.....nice walking available, lots of restaurants, and grocery stores available and even a good laundromat, not to mention the fact that the people at Barron's Boatyard are great and our boat was in a good, safe location!  So in no time, we decided to 'forget the plays!', rent a car, and head home for Thanksgiving!!!

We were able to rent a van from Enterprise in New Rochelle (trivia alert....Rob and Laura Petrie from the Dick VanDyke show lived there!!), and by Wednesday morning we were making our way north for a much-anticipated visit with our wonderful family!!!!!  We feel so fortunate that everything really worked out well!  We had good visits with all the 'eastern' family members; visiting Dad and Lisa,  Elspeth and Fraser and Murdoch (he really likes his new 'country digs!!'), Wil and Didi and their two fantastic boys, Pat and Fiona, and Chris and Anne and our beautiful, happy, newest grandson (finally!!), and even squished in a couple of good friends, visiting John and Elizabeth while their boat came out of the water, Mike, and finally had a delicious lunch at Fred and Deborah's!!!!  The crowning event was the wonderful dinner and evening that my Mom had organized at her home for the family on Sunday night, where we also saw our nephew, Alex and his girlfriend, and Chip and Kathy and three of their girls!!  All in all, a wonderful trip......hard to get ourselves back on the road and back to the boat!!!!

We did end up staying an extra day because I managed to come down with the beginnings of a cold, so took a day of rest before heading back to New York, as we knew we were likely to do an overnight sail from there to possibly Atlantic City, and hopefully as far as Cape May, right at the entrance to the Delaware Bay and we needed to be rested for that!  So exactly one week after leaving City Island, we returned on Wednesday, October 16 and began to prepare the boat and ourselves to head back out in to the North Atlantic!

We have much to be thankful for!!

City Island, The Bronx, New York City

After making another early start out of Bridgeport, we put on enough miles that we made it to Barron's Boatyard, on City Island a day early!  We had heard that this was a good, family run boatyard and had decided that it was probably a good place to clean the moss off the bottom of the boat, and have the ocean bottom coat applied, before too many barnacles made the Wyvern their home!

As soon as we arrived, the staff had us pull up to the boat lift, and before we could hardly catch our breath, the boat was out of the water and being power washed!!  As there was not much we could do, we wandered in to town and had a look at our new surroundings.  Over the next couple of days, Barron's Boatyard sanded down the old 'freshwater' bottom coat, and then applied the new 'oceanwater' bottom coat.  Meanwhile, George waxed the topsides, and she is looking pretty darn spiffy right now!

Before.......

After!!!

City Island is at the north east end of Manhattan Island, and is, officially, the east end of the Bronx.  It is about a mile and a half long and about half a mile wide, with a population between 4500 and 5000 people.  The main road, City Island Avenue runs down the middle of the island and has all the businesses on it, with the side roads almost all ending in a dead end at the water, either east or west of it, so that all the houses are situated on streets that are only about 1 or 2 blocks long.  The west end of the island has a distant view of the skyline of New York, and the eastern end, where we are, looks out on to Hart Island.  Hart Island has an interesting, if sad history.  It used to be where they had a debtor's prison.  These buildings are now abandoned, and the island, still under the auspice of the Dep't of Corrections, has been used for years as a place to bury the paupers and street people that die in New York and don't have any family to 'claim' them.  There are about 600,000 babies buried there and 2.5 million adults.  There are still about 1200 people buried there each month.

Because City Island is so small, one can easily walk it from end to end, as I did on our second day here.  Historically, the town used to have a large oyster fishery, but the commercial fishery is finished here now.  It is also well-known for, and proud of, its wooden boat building heritage.  City Island built 8 America's Cup racing boats; 5 of which won the title!  Lastly the island is well know for it's sailmakers, of which there are still two, on our count!  Presently, the little town is known for its restaurants, and while there are some mega seafood-themed places, we have discovered some real gems right near the boatyard which we have taken advantage of already and plan some more meals before we leave!!  One of our favourites is the City Island Diner, which serves hot coffee and food all day, but we have been enjoying it's great breakfasts and never-ending coffee!!  Another, the Black Whale, is listed as a favourite with a number of the locals and also brags about it's famous desserts, so we wandered up after supper Thursday night and had chocolate fondue (yahoo!!) and tea and coffee on the patio.  Sunday we have invited my cousin, Patricia who lives in Manhattan, for the Sunday brunch there, which also looks fantastic!!  Finally, there is a little french Bistro that has jazz on Sunday nights, so we will see how the budget holds out!!......not to mention our waistlines!!

City Island Diner

local IGA

local liquor store

New York skyline

hardware store (note 911 memorial painting)

sunrise over Hart Island

Once again, we have stumbled on to a place that seems to have made it to the silver screen in one form or another!  There is actually a movie called City Island, but I have not seen it, so can't comment on it.  It has also been used for a number of Law and Order shows, as well as it has the house used in the Cary Grant film, Arsenic and Old Lace!  We have really been enjoying our stop here.  The people are very friendly, there is enough Bronx accents around so that we can't forget where we are, and it has a nice, New York feel to it, with none of the 'craziness' that the Big Apple exudes!!

Arsenic and Old Lace house

 Speaking of which, we are going to give the city a miss, as it is actually quite far to get there, and neither of us really wants to tackle it right now!!  I am hoping that I will be able to get some good photos of the city as we sail by on our way.......SOUTH!!!  We have finally reached the point where we have to make our decision re: Hudson River and home, or Intra-Coastal Waterway (ICW) and The Bahamas, and after much consideration and creative number-crunching on the financial front, we have decided we have come a long way....about 2000 miles as the Wyvern sails, and we really should carry on, as the boat is in good condition and we are still talking!!!  So, all those careless invitations to visit us once we get to warmer, gentler climes, are going to come to fruition!!!

I will be honest and say we will miss the family greatly, and had hoped to join them for Thanksgiving, but we hope to see some (if not all???!!!) while we are in the Bahamas.  Anyway, we are about to start a whole new leg of the adventure!.....stay tuned!

Mystic Seaport, Connecticut

Spent two days sailing to Mystic Connecticut.  After leaving Newport we had a short day, essentially simply leaving the Narragansett Bay and rounding the corner, anchoring in Point Judith Harbour of Refuge.  This gave us a little head start to Mystic the next day.  The evening was lovely, and the next morning we left at first light, enjoying another sunny day with light winds on the water.

We arrived at Mystic early afternoon, and decided the poor old girl (Wyvern, that is!!) needed a bath and have the salt water washed off the outside, and the mould washed off the inside, so we made Saturday a 'work' day, also getting ourselves washed off and the laundry done, finishing the day off with a dip in the pool (very cold!!) and the hot tub (nice and warm!!).  For the first time in a long time, we opened all the windows in the boat, and although we had the electric heater going, we left them open for the evening, as we really felt we needed to air the boat out!

The next day we climbed in our dingy and motored down the river to Mystic Seaport.  The Seaport is essentially a museum, much like Upper Canada Village, where the buildings have been restored or rebuilt to replicate the old village of Mystic when it was an active ship-building and whaling village.  Motoring up the river, and coming around the bend, the masts of tall ships came in to view, and as we arrived at the village, the clapboard buildings housing the cooperage, the cordage building, the blacksmith's shop, the bank, etc. hove in to view.  After docking the dingy, we walked through the village, learning interesting facts about barrel making from the cooper, walked the length of the cordage building where they made rope for the ships, talked to the blacksmith about the history of harpoon-making, admired numerous figureheads from numerous ships, many made in Mystic, and finally stopped for a snack and the requisite shopping at the bakery and gift shop!  Finally on our way back to the boat at the end of the day, we spotted the 'Joseph Conrad', a whaling vessel we had passed on our way in, but didn't realize it's name!  George is a big fan of Joseph Conrad books, so we took some pictures, and also admired the figurehead, which was a likeness of Joseph Conrad!

Seminole figurehead made in Mystic, Scotsman reconstructed in Mystic

Fire department!!

the looong cordage building!

Joseph Conrad figurehead

The whaling vessel Joseph Conrad

By this time it was about 5:30pm, and we had worked up an appetite, and when in Mystic, you MUST go and enjoy 'a little slice of heaven' in Mystic Pizza!  The same Mystic Pizza from the movie of the same name!!  Needless to say it was a busy little place, but we managed, more by good luck than good management, to arrive just before the crowd, so quickly got a table where we admired all the 'movie' memorabilia; most from the movie Mystic Pizza, but also a generous smattering of generalized movie history (young photos of Frank Sinatra and Elvis Presley, for example!)  The pizza itself, I am happy to report, was delicious!!  We ordered a large and ate the whole darn thing!!!!  No left-overs for the boat this time!!  All in all, a good finish to a good day!!

The next day, I did some grocery shopping for the next leg of our journey, while George readied the boat.  We were leaving that afternoon to start our trip through the Long Island Sound, and ultimately, to  City Island, the Bronx, New York City, and we were hoping to anchor on our overnights, so needed to make sure there was enough fuel on board, enough water on board, an empty holding tank, and a full fridge!!!

That night we anchored in a harbour just south of Niantic Bay, off Point O' Woods.  There was no wind and the temperature was lovely, so we had Peanut Cauliflower Curry and Apple Betty for dessert in the cockpit while we watched the sun go down.  Unfortunately, it was VERY 'rolly' with the sea swell coming in, so in the end, we didn't sleep very well.

As a result, the next morning, before the sun came up, we were up and raising the anchor!  En route, we reconsidered our anchorage plan for that night, as all our anchorages were planned with the predicted north winds, but we were now getting south, south-westers, which exposed our anchorages to the prevailing winds.  We decided that we should put in at a marina, as we wanted to sleep that night!  We ended up pulling in to Captain Cove's Seaport Marina, in Cedar Creek at Bridgeport CT.

relaxing with a 'dark and sexy' porter!!

a visitor

Hmmm..whose getting the random knitted object from Nana this Christmas???

What an interesting little spot!!  Unfortunately (possibly fortunately??!), everything was closed, but it looked to be, essentially, a mini Coney Island!!  At the end of our dock, we walked up to a large boardwalk, covered with all kinds of nautical-themed paraphernalia; including paintings of marine life, a set of 'stocks' that you could stick your head and hands in for a photo op, wacky mirrors that made everything look long and skinny or short and fat, a little play tug boat, a rocking horse, the requisite fast food restaurant with picnic tables all over the dock, sign posts pointing the direction and distance of all the major cities of the world.....and I am sure I have forgotten lots of stuff!!  Lets put it this way, Ash and Osbee and Jasper, in a couple of years, would have LOVED it!!!!  Then, moving off the main dock, there was a wooden quay that held a line of little miniature 'houses' and other buildings that held small shops specialising in various items like ice-cream, jewellery, etc.  Anyway, as I said, for good or for bad, it was closed when we were there, so it was a bit weird walking around, but also amusing!!  Unfortunately, it came as a surprise that it was all there, so I did not have my camera with me, so hope the verbal description will suffice!!  The other wonderful thing that happened here, is we opened all the windows again on the boat.....but that night, no heater!!!!  And not cold!!!!  Is it our imagination, or are we finally getting to the land where the butter, if not melting, is at least getting soft???!!!