It’s been a month since my last blog and just three days shy of a month since we left the boatyard in Oxford, MD. We’ve been a bit lax, enjoying port life in the center of Salem, MA, seeing friends, working on projects and for the first two weeks here, trying to stay warm.
I always feel the trip between the Chesapeake and Massachusetts is the hardest part of the long distance we cover back and forth to Florida. There are stretches with little protection, as along the New Jersey coastline, and no option but to travel outside, and other stretches with few good places to stop, necessitating long days or days shorter than one might like. Getting underway at 6 am as we did every day for a week and going until sunset several days, it can feel like a slog.
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| Traffic in the C & D Canal |
Our rough itinerary goes as follows and usually doesn’t vary much trip to trip. We left Oxford on April 29 late morning and arrived at Still Pond, a pleasant anchorage up the Eastern Shore of Maryland. We intended a short trip the next day, but the seas were so much calmer than predicted and the current seemed to stay with us, so we travelled through the C & D canal (Chesapeake and Delaware), crossed Delaware Bay and took the back door into Cape May via a short canal. We arrived in Atlantic City the next day, May 1, earlier than planned, but felt we needed to have our battery charging systems and alternators looked at-- there’s a whole other story here which I won’t go into-- as well as having some time to catch our breath.
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| Atlantic City at First Light |
We stayed in Atlantic City three nights, we got the batteries charged up, hoping all else was well in the engine room, and my college roommate joined us on the third day to make the trip through NY harbor with us. As was true for most of out trip up from Oxford, the weather and marine forecasts were not encouraging-- rain, high winds and our least favorite thing, high seas. So we left Atlantic City for the long trip up the Jersey coast, stopping just outside the harbor to put down our paravane stabilizers, the first time we've dropped the "fish" in almost a year. We travelled in rain with a slight roll all day until just as we approached NY harbor the late afternoon sun began to peek out.
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| Lights of Lower Manhattan |
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| Reception Hall at Ellis Island |
If there’s little else to get excited about on this leg, the trip through New York City via the East River makes up for it all. And unlike our last trips, instead of anchoring further south in Sandy Hook, NJ, Paul found a wonderful spot between Ellis Island and Liberty Island. Never mind that it was one of the roughest anchorages we’ve ever experienced, the views were spectacular.
None of us, even Bubba, minded the evening we spent there, literally on a roll. We ate a late dinner with the lighted Statue of Liberty off to the port and the Reception Hall at Ellis Island and the night skyline of lower Manhattan off to starboard. It’s hard to describe the elation we felt!
The next morning was the actual trip up the East River through the NYC bridges, looking at all the landmark buildings, the Chrysler, the Empire State, the new building going up where the twin towers of the World Trade Center stood, and the prison of Law and Order fame at Riker’s Island. We travelled up Long Island sound and arrived by early afternoon at Port Jefferson-- an uneventful passage other than watching a submarine out of Groton, CT heading up the sound and out to sea.
The next bright spot on our journey homewards was Newport, where we landed late Friday afternoon. Paul’s old college friends who lived in Jamestown whisked us and our guest off to their yacht club for dinner. After a lovely breakfast at their home Saturday morning, my friend left us and Paul and I made plans with our Jamestown friends who would be joining us for the last leg up to Salem.
We planned a civilized Sunday, picking them up at the Jamestown town dock around 10 am and anchoring in the Mattapoisett/ New Bedford, MA area in the early afternoon. Luckily Paul checked weather conditions again and found the window of opportunity was closing to get to Salem without experiencing seas of 5-9 feet-- way more than we want to purposely find ourselves in. With guests onboard, we made a quick decision to go overnight, stopping for a few hours east of the Cape Cod Canal for favorable currents. Our friends are well-seasoned sailors and cruisers and more than willing to stand night watches, so we docked in Salem at 5:30 am Monday morning, May 9.
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| Brooklyn Bridge |
The sun is shining again today, the second full day of sun in the almost three weeks we’ve been here. I do keep reminding myself, that although it’s been chilly and damp here, we really have nothing to complain about as every evening we see new reports of unbelievably destructive tornados ripping through the south and midwest.
We have two more weeks here, which will go quickly. We’re looking forward to the month we’ll spend in Maine and the rest of the summer cruising along the Atlantic coast of Nova Scotia, visiting some favorite spots and discovering new places along the way.
