Another Day Closer To The End

SHIP'S LOG:

Current Location: 40'47.815N/ 073'45.672W Little Neck Bay, NY

When I left Manasquan this morning, it was sunny. The NOAA boys and girls got the wind right(finally) and it was 15 knots out of the SouthEast. And it was a great sail, though more than just a little rolly as the waves were right on the stern starboard quarter. After a while, it was tough to keep the boat one course and I took anything within 20 degrees of the desired course as a bless. Still it was a great sail.

All up and down the Jersey Coast there were flocks of helicopters. At first I didn't understand what they were for but as I entered the Ambrose Channel which leads into NYC, I came face to face with the answer, United Sates Warship #21. IT was an aircraft carrier but which one I don't know for they never identified themselves by name, only by number "21." They didn't like that I was within five miles during their transit and they let me know about it, by radio and with one of those helos who came and checked me out personally. at the time, I was working hard enough just trying to stay on course and out of the way of barges and tankers and cargo carriers. As I entered the lower harbor I was greeted in typical New York fashion - passed by two tugs towing barges of garbage.

I found out that I am going to have to get new charts of this area as the markers in the Ambrose channel; have all be re-numbered. Thank goodness I wasn't searching around in a fog for a buoy. It would really have been confusing.

Entering the Narrows with me was "The Pride of Baltimore," She is a brigantine or barkentine and was really quite lovely. It would have been spectacular to see her in some real wind but by that time the wind had pretty much gone away.

Passing under the Narrows bridge was like stepping into a sauna. It got very hot and humid and heavy. NOAA had been calling for rain and thunder storms and it felt like there would be one but up til then, nada.

I was hoping to hit the battery around 3pm when it would be dead low tide for that would mean that the trip up the East River would be made on the incoming tide and that would mean I would get to Hell Gate at slack. And it worked out perfectly. I have now been through all three "Hell Gates" on the East Coast, the one in New York, the one north of the Little Mud River in Georgia, and the one on the St. Lucie in Florida and none of them has been anything but a pussy cat. The inlets at Manasquan and Atlantic City were far worse, as was the Delaware Bay, though Elliot's Cut out side of Charleston still takes the prize for the nastiest stretch of water.

I was blessed in that I was missed by the storm that roared through New Jersey, NYC, the South Coast Of Long Island and part of which nailed Springfield with two tornadoes. I guess God still feels that I have credit in the storm bank

Hopefully tomorrow, I will have dinner with Bob and Fred. I haven't seen them since they exercised their common sense and jumped ship in Harve de Grace back in October. I will be presenting them with the bucket in which they had their heads during those first days of storms. While both share ownership, I think that pride of place, and so the bucket, with reside with Bob. And tomorrow, God willing, I will sleep in Connecticut for the first time in 9 month short a day. Times flies when you are having fun!