Toasting Strathspey

When we left Oswego, NY after getting Strathspey‘s mast stepped, we headed due north across Lake Ontario with a faint south wind pushing us home. Our early bird status was confirmed by the +6C water temperature and our solo sail all day. As we swung past Kingston, it was too funny as we both kept exclaiming and pointing out familiar landmarks and anchorages like we’d been away for years and years. But when we arrived at Trident Yacht Club around 5 pm, it was with no fanfare, pulling quietly into our old slip and securing ourselves like we’d only been away for a short weekend. We cracked open a bottle of bubbly that I had tucked away for the whole year in anticipation of this moment and we toasted each other and Strathspey for a fine year. At times Strathspey was a better sailor than I this year and I learned to trust that old adage that most often your sailboat can handle far more than you can. What a fine and wonderful boat to have carried us as swiftly and safely all those miles back here to Trident. Later that evening, Doug and Cathy from our sister ship Pleiades arrived to welcome us back in style with champagne, strawberries and chocolate; all the important food groups!

Radar down

We worked hard for the next two days, cleaning out a year’s accumulation of memories and dirt off Strathspey. We worked that is until the action became less of a sort and remove and more of just move it from here to there. Wisdom says that’s when you should quit the cleanup. So on Friday night, Blair and I were ready to quit cleaning and joined the Trident Friday night social. We got all our embellishments straight and told lots of tall tales that night. Then we moved a year’s worth of living into Trident’s laundry room to await pickup by Heather and Paddy who arrived Saturday morning with both a truck and a car. And if you can believe it, we filled them both!

Strathspey at dock

So right now, Strathspey is sitting pretty at dock. Sitting pretty and sitting a good deal higher in the water as well after Blair carted five huge loads up the dock making Strathspey rise a good 2.5 inches in the water. Our Canadian flag that flies from our stern has faded from a bright red to a threadbare orange this past year. We hear we’ve missed the worst winter for snow that Ottawa has had in years. It’s spring, the peepers in our back yard are yelling “pick me, pick me”, the lilacs are in bloom and now back here on dock, it’s a good time to reflect.

People ask us what the highs and lows of the trip were. I have to say, the best parts were those deserted anchorages. Anchorages like Lee Stocking Island on a day so calm that, on a bet, we could have swam the 5 miles over to Brigantine Cays. We dinghied over instead and spent the best part of the day on flat, mirrored waters, snorkeling and paddling lazily along the shoreline. Highlights too were those out-of-the way towns like Fresh Creek, Andros where we boldly wandered through the small batik factory, sorting through the finished wares to find a set of placemats that will forever take us back to this remote area when we set a winter’s table with them. Top shelf are the friends we made this year – friends from one end of the country to the other that will welcome us to dinner and long sessions of “remember when’s”. On the other hand, the lows are unforgettable as well; Dodging those skinny spots in the ICW, doing without refrigeration for six weeks in 85°F and of course, my least favourite, those following seas on long ocean passages with nothing but Saltines in my stomach.

People ask us, “Would you go again?” And we say, yes absolutely, but only after we’ve done more of the things on our “must do before rocking chair days” list. Number one on that list, as far as cruising is concerned, is to take Strathspey up to the North Channel of Georgian Bay and then perhaps on further north into Lake Superior. The North Channel is Blair’s Mom and Dad’s old stomping grounds, having sailed there for more than 20 years, so it would be wonderful to bring our own boat up there after all these years.

People ask us, “Are you sorry to be back? Are you dreading going back to work? Do you think you’ll have trouble adapting to not being footloose and fancy-free?” No sorry, no dread, no trouble. This trip has given us stories for years to come and friends in all corners of the country to visit. This winter, we’ll sit back in front of the fire and one of us will say “Do you remember when we got stuck behind Fowl Cay in 30 knots for four days and read five books between the two of us?” “Do you remember coming face-to-face with that Lionfish at Warderick Wells”. “Do you remember rebuilding the head when it was 90°C and dead calm?”. Actually, maybe we’ll save the head stories for around the campfire at night to scare the children (or the non-sailors).

People ask us, “Is it hard? Do you need all the finest equipment? Do you think I can do it?” We are both in agreement that anyone with a well-found boat and some mechanical smarts can do this trip. In fact, maybe that isn’t even the criteria because we saw many boats that made us wonder how they managed to get past Florida. The cruising community is full of people who are happy to help less competent boats along and maybe this is how these guys make it so far south.

People ask us if we’ve changed over this year. We say we’re the same people we were when we left. A wise person once said, if it were that easy to change, more would. I suppose there’s lots of reasons people go cruising but ours was pretty simple. We weren’t feeling jaded, looking for a way to jump start our lives or anything like that. We just wanted a year to try this sailing thing while we were young and nimble enough. Living and sailing on a boat isn’t exactly the lap of luxury and, although a good many steps above tenting, it does have much in common with that camping way of life.

Trident Yacht Club

We’re glad to be back home in Ottawa with our friends and family and we’re glad that Strathspey is snugged into her usual spot at Trident Yacht Club. We always appreciated this club but perhaps we had to take a trip away to realize how top shelf it really is. In the Bahamas, a yacht club like Trident would not hesitate to set it’s rates around $4/foot/night. Coming back to this well-run club with it’s brand new docks, beautiful grounds and involved membership is a real pleasure. We look forward to sailing Lake Ontario this summer and tucking into those great anchorages in the Thousand Islands. We look forward to those bright mornings, waking up to the loons’ calling and feeling that cool before the hot, hot July sun takes over. We look forward to diving into those clear waters to cool off at midday. It’s like Dorothy said, “There’s no place like home. There’s no place like home”.

And now this story is done.

Skipper’s View

Leaving Riverview Marina with our mast and all it’s accoutrements strapped down on Strathspey‘s deck, we gingerly pulled out into the main channel of the Hudson River and turned north. We swung in behind a big tug and barge and initially couldn’t tell if Strathspey‘s sluggish response to turns of the wheel were due to the whirling eddies kicked up by the tug or because she was unbalanced. Strathspey quickly settled into her normal rhythm and we motored north all day, very aware that if we had any engine trouble, we definitely could not simply pull out the sail while we troubleshooted any problems. All was well though and our first big test of how we’d handle big waves came almost immediately as a large sportfish boat roared by and kicked up a good wake. It was good to find out so soon in the day how that sort of annoyance would affect our steering and whether Strathspey would bob like a cork from side to side. Despite our strange configuration, Strathspey motored well and handled motor boat wake with ease.

Lock #2

That day we motored 40 miles north on the Hudson River, through the first lock at Troy and then turned left to enter the Erie Canal at the small town of Waterford. The Troy lock was our first experience of transiting a lock with our mast on the roof; an interesting experience at that. We’re especially glad that we positioned the mast so the top hangs out over Strathspey‘s stern rather than her bow. At the top of Strathspey‘s mast, we have a few expensive instruments that we’re partial to and would definitely miss if anything happened to them: wind anemometer (speed and direction), VHF antenna and mast head light. Over the years, we’d read all sorts of horror stories of people losing all their instruments because the mast was unstepped with the instruments hanging out, unprotected, 10 feet over the boat’s bow. Their instruments had suffered blows on various hard surfaces either while pulling into locks or when docking. While in the locks, as we rose up and the water rushed in, Strathspey inevitably did a sort of sideways teeter-totter with her midship as the fulcrum. The bow rode in close to the concrete lock wall and then the motion shifted enough to swing the bow out towards the middle of the lock while her stern rocked in close. The first time this happened, it caught us by surprise and the bottom of our mast gently kissed the lock wall before I was able to push off. Both of us realized that if the top of the mast had been hanging over the bow, all the instruments would have taken a good scraping. Over the past four days, we developed a good system to ride the locks and all was under control.

Flight of Five

As soon as we left Waterford, we climbed the Flight of Five; a set of locks that lifts you up 165 feet through five locks all within 1.5 miles. We barely had time to relax and motor out of one lock before we had to pull into the next one. The locking in and out wasn’t awful but it sure felt like I was practicing for some sort of imminent exam. The drill was to motor into the lock and stop Strathspey so Blair, who stood midship, could grab one of the long lines that hang down from the top of the locks. The lines are spaced out so theoretically you can hold one from the bow and one from the stern. So as soon as Blair had his line, I motored slowly forward til the bow was close to the next line, stopped Strathspey and then scooted forward to grab the forward line while Blair used his strength to hold us in place.

Rural setting

After our first day on the Erie Canal, we realized that it’s not a canal like Ottawa’s Rideau Canal. It’s more like a mini-ICW but without the skinny spots. This canal is made up of the Mohawk, Oneida and Oswego Rivers. Periodically, in fast flowing and shallow areas, the route was diverted through an honest-to-goodness canal for a short distance and then our path would join up with the rivers once more. There was only one section about 20 miles long that was a canal in the true sense of the word. The scenery is easy on the eyes – rural, with the occasional burst of wind blowing through your brain as freight trains roar past or when the canal swings closer to I90. But for the most part, it was pretty quiet.

Sign of Spring

It felt like we followed spring north because even here on this waterway the lilacs, columbines and Lily of the Valley bloomed right down to the water’s edge. We know that all the towns enroute like our business by the way the lockmasters were upbeat and friendly, the way each small town along the way offered inexpensive dockage to entice you in for an evening and most especially by the way that the entire canal system was buoyed for dummies; if one buoy will do the job, they’ve installed three!

No pride

That first day, we covered 11 locks and traveled all the way to Fonda. I know that seems like a lot of locks but we were the only boat on the canal that day and as we arrived at each lock, it was sitting open for us. We felt pretty special as the previous locktender would have called ahead to say we were on our way. We’d simply motor into the lock and before we’d even grab one of the lines hanging over the edge to stabilize ourselves, the lock doors were shutting. Each lock-through took no more than about 15 minutes; mere hiccups in our day rather than events that slowed us down measurably. When we arrived at Fonda, there was no available dockspace and because at this time of year the locks shut down at 5 pm, we didn’t have time to get to the next good dock. We were just really bold and tied alongside a barge, empty and parked for the weekend. We had a quiet night in this out of the way spot but it was definitely a first for Strathspey.

Ilion

Our second day, we’d covered six locks and 40 miles when we came upon the Ilion Marina. We stopped here for diesel and a pumpout and at $1/foot dockage with hot showers and laundry, we decided we’d gone as far as we wanted and tied up to their concrete wall. Concrete walls are your typical dockage spots here on the Erie Canal and if you find a spot with showers and actual power outlets, you count yourself lucky. The Ilion Marina was a good stop late on this Saturday night and likely an even better stop during the week when the Remington Rifle Company factory and museum are open for tours.

Lock #23

We took four days to travel from the beginning of the canal at Waterford to Oswego, NY. The trip was uneventful, even across Lake Oneida, the spot that’s flagged in everyone’s book to watch out for because on this shallow lake, high winds can whip up waves that wreck havoc on those unstable sailboats with horizontal masts. We can see that this would be a popular route in the height of summer, with all the free docks and well-maintained locks. We wondered at the lack of spiffy uniforms as each lockmaster greeted us wearing an assortment of what looked to be their change-the-oil clothes. Chatting with one of the lockmasters, we discovered that they are responsible for all aspects of their lock; maintaining the lock gears right down to cutting the grass and painting the gates their bright blue and yellow signature colours. This early in the season, these guys (and one woman on Oswego Lock#7) are in maintenance mode hence their apparel.

Right now, 160 miles and 30 locks later, we’re in Oswego, NY, a stone’s throw from Lake Ontario and Strathspey‘s home waters. We’ve traveled far and fast since leaving that remote island of Andros at the end of March. We had a few things egging us onward and northward; We wanted to be home to see our son off on his own adventure on the west coast of Canada. As well, for insurance purposes, we wanted to be home so our house wouldn’t stand empty. And, because this was a one year sabbatical only, we had to be home to take our place in the working world once again on June 1st.

It feels good to be back here on Lake Ontario again. This is one of the best sailing areas in North America with wonderful anchorages and clean, clear water for swimming. Tomorrow Strathspey‘s mast will be vertical once more and we will set our sails for Trident Yacht Club and home.

One of 30 locks we passed through

NYC Spring

Our last day in NYC was a sunny, spring day around 14°C and that meant everyone and their dog was outside; New Yorkers LOVE their dogs and the dog de jour seems to be the little Maltese tucked-under-your-arm things. We walked for hours through Central Park, past the Dakota, of John Lennon fame and then dodging all the cyclists along the river boardwalk, made our way up to our most favourite food joint here, Zabar’s Deli on Broadway and 80th. The smoked salmon counter here, easily 25 feet long, is a thing of beauty. Who knew there were so many different types of smoked salmon. Place your order and watch one of the five skilled artisans behind the counter use 10-inch long razor-sharp knives to slice your salmon into delicate wide ribbons and lay them lovingly alongside each other on a sheet of waxed tissue. This display is definitely worth the trip. For those of us who thought smoked salmon came in one shape and size, these carvers happily provide samples to help you decide which sort of salmon you prefer. We tried the Nova Scotia Salmon as well as some smoked Sable; both excellent.

Strathspey at 79th Street

We unhitched Strathspey from our mooring ball at 6:15 am in order to catch a favourable current to carry us upstream on the Hudson River. From the 79th Street Boat Basin north, it’s all new territory for us. We planned for two days to reach Catskill Creek where we’d arranged to have our mast unstepped and put to bed in a cradle on Strathspey‘s deck. Riverview Marina is in Catskill Creek and it’s the last marina we can pull in to have our mast lowered before Troy, New York. Just past Troy, we make a left turn off the Hudson River and enter the Erie/Oswego canal system; a 180-mile canal with 30 locks and quite a few fixed bridges that are only 20 feet high (definitely too low to pass under with our mast in place).

Sing Sing Prison

Traveling up the Hudson River, the morning was cool enough that we stayed bundled up until about noon but by afternoon, the sun shone down and warmed us up enough so we changed into shorts and tees. That excellent current upstream had us traveling quickly past Sing Sing prison, Tarrytown (Sleepy Hollow of Rip Van Winkle fame) and West Point, the army’s answer to Annapolis’ US Naval Academy; all places we’d heard of but were surprised to see at water’s edge on the Hudson River.

West Point

Pulling in to West Shore Marina in Marlboro for diesel around 3 pm we decided to take a slip here, mainly because there are so few places to anchor in the Hudson River. This river’s water is deep, deep, deep right up to the wooded shoreline so there are few protected spots to spend the night. On top of that, we’d just turned the corner on a full moon’s extra high tide. This meant that the river had reached new heights and gathered up quite a few logs and other debris that we’d been dodging all day. When we walked into the town of Marlboro the next morning it was clear that it was just a widening in the road (Hwy 9) despite it’s efforts to promote tourism here, “We’re in the heart of New York State wine country”. It didn’t matter, we’d found the local’s morning hangout, had bacon and eggs (BAD!!, but good….sometimes ya just gotta do it) and read the New York Times; all this because happily we weren’t in a hurry that morning as the current dictated that we leave around 9:30 am.

Rip Van Winkle country

We loved traveling up the Hudson River with all it’s history and it’s wide rambling mountains; we passed through the Hudson Highlands, then a section of the Appalachian Mts and then into the Catskills. I can imagine this is a spectacular trip south in the fall by boat when the colours are at their peak. Now that we will be land-bound from September to May, we’ve even thought that this would be a wonderful drive or train ride to take sometime in October.

Herring

The river is particularly busy with fishermen right now. These guys are all after the Striped Bass, who in turn, are chasing the salt water herrings all the way up the Hudson River from the Atlantic. The fish run has just started and everyone’s excited in Catskill where we’ve pulled in to unstep Strathpey‘s mast. Striped Bass grow big (up to 50-60 lbs) and everyone wants one. The limits are strict though; one fish per fisher per day. The two nights we’ve stayed here on dock, we’ve heard the fishers heading out, some at 2 am, some at 5 am and some at 6 am. On our way upstream, we passed nets strung out in shallower areas to snag the herrings. Here at Riverview Marina, they have a good business going, selling those live herrings to fishermen looking for bait to snag “The Big One”.

54 foot motorboat

As soon as we arrived at the Riverview Marina on Catskill Creek, we set to work taking down our sails, removing lines and building a frame for Strathspey‘s mast to rest in for the next five days. Mike, the head honcho at the marina told us, “No matter how well you’re tied down, when that 58 foot Hatteras motor yacht roars by you, you’re gonna wish you’d had more tie downs”. Picking up some tips from another boat unstepped a day ahead of us, we made a trip to the local WalMart and picked up some super tiedown straps with mechanic winchdowns. The following afternoon, Strathspey‘s boom was laid on her deck, her mast came down and was settled into it’s frame and surprisingly, all in all it was a relatively painless process. Riverview Marina staff was competent, calm (always important when mast unstepping), provided lots of good advice re the strapping down process and all this at a reasonable price.

So now we are a honkin’ big 54 foot motor boat with top speed 6.2 knots; can you imagine the marketing program to sell a boat like that? We’re taking a big breath now and wondering what canal travel has in store.

April, a cold month

Brooklyn made this wonderful cruising calendar to help us to keep that close-to-home feeling this year. Each month had super pictures of friends and family while the days and weeks were framed with season-appropriate decals. We hung this calendar in our salon and each day Blair would enter miles run, weather, important events such as anchorages, whether he played his pipes and birthdays. Brooklyn got April’s weather pegged perfectly with her decals. Interestingly enough, Blair has not played his pipes once in April; just too dang cold.

We left Annapolis early on Tuesday. That decision was still up in the air on Monday night though; it was raining hard and we couldn’t tell where the bounce was coming from – either swell from the bay or motor boat wake coming in from who knows where. So, with all that weighing down on us, it was hard to tell what the mood or inclination would be come morning. Much depended on weather, as usual. When we’re in harbour or at dock, I can always get great weather forecasts via the internet. I’ve bookmarked all the good pictoral weather maps of the Chesapeake and other areas all the way up to New York City so I can simply click on any spot in these maps to have a great 5-day forecast at my fingertips. It’s displayed in logical text format and easy to peruse it at leisure so as to plan our day. The problem in Annapolis was that Tuesday was bad – real bad; cold, 15-20 knots, gusting 25 knots and all of that from the northwest right from Annapolis all the way north to the top of the bay. This meant we’d be beating both the boat and our heads into the wind, not the most comfortable point of sail. On top of that, we’d be wearing every stitch of clothing we owned so as to stay warm.

Passing ships

On the other hand, by my calculations if we left on Tuesday, we’d hook up with relatively good winds and weather to sail down the Delaware Bay and up the New Jersey coastline to New York City. It was a toss up as to whether we’d leave to catch this weather window or stay and “bob” a bit longer on our mooring ball in Annapolis. We took the bait and went and it was just as expected, cold and windy, but we made it. We made it all the way to the Chesapeake and Delaware (C&D) Canal that joins the Chesapeake and Delaware bays. Just before we entered the canal, the current changed directions and we were roaring along at 8.2 knots – what a treat to have the current with us for the 12-mile trip through to the other side. We passed two big ships heading the other way and squeezed way over to our own side to give them all the room they wanted. A tug, pulling a massive barge, overtook us at the far end of the canal but other than that, it was an uneventful passage. But we were pretty darn cold when we arrived at Reedy Island, our anchorage for the night.

Reedy Island view

I have a hat, a really warm hat, that suffers much verbal abuse from Blair. If he’s feeling kindly, he’ll simply say, “Mary, that hat really doesn’t flatter you”. If he’s feeling wicked, the insults never stop, starting with, “Oh, you’ve got the 10-foot pole hat on” (as in “I wouldn’t touch it with a 10-foot pole”). I wore it all day and that night in Reedy Island, I actually cooked dinner wearing the stupid thing before the Espar heater had thawed me sufficiently. In fact, I wore that hat all the way up to New York City where I bowed to that city’s fashion sense and stored it away, much to Blair’s delight. Our stay at Reedy Island was the coldest we’d had in awhile and that night the NOAA weather broadcast on VHF issued a wide-spread frost warning an hour after we arrived. They actually announced “Bring in your plants”. That night I really would like to have been brought “in” somewhere. Perhaps April is a tad too early to start heading home from the Bahamas…

Heading down the Delaware Bay the next day, we had very light winds (4 knots) but 2.5 knots of current so we were making good time motor/sailing towards Cape May, New Jersey, a spot where we would face the wide open Atlantic Ocean once more. Delaware Bay is a bay with little to recommend it; muddy, a very strong current, non-stop tug and tanker traffic heading upstream to Philadelphia and not a marina within 25 miles once you are well and truly committed to it. About halfway down the bay, Strathspey‘s engine started sounding like a cigarette boat on a 1000-Island tour in mid July – think loud, think no muffler, think this is not normal! Even worse, water no longer spouted out her engine exhaust pipe.

Strathspey‘s engine is water cooled. A water pump, the size of a teapot, sucks water in from her saildrive sitting four feet below the water and pumps it through a series of hoses and chambers surrounding the engine. This cool water coming in cools the hot water in Strathspey‘s engine and hoses so basically it is a heat exchange. In order for it to work, Strathspey needs a constant supply of cool water coming in and going out – out the exhaust pipe. When no water is coming out the exhaust pipe, that is a bad thing – it means we are about to experience engine shutdown.

So, here in the middle of the Delaware Bay, miles from any help, we sailed slowly to the edge of the shallows and dropped our anchor out of the way of the big boats and started the deductive processes. The first thing Blair did was check the raw water strainer (clean) and inspect the raw water impeller and, because it was cracked, we assumed Bingo!, that was the problem. The fact it was cracked was a surprise, as it was only three months old, but we left that question for a while. I started the engine again, but still no water spouted forth from the exhaust pipe; okay turn it off and think some more. At this point, Blair feared the worst: those ever-present barnacles down here had clogged the water intake on the sail drive; a sail drive that was 4 feet below water – 16°C water! Blair donned his wetsuit (a short-sleeved, short-legged one at that), put on a neoprene hoodie, gloves and flippers to go overboard and try scraping the barnacles out. It was when he tied a line around his waist to keep him from drifting away from Strathspey, I had this terrible sense of dread. There was a 2.5 knot current, strong enough to hold our swim ladder out from Strathspey‘s stern at a 45 degree angle. Blair got into the water and as far as the last rung when he said, “I can’t fight the current” and came back aboard. Time to think some more.

The culprit

We were that close to calling for a tow, using our US Boat Tow insurance package, purchased last year but as yet unused. Persistently running through all the scenarios, Blair figured as a last ditch effort, he would cut a section off the long hose that we use to fill our water tanks, hang one end overboard and attach the other end to the strainer and use that to supply water to the pump. Doing this, we could limp along to Cape May, dock, think some more and if need be, hire a diver to clean the water intake. Low and behold, when he took off the intake hose to the strainer, it spat out a 2-inch bony, lifeless DISGUSTING-looking fish. Crossing my fingers, I started the engine once again. Still no water. At this point, we were definitely thinking of calling for help. The problem seemed to be deep inside the heat exchanger and we had no means of attacking that one. As one last attempt, Blair dug out the spare water pump and began to replace the old one. Taking the old one apart and looking at it one more time – cleaning it and replacing the impeller, it just didn’t make sense that there was anything wrong with it, so he put it back on and said ” Give it one more try.” Success! Water shot out Strathspey‘s exhaust pipe like the proverbial fountain of youth.

During the inevitable postmortem, we figured that the impeller just self-destructed due to overheating because of the lack of water. That unfortunate fish had probably been nosing around the sail drive at some point and when we started the engine, he’d gotten himself sucked up inside. We also thought that all our manipulations – starting the engine, sucking hoses dry, starting engine, priming pump etc etc, had finally worked our little fish far enough up in the system. That little sideshow took a good 2-hour bite out of our day and we didn’t arrive at Cape May ’til close to 7 pm, glad to be in shelter with another frost warning for that evening. Once again, I’m so proud of Blair and his troubleshooting prowess; an absolute must for any boat contemplating this trip. I tip my hat to him, even my 10-foot pole hat!

Last fall, when we stayed at Cape May, we were part of a big migration heading south. In early October last year, the anchorage off the Coast Guard station was full and it was warm enough for Blair to play his pipes. Not so this time. Here, on the last day of April, there were no boats anchored as we motored past at 7 pm. We went straight up the harbour to South Jersey Marina to top up our diesel tank. Once there though, it was too tempting to leave the prospect of hot showers and unlimited power so we secured a slip at low season rates because of the cold, plugged in, set the Espar on high and settled down to a fine dinner of Chesapeake crab cakes. A nice bonus was an inbox full of emails waiting for us. We’re often parked where we can’t get any emails so it’s great to savour all the missives when they stack up like this.

Harrah’s Casino

We left Cape May and had a nice sail up to Atlantic City. All morning, we’d contemplated just continuing on, sailing overnight all the way up to New York City. How nice it would be to get this relatively inhospitable coastline over and done with we thought. But it was just too darn cold. Despite being well-bundled, we were still cold and eventually put up the entire doghouse even though when it’s up, it’s hard to see the sails, hard to keep them well-trimmed and hard to see any other boat traffic. I just kept thinking about how cold it would be once the sun went down and once again I was the one who called “Uncle”. Blair’s got far more tolerance to discomfort than I do. We can be heeled up, sailing on an angle of 20 degrees (for non-sailors, think standing on your apartment walls), and Blair will say, we’re not heeling, we’re simply listing a bit to starboard. Ah yes…. In this case, rather than face a windchill of 10°C all night, we made a relatively early day of it around 1:30 pm and turned left into Atlantic City. This situated us well the next day for a long 13 hour run up to Sandy Hook just south of New York City. Relaxing, we enjoyed the greenhouse effect of the sun on our doghouse all afternoon and made an early night of it in order to up-anchor at 6 am the following morning.

Newest Tartan fan

The whole of the following day, running up the long New Jersey coast, we kept thinking, “We’ve did this bit before…” Last fall when we traveled the same stretch going the other way with Madcap, we left Sandy Hook at 3 am and arrived at Atlantic City 13 hours later. This time, the trip was just as long, the scenery just as monotonous and the only redeeming factor was that, because of longer daylight hours, we started our trip at a more reasonable hour. The New Jersey coastline is long and straight with few harbours for a sailor to take refuge in. I’d look over my shoulder at the shoreline and see a never-ending row of condos and high-rises with a large water tower to one side. An hour later, I’d see the same scene repeated. From this angle, New Jersey seems to be one long beach-side city. This was a day we were grateful for our autopilot which took us from waypoint to waypoint for 86 miles down the coast. The highlight of the day was a little redbreasted nuthatch that landed on Strathspey and stayed with us for a hour or so. He had absolutely no concept of humans; landing on my shoulder, my hat, Blair’s head, the steering wheel and often flying in and out Strathspey‘s cabin. At one point, he spied a mosquito flying inside our dodger area and snapped it up with lightning speed. When we started dropping the mainsail for the swing around into Sandy Hook, this little hitchhiker disappeared. That night, the fog was so thick that we couldn’t see the Verrazano-Narrows Bridge from our anchorage.

NYC mooring

The next morning, we sailed under the Verrazano-Narrows Bridge and fought the current up the Hudson River past the Statue of Liberty, all the way up to the 79th Street Boat Basin. It was an auspicious day for Strathspey and crew as the Verrazano bridge marks the end of our time on the Atlantic Ocean. During this past year, we’ve spent 10 months on this ocean or parts thereof. As great as it was, Strathspey is like a fish heading upstream, homing in on that fresh water, up the Hudson River and then more than 100 miles of canal to burst out into Lake Ontario and home. New York is a great place to start that journey from. We’ll stay here a few days, wander around the city, pick up some boat parts and charts that we had sent to our friend and neighbour Derek, then head north a bit further.

Verrazano Narrows Bridge