JUNE 7 - 19 THE FINAL 500

One of the Victorians in Cape May, NJ, now an inn



Dock at Fishers Island, NY



Dacey onboard and posing in front of the Statue of Liberty



Atlantic City Life Guards at the beach (note the fog rolling in on the right)

Jun 7 Leaving Annapolis with our friend Ann Dacey (from West Virginia) we found good weather for the first few days. We also reconnected with ANDROS, a boat from upstate New York that we first met in these waters back in October. There is a new boat, PAVITI TERN, that was in Annapolis and is going the same way we are, destination Westport, MA. Mike, the skipper, is single-handing, and his boat is a 1930s classic sailboat.

June 11 We have arrived in Atlantic City, the best stop before we sail overnight for Block Island. From here we plan to clear two of the shipping lanes outside of New York City before dark and then will just have to pass through one more in the night.

But first, we need to get good weather to leave for a 160 mile trip to the northeast, and even though it is sunny and warm, the wind is coming from the north and then from the east, and that is not good. We ended up in Atlantic City for four days.

Dacey and I are making the best of our visit to the Jersey shore. We took a self-guided tour of the Victorian houses in Cape May the day before we got to Atlantic City, and have been to the casinos, the boardwalk, and the beach in AC. With Ken and Mike (PAVITI TERN) we’ve found some good seafood and beer near the Aquarium docks and there are groceries across the river near the St.George Thoroughfare. There is also a good anchorage there (St. George Thor.), within sight of the casinos but out of most of the traffic.

June 15 We finally left Atlantic City with a east-south-east wind and sailed overnight under a pink half-moon (it came up at 12:45 am and then got covered by clouds at 2 am). We avoided the traffic in the shipping lanes, but we couldn’t get to Block Island due to the wind changing to be more north east as the wee hours passed. At 8 am Ken decided to re-direct to New York City. It might have been dark on the second day before we reached land if we had continued the way we were going. But even going to NYC it took us until 6:30 pm to get just outside the harbor and anchor off of Sandy Hook, in northern New Jersey.

June 17 To get some rest and to catch the best current we slept in and started through the passage to get through New York Harbor in mid-day. It was mostly cloudy but there was almost no traffic (except the Staten Island Ferries which seem to go every 15 minutes!) and we were fascinated by the sights, passing the Statue of Liberty, Ellis Island, the whole east side of Manhattan, La Guardia Airport, etc. This was definitely an interesting day, even though this part of the trip was unplanned. We ended up anchoring for the night off of Long Island, in a shallow cove all by ourselves. Dacey has found her niche as a wonderful ship’s cook and she prepared another delicious dinner for us.

June 18 This was our best day for sailing of all the days Dacey has been on board. We had a good wind, Long Island Sound was flat, and even though it rained most of the day, we made good progress and sailed between the Connecticut shore and the Long Island shore until we got to Fishers Island. We really like Fishers Island! It looks like a small Cape or Maine town, just a couple dozen boats in West Harbor, and friendly people on shore. We got to stay for the night at the fuel dock as they had just closed, and a passerby offered a ride to wherever we needed to go. Dacey can connect up with a sister who is driving through Connecticut this evening if she takes the ferry to New London. We’ll miss her, but she has been onboard for 12 days and she has a family party to get to in Massachusetts.

Fishers Island has 200 year-round inhabitants and 4000 summer residents, we were told by another friendly islander that gave us a ride to the Pequot Inn after Dacey left. Some of the summer people have filtered in at this point, enough to make the Inn a “happening” place on a Thursday night. The bar/restaurant reminded me of a ski lodge and yacht club dining room combined.

June 20 We motored into Duxbury Harbor at 8:15 pm today, completing our 8 month trip in drizzle but good visibility. We plan to get RISING TIDE hauled out and
paint the bottom in the coming week. The weather is threatening to be a full-blown nor’easter for a few days so we are happy to be in a snug harbor. The past two days took us through Newport where we stopped for one night but didn’t go ashore. The weather in this period was very foggy and we had to cross ferry lanes to Block Island but by mid-day today it had cleared. We couldn’t stop in Mattapoisett as we had planned (Onset as a second choice also was scrapped because of the impending storm). The current in the Cape Cod Canal was favorable and we made good time from Newport to Duxbury.

We’ll be reassessing our future trips as we adjust to mostly shore life for the next few months. We had a good boat to take this voyage in and we (the crew) held up, for the most part, through good and bad weather. The last three weeks were the most challenging mentally as we approached the end of the journey and had difficult weather conditions to cope with. Gone are the days of consistent warmth and no rain, returning us to New England’s ever-changing weather. As we put our socks and shoes back on and pull out the slickers from the hanging locker, we end our trip and wonder what the future will bring.