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Our final passage was from Cape May NJ back to ILENE’s mooring at the Harlem Yacht Club, Eastchester Bay, Long Island Sound, a distance of 140.5 nautical miles. I was unhappy with Utsch’s Marina’s pricing policy. They do give you a bottle of cranberry wine and three biscotti upon arrival and the cost of $2/foot is not unreasonable. But we had arrived at shortly before four pm and departed from the fuel dock at shortly before 7 pm the next day spending only 27 hours – and they were unwilling to budge on charging me for two full days!

The wind was blowing from our port side at the fuel dock and the staff  let go of our bow line before our stern had swung to starboard so we were drifting back sideways into shallow waters, Lene got us in forward gear and far enough forward that we were able to grab the aft piling of the leeward slip. Then Bennett and I held on for dear life until the stern was blown to starboard and we got out fine.

The roughest part of the journey was a mile or two later, going out into the Atlantic through the two parallel sea walls designed to protect the harbor. The problem was that we were forced to head SE and the wind was from the SE and the waves were high, in the channel, some breaking over our bow. Lene was below making her delicious casserole of steak, sausage, onions, peppers, rice, chickpeas and parmesan cheese. Down in the cabin she did not feel the problem which was one of pitching, not rolling. I had put up the main with a reef in it but while such a sail will stabilize against roll, it does nothing against pitch. Lene reported that I had not dogged down the forward hatches quite tight enough and small amounts of seawater had intruded.  The engine is not strong enough to move us very fast in such conditions because each wave we slam into cuts our speed. Bennett later admitted that he was afraid during these few tense minutes. What had he gotten himself into?!

But once we cleared the channel , put out the jib and turned to port, first east, away from the coast and then NE, along the coast, we picked up good speed, heeled and stopped pitching. It did not get dark until  after 9, these being the longest days of the year, and with teamwork from the crew, I  clipped on tight, went forward to the mast and put the second reef in the mainsail (“I told you to do that before we left” muttered the Admiral), reducing heel but not reducing speed much.

My objective was to try to get to Sandy Hook at 11 am the next day, because that was “one hour after low tide at the Battery”, which provides six hours of fair tide from Sandy Hook all the way through New York Harbor, Hells Gate and indeed to the ThrogsNeck Bridge, only two miles from home --  the final 32 miles. We had planned our departure for this arrival time and were lucky enough to make an average speed as planned.

Lene and Bennett took the first watch, from after dinner until midnight, but they did not rouse me until 1 am when I came on for the duration. We sailed about one to one point five miles off the beach, in deep enough water and had no adverse close encounters during the night.

The Jersey coast is curved, permitting us to sail more north than NE as the passage continued. For the last ten miles before Sandy Hook, the wind was from the south, too close to directly behind us to give us good speed and the waves continued to be high, so we steered further off the coast and then jibed into the southernmost channel through Lower NY Bay. Bennett turned the InavX on during this portion of the trip so there would be no mistaking one set of buoys for another.

We sailed under the Verrazano Narrows, Brooklyn and Manhattan Bridges, before the wind got lost in the city for a while and we turned the engine back on. But we kept the sails up and motor sailed the rest of the way past the Throgs Neck Bridge. Ten point five knots in Hellsgate!  We grabbed our mooring at 4 pm and were off the boat with dry clothes to change into,  and the cats by 5. Here the are. The synchronized sleeping team:

We drove Bennett to his car parked in midtown and then drove home and had a good night sleep in our own bed.

Future postings will attempt to summarize our trip and report on ILENE’s future more localized sailing.

Thanks for reading. Comments, questions and corrections are always welcome.