New York Part 1

I can't believe I got up so early, 5:00 AM!! I so don't do mornings. We were going to Sandy Hook NJ. It's 90 nautical miles, nautical miles are longer then regular miles, by how much I don't know exactly but they're just over 1 statute mile. Did I mention, it's out in the Atlantic Ocean!

When we left Atlantic City the seas were rough, to put it lightly. The tide was coming in and the wind was going the opposite direction like us. That makes for some very large square waves. (For non-boaters, square waves = very bad, very rough) It was so bad, we considered going back. But we went out a little further and the waves were still pretty big (4ft) but at least they had distance between them. The waves stayed behind us the whole way (it means we were surfing, it's tough to steer and keep a straight line). The wind was uncooperative too. The wind was blowing from behind but very shifty. Soooo, we motored ....again.

We finally got to Sandy Hook and the anchorage we were going to stay at, wasn't as protected as it claimed to be. Then we thought we'd stay at the marina, but they closed at 4:30, it was 4:35!

Allow me to let you into our mind set of the moment. We'd sailed for 15 hours, in rough following seas, we ran out of food (Atlantic city has NO grocery stores), we were running on very little sleep, there were biting flies (I don't know about these flies. They look like regular house flies, but don't be fooled by apperances, they bite. I kid you not, I must have killed close to 30 of those FU@##!$^&ERS.) AND we were almost out of fuel. The last thing we wanted to do was run out of fuel in New York Harbour.

I called a marina in Coney Island but they didn't get back to us. We planned to anchor at the next available anchorage. In New York City, you can bet that there aren't too many of them. We decided to take Skipper Bob's advice and anchor behind Coney Island. Well if we thought the approach to Atlantic City was close to the beach, this was 5 times closer. The guy fishing had to wait for us to pass before casting. We dropped the hook with the beach on one side and a huge wreck on the other. We really didn't want to stay there. Thank goodness the guy from the marina called us back.

We pulled up the hook and went to the marina were we filled with fuel and tied to the dock for a good night's sleep. It was by no means the ideal location for a marina, the South Brooklyn Department of Sanitation was on the other side! What are you going to do.

Which reminds me, I wanted to tell you all about our new game. "Guess the debris". There's so much garbage floating around here, it's quite sad. Some of it cans, pieces of wood, random unidentified objects, and lots of plastic bags. While playing the game, we saw weird red jellyfishes.

Oh the things that keep you amused on the boat. You'll see when you come aboard.