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August 2007 |
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28 August - Up to New York with Stuarts Parents
The last few months seem to be going past in a blur, we have been so busy. We left Washington nearing the end of July and made our way back down the Potomac, into the Chesapeake and up to Annapolis which took us 3 days anchoring in various different spots along the river each night. Once in Annapolis we decided to stay put and hire a car to pick Stuarts parents up from New York, there was no way we would make it up there in time on the boat. Annapolis is the sailing capitol of America and when you arrive there you wouldn't argue. I have never seen so many sail boats shooting around, as we entered the harbour there were schools of sailing dingy's zipping in front, behind and all around you, big sailing boats in the harbour for a cruise around. There were Navy boats coming up through the channel, the place was manic! We finally found an fairly unprotected anchorage off of the Naval Academy and stayed put there for a while. The facilities in town for visiting boats was very good and there are free public dingy docks all over the place, the town also has free internet so if you can get in close enough you are well set.
We found a better spot to anchor before Stuarts Parents arrived, down one of the rivers off of the harbour so we weren't rolling around so much. We then managed to get ourselves sorted with a hire car and set off at 4am on 28 July to pick Pat and Les up from New York, it was strange as the people in the boat next to us were still up and partying from the night before! After getting a little lost leaving Annapolis we finally got on track and made it up to New York in 5 hours, picked them up from their hotel and headed back straight away for another 5 hours. We managed to get lost again in pretty much the same spot as on the way in but apart from that no problems! It was a relief to get out of the car at the other end especially for Stuart who had been driving for 10 hours solid and we could all have proper hugs and get catching up too. We settled in back on the boat, Pat and Les had brought over all sorts of goodies, proper Yorkshire Tea, lots of choc's, Branston Pickle and Coleman powdered mustard! Stuarts sister had sent us over a load of Marmite and some home made cards from the kids which was great, so we are all stocked up on all things British now!! My parents sent us over the new Harry Potter book and the video of their holiday with us in Florida, so that will keep us entertained!
Click here to see pic's of Annapolis & up the Chesapeake
We spent a couple of days around Annapolis, its only a small town so we saw all we could then we left and headed up the Chesapeake and toward the Delaware Canal. After a couple of days motoring and stopping off at night to anchor just off of the channel, we found an anchorage in Chesapeake City and stopped there for a day. Another very pretty place with nothing useful in it!! Apart from a bar of course which is always very useful! From here we crossed the C&D Canal and headed on down the Delaware.
The Delaware being a completely different beast to the Chesapeake, it was lumpy bumpy and pretty uncomfortable. Not a very good introduction to Les as he is not a big fan of boats at the best of times. We anchored in a really horrible spot that gave us no protection from the swell so was a bit of a rolley night. Although Les was pretty impressed when we finally got a guide book for the area and it said "The waters of the Delaware seldom top anyone's list as a favored cruising ground. Critics describe the cruising as rough, tedious and inhospitable", so hurrah! Les is now officially a hardened sailor with the best of them!
From here we headed down to Cape May, which was a complete nightmare to get into, we took the smaller channel in to save us having to go all the way off shore, around the point and in the other side. In this side though half the channel was obscured by a dredging barge, there were hundreds of motor boats whizzing all over the place and the ferry's seemed to leave almost every 5 minutes, when they did they took up the whole channel! After having to run away from the ferry once we finally made it through with motor boats swarming all around us in the slim channel, knocking us flying. We had no idea how deep the channel would be either, so there was always the worry that we could run aground. The bridge we had to go under was only a foot taller than our mast so that was a bit nerve wracking too, then there was a swing bridge to go through with only enough room for one boat. Finally we made it into the harbour and found a spot to anchor. As much as Annapolis was the sailing centre, this has to be the motor boat centre, and it wasn't particularly pleasant.
Click here to see pictures of the C&D Canal & the Delaware
We spent a couple of days here, we familiarised ourselves with the bar opposite and took a day trip to Wild Wood, an island not far off. This had a really tacky sea front, more like you get at home with amusement arcades, henna tattoo and piercing's shops and a huge fair ground. The beach was enormous and chock-a-bloc with people. We did find a fantastic green grocers and some really nice Italian Deli's on the walk back to the dingy and were very impressed as everyone spoke with the New York "So you think your a wise guy ha?" accents. We we then all promptly tried to copy and spent the walk back speaking with terrible accents, and then worrying that it may get us beaten up!
It was a fair dingy ride there and whilst we had been amusing ourselves the water had become decidedly more choppy. We all got drenched on the way back and all almost flew out of the dingy on a number of occasions, I'm surprised our tomatoes made it! Brilliantly rather than threating for their lives Pat and Les thought it was hilarious and we all had salt filled mouths from laughing so much. We quickly got dried on the boat then popped over the pub, for a "we made it back in one piece bevie!" Unfortunately we got no pictures of this due to the fact that the cameras would have ended up over board!
From here we decided to do a day sail to Atlantic City along the coast, throughout the day we were invaded with horrible black biting fly's and when we pulled into Atlantic City the boat was swarmed with hundreds of Horse Fly's! We couldn't cope any longer so decided to peg it back out to sea again. Along with the fact that we misinterpreted where the anchorage was so was having a bit of a hard time of it all ways so decided to call it a bad move and carry on throughout the night straight onto Sandy Hook.
Pat stayed up with me on my watches and got to see a lot of the stuff that we usually have to go through on a night shift. A tug pushing a barge with very confusing lights that wouldn't answer us in the radio and came past very close and very quickly, we thought we were going to be run down. We then had fog so thick we could barely see in front of the boat, followed by rain and a thunder storms! So she got the whole sailing experience! If that wasn't enough we had engine traumas too, the oil hose worked lose and all the oil spilt into the sump, luckily Stuart noticed that something was wrong straight away and we turned the engine off as that would have broken it beyond repair.
We came around Sandy Point and anchored in Atlantic Heights the next afternoon. The next day we took another extremely wet dingy ride over to Sandy Point and had a day walking to the beach along a very pretty bicycle trail over the other side where we got our first glimpse of the New York Skyline. We headed off to Great Kills on Staten Island the day after, it tipped it down with rain the whole journey and the seas picked up a little too. It rained so hard that we could barely see in front of the boat, the inside leaked pretty badly too, luckily it was only a short journey and the rain cleared up just as we were entering the harbour. After anchoring here we made friends with the people in the local Yacht Club bar and arranged dingy dockage with them for $5 a day.
Click here to see pictures of Great Kills & the Statue of Liberty
We spent the next week commuting into Manhattan every day to do the sights, the Staten Island ferry is free so we made the most of that. We took the ferry over to see the Statue of Liberty and the Immigration museum on Ellis Island. We also went to:
Grand Central Station, NY Library, China Town, Little Italy and Times Square
Botanical Gardens & Coney Island
Coney Island wasn't the nicest place in the world but we had to go there to do the Cyclone an old wooden tracked roller coaster built in 1927. Its got to be the craziest ride ever, I thought we were all going to die!! We all came off petrified, apart from Pat who just laughed the whole way through it! I've never heard Stuart sound so worried and he and Les are pulling identical faces on the picture they brought of us after! That has got to be the funniest photo I have ever seen and we could barely stand up after for laughing at it so much!
We spent another day at the Natural History Museum then moved up to 79th Street mooring buoys up the Hudson. Its amazing that we could moor right in the centre of New York for just $30 a night, we were 5 minutes walk from Broadway and 10 minutes from Central Park, it was fantastic.
Click here to see pictures of the Natural History Museum & Moving up to 79th Street
We spent the last few days of Pat and Les' time with checking out the shops and seeing the sites by night, and before long it was time for them to fly home, the time went past soo quickly, but I think we managed to do a lot. We went up to the airport with them to wave them off, it was very sad to see them go.
Click here to see pictures of Shopping, Central Park & Times Square at Night
So now we are back on our own again, after spending a day at the Museum of Modern Art we then left New York and headed up the Hudson on our way to Canada. We stopped for a couple of days at Bear Mountain National Park which was really nice, we did a hike to the top of the mountain (it's not actually a mountain at all, more of a hill, and not really a very high one at that!) It was nice to be doing a bit of exercise again although was a little disappointed when we got to the top and saw the road that most people had driven up there on! We saw people puffed out from the exertion of walking from the car park to the observation tower!
Click here to see pictures of MoMa
We decided to take the Appalachian Trail back down, apparently this runs all the way from Main to Georgia and is a 6 month hike if you do it all in one hit. We somehow managed to lose the little white squares that we were following and ended up off course which was quite exciting, it was a bit like a survivor thing (although we knew that the road was only 5 min's away in any direction!) A wild deer come stumbling through the bushes and was pretty shocked to seeing us there, luckily we didn't run into any wild beers or anything though (only at the parks zoo!) We really enjoyed it here and are looking forward to doing a bit of hiking and biking around Canada. We celebrated Stuart's birthday here before heading back up the river, we could have stayed longer as there were so much to do but our visa runs out in October so really need to get moving.
Click here to see pictures of Bear Mountain