Behind the Blog: To Tow or Not to Tow

We arrived at Kent Narrows just a bit after sunset... really wish the days weren't getting shorter! We were very close to the place we planned to anchor... we could see it just up ahead. The chart said there was 10 feet of water in the path between us and the spot... plenty because we only need 5'3".

It had been a great, albeit long, day of sailing and it appeared that the day would wrap-up nicely. That is until things came to a sudden halt.... soft, but sudden.

The boat stuck in a shoal that wasn't supposed to be there. We were in about 5 feet of water, as best we could tell, with our keel stuck in the muddy bottom.

Jake - always the voice of reason - suggested calling Tow Boat US. He has his very own Tow Boat US hat and has come to be fond of this service having used it twice before. Sounded like a good idea to me; after all, we are paying for unlimited coverage!

Pat on the other hand felt it would be best if we tried to get ourselves unstuck. Here's a quick replay of the events that followed...

Perhaps we're not really all that stuck...
-one sail up; engine in reverse/forward
-one sail up; attach rope to mast and pull with dinghy
-boat v. dinghy round 1... boat wins

If we could just get the boat to lean a bit, we'd be free!
-engine in forward/reverse
-two sails up now
-Jake asks again about calling Tow Boat US
-two sails up; try pulling on mast again with dinghy
-boat v. dinghy round 2... boat wins again

How about those great guys at Tow Boat US???
-Jake and Emily go below to color
-Jo suggests taking all sails down
(perhaps the wind in the sails is what is keeping us stuck she suggests; or maybe she just doesn't want to have to deal with the sails later in the dark and this is a good way to trick Pat into taking them down)
-Pat and Drew take sails down
-Drew goes below to hang out with Jake & Emily
-Jo goes below to find phone # for Tow Boat US

Reality begins to settle in...
-radio call to Tow Boat US, but no reply
-Pat considers what else we could try
-Jake considers where he put his Tow Boat US hat
-Jo hands Pat the cell phone
-more thinking on Pat's part, while alternating stares between depth meter and chart

Finallly, another radio call to Tow Boat US...
-Tow Boat US answers!
-Tow Boat US arrives!!
-Jake returns to the cockpit wearing his red Tow Boat US hat
-Tow Boat US is puzzled; their chart also suggests we are in 10 feet of water; but clearly this is not true
-Friendly banter regarding chart accuracy and related issues

We're moving again - hooray!
-Tow Boat US guides us to the spot we had intended to anchor just to be sure there are no more surprises along the way
-more friendly banter, this time regarding high and low tides and the tricky channels in the area
-a bit of paperwork confirming our unlimited tow coverage

A fond farewell...
-Tow Boat US leaves us a cell # just in case and heads home
-Kids wave goodbye as if to say, "hope we'll see you again soon!"
-Jake asks Pat if the Tow Boat US guy can come over for dinner; he was very nice
-Pat asks Jake to remove his Tow Boat US hat and get ready for bed

A Great Day in Solomons, Maryland

Solomons Island is everything we expected a town along the Chesapeake Bay to be... it's a perfect example of a quaint, picturesque, easily accessible boater's town.

Today we visited the Calvert Marine Museum and had the good fortune to stop by on a free day. The kids got to see otters and rays, dig for shark teeth, tour a Chesapeake Bay-style light house, and visit a NOAA hydrographing boat that happened to be visiting the museum dock.

Drew and Dad rented Segways for a ride around town and discovered a great seafood market where we'll hopefully be purchasing a big bunch of fresh crabs tomorrow. Here are some photos of our trip from Kent Narrows to Solomons Island, along with our museum field trip (click here).

Reports from the Field: Book Reviews

The kids have been busy READING and would like to share their thoughts with you on recently completed "must-read" stories...

Emily has been learning about the colonial days through the eyes of American Girl, Felicity. Here is her book review for Happy Birthday Felicity.

Felicity turned 10 on her 10th birthday. She lived in Williamsburg, Virginia when it was a colony. Felicity celebrated her birthday with her family + her friends Elizabeth and Annibell Cole and Ben, a helper who worked at her father's store. On her birthday, she got a lamb and her Grandmother's guitar, but she didn't get much sleep! It was 1774 just before the Revolution war so it was complicated at that time. Read the book if you want to learn more. I learned a lot. The end.

Emily also highly recommends Nancy Drew - the originals, such as The Secret of the Old Clock, Book #1.


Jake has been reading R.L. Stine's Goosebumps series; most recently Deep Trouble II. His review follows...

Billy and Sheana got dropped off by their parents to see their scientist uncle Dr. D. on his floating lab in the Carribean. Dr. Ritter the bad scientist made plankton turn fish 100 times their size! Billy and Sheana liked to play jokes on each other, but Dr. Ritter's jokes were never funny. Dr. Ritter got stopped but I won't tell you why. If you like swimming in the ocean you should read this book. You may never swim again! The end.


Drew just completed Danny Champion of the World by Roald Dahl...

Danny, the main character, has an exciting life with his dad. He does not have a house. He has a carivan and likes hunting pheasants. The hunting takes place in the woods. I hope you like this book. I know I did because it is a very adventurous story. Danny and his dad were poachers, and it was very risky. The End.

Drew also highly recommends The Secret of Platform Thirteen. We just read this as a family and thought it was great!

Solomons Island

We have been making our way south this week... from Baltimore to Galesville to Kent Narrows to Solomons Island, Maryland. We've visited both the eastern and western shores of the upper Chesapeake and will now stay in Solomons for a couple of days before venturing up the Potomac to Washington DC. More photos and news coming soon...

Our Week in Baltimore (by Drew)

We spent the last week in Baltimore's Inner Harbor, right next to the USS Torsk Submarine, the National Aquarium, and Chesapeake Light Ship. Also every day we were surrounded by little sea monsters (paddle boats). We visited the Maryland Science Center, Public Works Museum, and many other places. We accidentally got stuck inside the gated playground at the Public Works Museum but I climbed the fence and got help. My favorite place was the Science Museum where I got to ride a Segway. Dollar crab night at Phillips was fun too! Here are more photos from our stay in Baltimore (click here).

The Rocket's Red Glare The Bombs Bursting In Air . . .

Man they're not kidding about this stuff in Baltimore. Sure, it's the home of Ft. McHenry and the National Anthem but this up close and personal experience with fireworks was a bit more than we were expecting.

We turned in early and everyone was asleep by ten 'o clock. While we were sleeping, a fireworks barge slipped into the Inner Harbor and anchored right next to us in preparation for a show. It was a random Wednesday night and we had no idea there was going to be fireworks. Then BOOM!!!!!

We were so close to the barge that we could feel the concussion from the explosions through the hull of our boat. There was even residue from the fireworks on the deck of our boat in the morning. Here are a few pictures of a fireworks show we won't soon forget!!

Joanna didn't want me to mention this part, but inspired by her straight talk from Behind the Blog, I thought I'd mention it anyway. When the fireworks started going off, Jo jumped out of bed ran to the window and then proclaimed that the National Aquarium was on fire. Filled with 4 million gallons of water and made entirely of reinforced concrete, I doubted this but looked around any way. After careful inspection, we realized that what Jo was seeing, without her glasses, was the reflection of the fireworks show in the windows of the aquarium. Another close call, but that's the dangerous life we live out here on the high seas.

Hanging Out on the Hudson

A good time was had by all hanging out over Labor Day Weekend with Uncle Jeff, Aunt Jen, Cousins Jack and Liam; Cousin Lidwin and her family, Jim, Jim and Matt; Jim's girlfriend Pam and their friends; and Uncle Steve. We got to see West Point from the water... a beautiful view... and spend time enjoying Bear Mountain, Newburgh, and Salisbury Mills, NY.

Among other things, the kids discovered just how much faster a jet ski can travel compared with a sailboat. They also caught lots of crabs and enjoyed their time with their NY cousins. See for yourself.

Post-travel note: Uncle Jeff recently shared with us that a barge filled with stone recent broke free from a barge and drifted into shore exactly where we were anchored the day we left the Hudson River Valley near Bear Mountain to begin our journey south to the Chesapeake.
Guess it really was time to leave!

We Love New York

Traveling along the East River, so close we could read the street signs, but with minimal traffic... what better way to see The Big Apple. There were a few barges and water taxis... even an occasional sea plane, but no red lights, no detours, and no gridlock.

We left City Island, NY early in order to make it through Hells Gate with the tide in our favor. The guidebook made it sound scary, but the trip proved uneventful from a navigational perspective. The perspective you get of NYC from the water is definitely an event! Click here to see for yourself PHOTOS.

The Inner Harbor -- Downtown in Baltimore, MD.

Up close and personal with Baltimore is what we're doing this evening. We sailed in today past Ft. McHenry and anchored smack in the middle of down town. It's an up close experience with a lot of tall buildings and a lot of lights and its pretty cool. Here's a pic from the boat that we just took. (I really like this broadband internet card!!) In addition to this pic we took a few others and here they are. Just click on the word here.

Reports from the Field: Philadelphia & Baltimore

The U.S. Mint by Drew

On 9-13-2007, we went to the Philadelphia Mint. We saw lots of money and lots of big bags. The bags weighed over 1 ton each, and had 600,000 coins in them.

It was a cool process. The process is an artist makes a mold, then a roll of sheet metal gets cut, then the coins get stamped. The coins go into bags, and the bags go to banks.

Some of the scraps get melted and sold in the gift shop. They sell gold, copper and iron.

Did you know in the Philadelphia Mint's first 3 years of operation, they made 1,000,000 pennies. Today, it only takes about 3 hours to make that many pennies.


The Liberty Bell by Emily

I visited the Liberty Bell. It is in Philadelphia. The bell was for calling meatings, birthdays and announcements, but now it is for liberty.

Why is it for liberty is because for ladies it was for the right to vote and for others it was for concentrations camps and slavery.

Did you know that 1.5 million people visit the liberty bell once a year and if you can't see it in person you can see it on card stamps and coins. O, and John Pass and John Stow fix't the first crack but the bell crack't agin. And the bell sais Pouclame liberty throughout all the land.

We also visited Betty Ross's house and learned about sword fighting. It was fun. The end.



The National Aquarium by Jake

I went to the National Aqarium in Baltimore, Maryland. We saw rays, sharks, angle fish and more. Also sea turtles, dolfins, and striped bass. Also sloths, monkies, parots and flamingos all in a rain forest.

The rain forest is endangered because people are chopping down trees for farming and bilding.

Sharks are in danger too because people like fin soup. We can help by not eating fin soup and not putting trash in the ocean too.

What I liked best of all (about the aquarium) is that it's cool and has lots of facks like shark skin was once used as sand paper. The whale shark is the biggest fish in the world. The most poison animal in the world is the poison dart frog. The end.

Behind the Blog: Mars v. Venus

Atlantic City to Cape May via Mars v.
Atlantic City to Cape May via Venus

We agreed on one thing... Atlantic City is gross. We spent as little time there as possible, anchoring only because we needed a place to sleep while traveling down the Jersey Coast. Trust us on this one... don’t visit. We arrived shortly before sunset and left at sunrise in route to Cape May, the southern most point in NJ, still trying to recover from the horror of our early evening walk on the boardwalk the night before. Donald Trump should be ashamed.

Weather proved to be unfavorable... we were heading right into the wind which isn’t ideal for sailing and the seas were 2-4 feet (mostly 4). A few minutes into the “cruise”, the alternator belt gave out... of course we didn’t know that was the problem at the time. Pat was on deck raising one of the sails; Drew and I were driving. Jake and Emily were still sleeping.

Drew and I knew something bad happened because the instruments were going hay-wire and the engine temperature was way too high. Within a few seconds there was smoke (my opinion)/steam (Pat’s opinion) coming out of one of the lockers - right where Drew was sitting.

To effectively tell the rest of the story, it will be necessary to use 2 perspectives:

Jo - There’s a fire; I’ve got to get Jake & Emily up on deck with us. (The engine sits just below the stairs leading from the cockpit to the cabin, so I didn’t want them below and us above in the event of a problem. There are plenty of hatches they can and do frequently crawl through, but those are closed when we’re under sail.)

Pat - The engine is overheating. I wonder why Jo has abandon her post at the helm?

Jo - (Once it was clear the kids were all safe) I can’t believe this is happening... we’re going to be STUCK in Atlantic City!

Pat - I can’t wait to diagnose this engine problem.. whatever it is, I bet I can fix it! Of course, first I’ll need to ask Jo a few questions in order to discern exactly what happened.

Jo - If this is how Pat cross-examines witnesses, I can’t believe one hasn’t walked off the witness stand and punched him. What happened to innocent until proven guilty!

Pat spent the next 2 hours with his head stuck in the engine replacing the alternator belt. The kids and I sailed the boat (not particularly well, but a reasonably straight zig-zag). It was very hot and the seas were probably the worst we have encountered on our trip to date. Even Pat had to take motion sickness medicine (a regular thing for Emily and I). We were on day 3 of home schooling and classes had to be cancelled for inclement weather!

Pat - (after everything was back to normal and having spent some time reflecting on his accomplishments) After I hose myself down and get this grease off, I think I’ll make myself a nice tunafish sandwich!

Jo - Emily just threw up. I can’t believe Pat is eating tuna fish!

Pat - It sure is a nice day for a sail.

Jo - The only good thing about today is that we didn’t have to call the coast guard. If the NJ coastline doesn’t end soon one of us is going overboard!

Talking to his brother later in the day, Pat described the seas as “a little rough”. The alternator belt issue was “fixable”; that’s why we keep spare parts on board. The fact that Emily threw up must have had something to do with what she ate for breakfast. Clearly, we were on 2 different boats! Actually, it would have been great if we had been on 2 different boats!

Thankfully, Cape May proved to be a really lovely destination and a very calm anchorage. Weather outside and moods aboard improved significantly the following day, which was mostly spent ashore, enjoying the beach!


Follow-up: Drew now checks the engine temperature at least every 5 minutes when we have the motor on... just to be sure everything is okay; Jake and Emily have practiced opening the hatches by themselves with good success, and we will be restocking on Bonine (motion sickness medicine) at the next opportunity... just in case. As for tuna, we’re still good... what with the 40+ cans Pat purchased back in June!

Behind The Blog - Handsignals

Not that 42ft is all that far, but it is when the wind is blowing and you’re trying to communicate from one end of the boat to the other while anchoring. Thus we’ve come up with some fairly effective hand signals.

There’s forward (arm bent at elbow and pointed up), neutral (arm straight) and reverse (arm bent and elbow and pointed down), as well as a sign for faster (arm up and circling) and slower (arm down and circling). These are all pretty straight forward. Pat stands on the bow and manages the raising and lowering of the anchor while I steer and shift gears in accordance with the signals. If only it were that simple...

two fingers pointed under two glaring eyes (Pat’s) = stop talking to the kids and focus on me

one finger pointed up(Jo’s) = I am focused on you... it’s called multi-tasking

one arm doing anything (Drew’s or Jake’s or Emily’s) = sure, it looks like a signal, but don’t fall for it... wait for the “captain” to give the real order

signal repeated over and over again with vigor(Pat) = I said "(insert command here)"

two shoulders shrugged in frustration (Jo’s) = yeah, I’m doing that, but it’s not working!!!

The kids seem to prefer verbal signals... much like the ferries that frequent Cape Cod waters use horns to convey their messages.

Ferries:
1 blast = just to let you know, I’m leaving the dock now
2 blasts = you’re in my path; you might want to move
5 blasts = just so you know, I’m going to hit you

The kids have developed a set of similarly escalating signals to help alert Pat to potential threats....

dad, look out = there’s lobster pots on your (left/right)

Dad, dad, come here = I've got a crab, bring the net!

DAD, DAD, I need you! = Can you get the hook out of this fish before it bleeds all over the boat?!!

And my personal favorite...
DAD, DAD, COME HERE NOW = the anchor is up! don’t let mom drive the boat!

I like to join them on this one; it helps break the silence after all those hand signals!


Our favorite “extreme anchoring” observations:

The couple from NJ who were trying to anchor in Cuttyhunk and proceeded to teach everyone within a 1/2-mile radius a few new curse words. She apparently pushed the wrong button on their auto-everything power boat and dropped all their anchor chain in the space of about 3 seconds. About 30 seconds after he hauled it all back in, they left the area... bet is was a long and loud ride home!

The pampered pair from the Grand Caymans who anchored near us in Nantucket. While he and their crew circled a few times to find just the right spot to anchor their mega yacht, she was busy on the upper sundeck working out on a stair stepper!

This just in, more reports from the field.

Reports from the Field: On Assignment in Nantucket

The following stories recap portions of our historical tour of Nantucket.

The Oldest House by Emily

Did you know Mary Gardner and Jethro Coffin got “maryed”?... Their house was bilt in 1686 there were 4 fireplace, 2 rooms up, 3 rooms down and a gardin. There was no water, no lecktiside (electricity), no toilits, a prety big frig (cold room) and a prety big hous for back then.

They took bankcets and a big bench and a big fire to keep worm. They had 10 children too. Mary Coffin was good at painting. (Her pictures are on display at the Nantucket Historical Society.)

The End.

Something I learned: a root cellar is where people stored potatoes back then



The Whaling Museum by Jake

At frist Nantucket whalers were hunting Right whales becuase they were the right whales to hunt. Once they say a spirm whale it turn in to the right whale. And one day a spirm whale whashed up on the beach and it’s bones were took to the museum. And that is how it got started.

You should never go on a whale ship becuase there evil. If you’re a “greeny” (making your first voyage) you would strip and jump in the whales head (to scoop out the oil used to make candles, etc). Your other jobs would be look out and rowing. The Nantucket Sleighride is a ride in a row boat with the whale as your engine pulling you 15 to 20 m.p.h.

The End.

Something I learned: scrimshaw is when you draw pictures on whale teeth


The Old Mill by Drew

The Old Mill was built in 1746 and is 253 years old. It was built by a sailor from Europe. He came to Nantucket and built the mill from drift wood. The only example he had was some sketches he made.

The mill has 3 floors and the 3rd floor moves. The mill is powered by wind and produces corn meal. The leftovers are used for chicken feed. The vanes turn to face the wind and they shortened the sails when the wind picks up. They shortened them from 4 to 2 or 0 and to face the wind, some one has to push it (a beam on wheels coming out the back of the mill which rotates the 3rd floor).

Something I learned: the drift wood used to make the mill came from wrecked ships


Audience Participation Welcome...

Dreams, by Emily

Oh hi, my nam is Emily. Pleas call me Em. Do you have drem’s? I do here they are. At fist I wanted to be a teacher, then I wanted to be a dophin traner, but after thoe 2 dreams I wanted to be a ballet techer, but now I do not know what I whant to be, but I have a bit of time to deside. Putt doun your dream’s and your name.

To be a engnear... Jake

To have a fishing boat... Drew

To see dolphins from alongside our sailboat... Pat

To invent a game with my children (Emily has a great idea for a card game!)... Jo

Matt Goodwine: Skateboarding by Jake, September 2007

Hello, sorry we haven’t done the blog lately. I just wanted to let you know about my cousin Matt the awesome skate boarder/street skater. I got to skate in their half pipe. It was awesome but Drew and I didn’t do the drop in. We were too scared.

My dad couldn’t even stay on the skate board. My cousin Jim is very good too. Check on “you tube” on matt goodwine. Click here for a Matt video. We hung out with them. It was cool to see their broken skate boards, posters, and Jim’s love notes. The End.







Uncle Steve: The Warrior
by Drew, September 2007

My Uncle Steve was in World War 2 and is 93-1/2 years old. He won a bronze star in the Battle of the Bulge for his courage. When he was a kid he played basketball and baseball and went hiking. He also ate very healthy foods. That might be why he has lived so long. He had 6 sisters and 1 brother. One of his sisters is my Aunt Libby the golf champ. My Uncle Steve is very cool because he has lived a long time and has lots of neat stories.

Oh Say Can You See . . .

Yesterday we visited Ft. McHenry, the site of the 1814 Battle of Baltimore and more significantly the site that inspired Francis Scott Key to pen the Defense of Ft. McHenry, better known to most as the Star Spangled Banner. It is an impressive fort that is both a National Park and a National Historic Shrine.

It was a really nice visit to an important historic site and an excellent follow up to our visit to the Liberty Bell and Independence Hall in Philadelphia the day before. Visiting the location where the Declaration of Independence and the U.S. Constitution were drafted was a great preview to our visit to the site where our national anthem was created.

The icing on the cake to our Ft. McHenry visit was that the kids got to help in the changing of the flag on the 193rd anniversary of the 1814 battle. The flag had to be changed from the storm flag (17 x 25 ft) to a smaller flag due to high winds. Drew just reminded me of this very cool fact: the large flag shown here is small compared to the fort's largest flag which is so big that the flag in our pictures would fit inside the blue field of the largest flag. Hopefully when we sail to Baltimore we'll get to see the biggest flag flying over the fort. Anyway, here are a few shots of the kids at work at Ft. McHenry. Because it was starting to rain, you might see a few raindrops in the pictures.

Kids aloft!

We ran into a small squall the other day on the Chesapeake. Unfortunately we tore the leech line on the main (its a pretty old sail) and it wrapped around the topping lift which required me to cut the line in order to get the sail down. So, long story short, we had to get to the line that was cut and unwrap it from the topping lift. We also lost the halyard for our radar reflector and had to retrieve it from the spreader. So what do you do on our boat when you need to get up into the rigging? You call in the bosun's chair crew and put them to work. Here are a couple of shots of the kids working up high. They're light and a delight to haul up, and they love it.

Emily releases Monarch at Cape May.

This was pretty cool. While we were visiting the Cape May, we stopped into the small wildlife museum at the base of the lighthouse area. Part of the program there is to show the life cycle of the Monarch butterfly which migrates down to Mexico from Cape May and other areas of the east coast. During the course of this year, the museum has raised and released about 20 butterflies. We just happened by at the right time and Emily caught the eye of one of the museum attendants. As a result she was asked to carry a newly hatched Monarch out of its holding tank, it had just come out of its cocoon that afternoon, and place it in the butterfly garden.

Jake seems to be feeling just fine . . .

Just found this picture of Jake jumping off a sand bank in Cape May, NJ. He lost his hat on the way down but he stuck the landing. A number of you have asked about how he is doing since his last surgery and I thought this picture summed it up pretty well. Back in business.

We're trying out some new technology on the boat right now, a Sprint broadband card. It allows us to have 24/7 highspeed internet on the boat anywhere we can get a cellphone signal. We decided to give it a try after our last blog post. Since we hadn't updated the blog for almost a month and then I did that monster post we thought this might work out better. We'll see . . .

WHOA!!! Time to play some catch up on the blog.

My brother pointed out on the phone today that we had not posted anything on the blog since 8/20. Wow that's a long time and we've been doing a lot of moving around in our push south so time for some catch up on where we've been and what we've been up to.

When we last posted we were still in Martha's Vineyard picking up Jake's last supply of medicine. That seems like ages ago. The day after we got the medicine we decided to say good by to the Vineyard and to start heading south. We had initially planned to go further north, at least to Province Town, but the weather wasn't that cooperative and we wanted to start making our way south.

We had thought about revising Block Island on our way out of New England but the wind and seas were favorable for a longer trip and so we went from the Vineyard to Montauk, Long Island, our longest trip so far in a day. Seventy-three miles in about 11.5 hours. The seas were some of the largest our small crew has seen but everyone was safe and it was a relatively easy trip.

Lake Montauk was one of the shallowest ports that we'd been in and it was a real trick to anchor there. At one point we were almost aground. We only spent the night and left the next day given that the weather was still not great and we had favorable east winds. We went from Montauk to Old Saybrook, Connecticut. We found a beautiful anchorage there and stayed for a couple of days. But while we were there we mostly took care of business instead of kicking back.

Jake needed to get his IV line out and we needed to re-provision and get some more boat supplies. The Middlesex Hospital in Connecticut did a very nice job with Jake's IV and Defender Industries and a couple of other stores did well for the restocking of the boat. We thought about staying a bit longer in CT but our next major stop would be on the Hudson River to see family and so we decided to move on.

From Old Saybrook we crossed the Long Island Sound to Oyster Bay, Long Island. We only had 1-3 miles of visibility. While it was calm and we motored a lot we were happy to have the radar on during the trip. There were a lot of fishing boats along the way and a ferry or two and it was nice to know where they were before we saw them up close and personal. For some pictures of our trip from the Vineyard and down the sound, click right here.

Oyster Bay was another very nice spot. Jake got to swim there for the first time in a month and so did we all. The water was a bit warmer than up north and we spent a couple two days there before moving on.

From Oyster Bay we went to City Island, NY to stage our approach to Hell Gate on the East River. The reputation of Hell Gate is about what you would expect for the name. It is relatively small pinch of water through which Long Island Sound funnels on its way to New York Harbor. You only go through from the north on a ebb tide and you watch out for the current and the HUGE commercial traffic.

We only spent the night at anchor off of City Island but it was pretty cool nonetheless. The kids got a dinghy ride under the Throgs Neck Bridge at dusk and got to see an old military fort. The skyline of New York was seen easily from the boat and everyone was pretty excited for our trip around Manhattan.

It was an amazing contrast to be able to show the kids the island of Manhattan after they'd visited the island of Cuttyhunk. The two places are certainly on the opposite ends of the island spectrum.

The trip around Manhattan was filled with fantastic sights as you would expect. The buildings, bridges, ferries, water taxis, sea planes, helicopters etc. provided a lot of excitement that was capped off by the Statue of Liberty. We tried for a group shot of the family with the statue in the background but the harbor was too rolly to get a good shot. We have plenty more pictures of that leg of the trip. Here are a few, just click here.

Our trip around Manhattan went smoothly and we were making good time so we pressed on up the Hudson River the same day and made it to Haverstraw, NY by the same evening. Anchoring off of Haverstraw was a blast back to the past for me because I grew up here and spent a lot of time on and near the river as a kid.

While in Haverstraw we got to take the kids to see their Uncle Steve who at ninety-three and a half is still going strong. He still drives his car around town, tends a nice garden at his house, visits with his grandkids, and still shovels his own snow in the winter. Hopefully we all have some of his genes. He has some great photos albums and he shared them with us during our visit. The kids even got to see a picture of him receiving the Bronze Star after fighting in the Battle of the Bulge during World War II.

I also got to take the kids to the house where I grew up and to a few of the places I used to like to go as a kid including Hoyer's Ice Cream stand. Everyone approved of the trip to Hoyer's which has been serving up some mean soft serve since 1933.

After Haverstraw we made it up to Newburgh, NY where we visited with my brother and his family and my cousin Lidwin and her family. It was great to see everyone after a long while. We got to see my nephew Jack and my newest nephew Liam. The kids also got to visit with their cousins Jim and Matt, Lidwin and Jim's son's. For pictures of our trip from Haverstraw to Newburgh, click right here. (Special thanks to our old friend Sgt. F (first picture in this album) for his help when we got to Haverstraw).

Lidwin, Jim, Jim and Matt along with my brother Jeff all like to spend time on the water so we got to do some sailing together, some rafting up of boats, and even a little jet skiing. A GREAT time was had by all. (pictures soon).

We spent about a week on the Hudson and the portion from Haverstraw to Newburgh has to be some of the most scenic of the entire river. Passing West Point and Storm King Mountain is absolutely gorgeous. And the section around Bear Mountain, where we spent the night before heading out, was beautiful as well. We even took a trip into Bear Mountain State park for a walk with the kids around Hessian Lake which was just as nice as it was when I visited there at their age.

After leaving the Hudson we headed back down the river, through New York Harbor, and over to Sandy Hook, New Jersey. We left Sandy Hook before dawn the next day to make the trip to Atlantic City. (Atlantic City, one word, YUCK!!) The only reason for going to AC was to avoid an overnight sail down the New Jersey Coast. We left the next morning and stopped in Cape May, New Jersey. The day and two nights we spent in NJ were really nice. We might have stayed there longer but with Tropical Storm Gabrielle on the way up the coast we moved on up the Delaware Bay, across the Chesapeake and Delaware Canal, and into the Chesapeake.

We're now at anchor at Hopkins Cove on the Middle River which is on Maryland's western shore of the Chesapeake. Here's a Google Map that shows were we are and where we've been.


View Larger Map

There's more to tell but for now that's the most catch up I can do in a single library session. To be continued . . .