Week 1: living the dream!
Our first long passage was done and dusted, and it was time to start living the cruising dream! We dropped the anchor, inflated our dinghy (affectionately named Saltine), and headed to shore to explore the Sandy Hook Gateway Recreation Area. Luckily, the anchorage we were in only had 2 other boats, so it was a quick 3-minute dinghy ride to shore. The beach we landed on was nice; however, we were exhausted so we took Tots on a quick 30-minute walk and then it was back to the boat for us. Back on Salty Foxx, we headed to bed early for a much-needed night of sleep.
The next morning, we once again set out for shore. This time we brought our books and towels so that we could spend a relaxing morning enjoying the sunshine. Before we knew it, the tide was changing and it was time for us to get back to the boat, raise the anchor, and head towards Manhattan. The sail to Manhattan is approximately 18 nautical miles almost due north so we planned for the passage to take about 3 and 1/2 hours at 5 knots. The wind that day was out of the south blowing between 10 and 15 knots, so we started off on a port tack sailing at 6 knots between 120 and 130 degrees off the wind. While this wasn't the exact course we wanted to sail, it kept us out of the main shipping channel to New York Harbor. After about 30 minutes, we were able to jibe over and point exactly towards the entrance to New York City - the Verrazano Narrows Bridge.
My goodness was there a lot of boat traffic and I can tell you they had little care for a pleasure sailing vessel. It felt like I spent the whole time on VHF Channel 13 discussing with other boat captains how we were going to pass each other. In retrospect, I should have expected nothing less from The Big Apple. Even with the traffic, I couldn’t help but stare at the beauty of the Manhattan skyline. I was so distracted by the skyline and the traffic that the Statue of Liberty snuck up on me! Lady Liberty was so breathtaking we adjusted our course so that we could sail up right next to it and just stare.
Before we knew it, we could see the entrance to our marina in Jersey City. That meant it was time to turn on the engine, furl the sails, and pull into the marina slip we reserved for the night. Normally we prefer to stay on anchor, and we had originally planned to anchor off Lady Liberty, but we had friends in New York that we wanted to visit so we figured spending the money was worth it. We ended up choosing the Hudson Point Marina as it was relatively inexpensive ($5 per foot plus $15 for electricity totaled $210 for Salty Foxx), a short walk from the subway, and a 10-minute walk to the bike shop where we needed to purchase a cable lock for our dinghy.
After we successfully docked (after one failed backing in attempt), we plugged into shore power and started blasting both of our AC units – it was nice to enjoy the perks of electricity again! A few minutes later we were joined on the boat by our friends Megan and Scott. Megan was my college Materials Lab partner and somehow in a tiny ~2000-person university we ran in almost completely different circles. We always joke about the fact we have almost no mutual friends from college. After a quick boat tour, we cracked open some cold beers and regaled them with the experiences from our 53-hour passage.
Pretty soon, it was time for Scott to go racing so he left us and headed down the docks. Unknown to us when we booked the marina slip, Scott was racing on a 56-foot Beneteau that was docked a mere 8 slips away so it could not have been more convenient! Megan, Abby, and I walked over to a bar/restaurant named Surf City and waited for my friend Brennan to join us (also a college friend of mine). As we were sitting at our waterfront table, Megan made a comment on the party that was ensuing on the mega yacht across the channel from us. Sure enough, there was probably 200+ people dancing and partying. As we sat there staring, our waiter came up and informed us that they were filming a new Kevin Hart movie on that yacht! When we looked more closely, the marina sign read “Miami Beach Marina” even though we were in Jersey City. After a few minutes of staring, the excitement wore off and we went back to chatting. Suddenly, there was a yell from the movie crew and a man came tumbling down off the top deck and into the water! We watched as Kevin Hart himself ran to the railing screaming. At that moment, I decided that I was sold and that I must watch the movie when it comes out (it’s called 72 Hours for anyone who is now invested in watching it).
Soon enough, my friend Brennan and his significant other joined us, and we laughed and drank the night away. I did cause some confusion as I have always referred to Brennan as “Tickle” because the first time I put his name into my phone I misspelled his last name, Tickell, as Tickle and thus Tickle is what I have called him ever since. Much to his chagrin, this caused both Megan and Abby to also start calling him Tickle even though he has always introduced himself as Brennan. As we sat harborside, we kept an eye out for the boat Scott was racing on to come back to the docks. Luck was not on their side that night and they were towards the back of the racing fleet. Soon enough, Scott finished putting the boat away and it was his turn to regale us with tales of his evening of racing. Eventually it was time to say goodbye and even though it was a quick visit with our friends, we felt like true cruisers!
The next morning, we got up early and prepared to run our errands. We needed a cable lock for the dingy and a Micro-SD card reader to update our charts. The marina was about a 10-minute walk from a bike shop which carried the cable lock we were looking for and a 15-minute walk in the opposite direction there was a CVS whose website had a Micro-SD card reader in stock. After walking across town to the bike shop and successfully getting the cable lock, I walked the 15 minutes to the CVS only to discover they did not have the Micro SD card reader in stock! After a quick google search, I found one in stock at the Walgreens, which was legitimately right next to the bike shop and man did I feel silly. After walking back across town, I acquired the card reader and was on my way back to the boat. As I wasted the better part of an hour acquiring this micro-SD card reader, it was almost immediately time to disembark once I was back on the boat. On tap for the day was a 1.5 nautical mile motor to the Statue of Liberty. My cousin had told me years prior that there was a free anchorage right behind Lady Liberty, and ever since then it had been on my sailing bucket list. Sure enough, we were able to anchor about 150 feet from Lady Liberty herself! We quickly realized why there was only 1 other boat anchored here… As the Statue of Liberty is such a popular destination, ferries passed every 15-minutes with loud diesels and big wakes - we were in for a rolly night. Even with the rolly anchorage, we were treated to a stunning sunset and got to watch Lady Liberty’s torch light up next to the NYC skyline. Overall, it felt like a once in a lifetime experience and I would absolutely anchor there again given the chance.
The other pro of the Statue of Liberty anchorage is that it is about 1.5 nautical miles from the entrance to East River and the infamous Hells Gate passage. The East River is about 15 nautical miles total and is known for having currents in excess of 5 knots as the tide ebbs and flows. Hells Gate is a section of the East River located right after Roosevelt Island where the fast-running currents create standing waves and eddies that have wrecked many-a-ships over the years. As Salty Foxx can only go 7.5 knots under motor in perfect conditions, we had to time the currents to be in our favor, or we could get stuck in the eddies. Reading “Eldridge Tide and Pilot Book” we knew low tide was at 0850 and that as a sailboat you should try and pass The Battery off southern Manhattan 1 hour and 45 minutes after low tide. Low tide was 0850 so we wanted to pass The Battery at 1035. Based on this, we planned to pull the anchor up at 1000 as we figured the process of getting the anchor up and motoring the 1.5 nautical miles thru traffic would take about 30 minutes. Sure enough, we crossed The Battery at 1033 and were soon on our way up the East River. Almost immediately we felt the current under our keel propelling us forward. We watched our Speed Over Ground (SOG) increase to 9+ knots even though our Speed Over Water (SOW) stayed around 5 knots. After a lot of traffic at the entrance of the East River, we were almost by ourselves 15 minutes into the crossing. This led to a moment of uncertainty on if we timed the currents right, but after double checking the books, we were sure this was right. We watched the miles tick by and soon enough we were flying through Hells Gate. You could feel the current trying to pull Salty Foxx in conflicting directions, but luckily, we had enough flow over the rudder so it was easy to keep a straight course. We felt as if we had timed it perfectly and soon emerged triumphantly on the other side into Long Island Sound. This was our first experience in extreme tidal current, and we felt as if it could not have gone better. Honestly Hells Gate felt tame compared to what we had read about it. This just showed us how important doing the appropriate research was to being successful. After exiting the East River, we snapped a picture of Kings Point where my friend Nick had gone to the United States Merchant Marine Academy and were off towards the Calf Islands in Connecticut.
Salty Foxx sailing up the East River and towards Hell’s Gate
We planned to stop at the Calf Islands for two nights and we couldn’t wait! At this point we were 5 days into our journey, and it felt like we hadn’t stopped to take a breath yet. The reality was that we had been actively moving 65 of the last 120 hours (about 54% of our journey thus far) and we were feeling the exhaustion. We had a choice to anchor on either the southwest or northeast side of the Calf Islands. We settled on the northeast side as it offered more protection from the southwest trade winds. We were happily able to anchor in about 18 feet of water just outside the mooring field. We quickly put the dinghy in the water and headed to shore to explore. The island was small but had a neat little lighthouse and stunning beach full of seashells. As we sat on the beach watching sunset, several boats began to pull up and turn our quiet little anchorage into a party zone. Abby and I looked at each other, and almost simultaneously we realized it was Friday night! Less than 1 week into the cruising life and we had already lost track of the day of the week. The sun went down, the party boats that pulled up scattered as quickly as they appeared and we were once again alone in the anchorage. After an extremely restful night of sleep, we cleaned the boat and reorganized for the first time during the journey. Around lunch time, we headed for shore with our beach chairs, some canned adult beverages, and our books.
As we sat admiring the view, our small anchorage once again began to fill up with the weekend crowd. The extra boats led to some pretty good people watching and if I had my phone I could have filmed several qualified captain moments. The craziest instance was when one of the first people to pull their boat onto the beach pulled right up behind our dinghy and decided it would be best to place one shore anchor on the right side of the dinghy and one on the left side so that we were fully trapped. When we asked if they didn’t mind moving left or right (this beach was ~100 yards wide and you could pull up anywhere), they responded that they would help us lift and carry our dinghy when were ready to leave… to each his own, I guess. The boat captain later walked up to me and apologized that he didn’t realize we needed to put our dinghy back in the water to get back to our boat. While I couldn’t understand how someone wouldn’t realize that, I appreciated the gesture, and he did end up helping me get the dinghy in the water so no harm, no foul. Once again, right after sunset, the anchorage cleared out and we were all alone.
The next morning, we got up early-ish to catch the running tide and made our way to Rowayton, Connecticut to meet up with some friends we had met while river rafting the Grand Canyon in June. This sail marked the end of our first week cruising!
A quick timeline of our first week cruising, and where we spent each night!
