After departing from New York City on December 9th... we ran all day and night through December 10th arriving in Portsmouth, VA at 1900 hours. A total of 279.1 nm in 40.5 hours... weather and sea conditions were great. It's still a little cold but this is the first time since leaving Rhode Island that the temperature has been above freezing and is forecast to remain that way for the next couple of days... just checked and it's 39 degrees outside and it feels like a heat wave compare to temperatures we had in the teens when we left NY.

We are docked at a town dock in Portsmouth, VA... position (N36°50.138', W076°17.782') Shortly after docking here a close friend also docked here behind us... Mike Effort of MI-T-MO.... he's not on MI-T-MO but a 60' Grand Banks that he is delivering to Florida. We'll fall behind him as we travel tomorrow as he will be cruising at 20 knots with the Grand Banks... nearly 3 times the speed we cruise at with SAILS.

We departed from New York City at 0330 hours on December 9th with final destination as Cape May, NJ. We left having a favorable tide in the lower East River and New York Harbor... attaining more than 10 knots many times. The trip was to take approximately 15 hours arriving to Cape May around 2100 hours. Weather conditions were fantastic... west winds and calm seas.

Off the NJ shore we did experience a few fuel filter issues... the previous few days of rough seas stirred things up a bit and clogged both filters.. and we had to change the Racor filters on both engines. After that things went smoothly.
Approaching Cape May we made the decision to not stop and continue on offshore to Norfolk, VA. Looking at the weather reports our window of calm seas would escape us if we stopped and we would of had to continue the trip on an inland route going up the Delaware Bay, across the C&D Canal and down the Chesapeake Bay to Norfolk... 4-5 days compared to 1 day offshore to Norfolk.

It's now December 10th approximately 0900 hours as I am writing this...we are off the coast of Virginia at approximate position (N37°34.600', W075°29.545')... or about 67 nm from Norfolk, VA.

Figured I start placing a quick summary of the day at the beginning of each daily entry.

Start: 0600 hrs, Westbrook, CT (N41°16.425’, W072°28.146’)
Stop: 1830 hrs, New York, NY (N40°44.149’, W073°56.814’)
Distance traveled: 79.81nm (91.78 miles)

We departed from Brewers Pilot's Point Marina at 0600 hours and planned to go to City Island, NY with an ETA of 1600 hours if conditions allowed for us to average 6.5 knots. Current was to be in our favor in the later part of the trip. Once arriving at City Island, NY we would wait until we could transit Hell Gate on the East River in New York City with an ebb tide... currents through Hell Gate can be 5 knots and you do not want to have a 5 knot current on your bow when you only do 7 knots with no current. The tide was suppose to change from ebb to flood at 1735 hours so we would have to wait until almost midnight to leave City Island, NY in order to go through Hell Gate with an ebb tide.

Once out of Westbrook and back in to Long Island Sound we found the wind and sea conditions to better than the day before... winds 20 knots and seas were 2-3 feet... but they were very short making the ride uncomfortable... as the day progressed the winds picked up and were steady 25 knots with gusts over 30 knots... but the wind direction had changed slightly from W to NW and we hugged the southern shore of Connecticut to get as much protection from the wind as we could but it was still a very uncomfortable ride.

As we approached the Stamford, CT area the seas started to diminish as the southern shore of Connecticut started to provide more protection from the NW wind and our ride became much more pleasant and our speed picked up with a little boost from the current... making 7.5 knots.

With the smoother seas and the speed boost we arrived to the City Island area sooner than anticipated and we estimated that we had just enough time to proceed down the East River and through Hell Gate with the last hour of ebb tide... so we did not stop at City Island and proceeded on into the East River and through Hell Gate... since it was the last few minutes of the ebb tide we only got a little speed boost... we got up to 8.4 knots for a few minutes.

After passing through Hell Gate we would soon have the current against us so we decided to stop as soon as possible... we had seen an anchorage on Active Captain just south of Roosevelt Island on the East River... we turned east into Newtown Creek and proceed up about 3/4 of a mile to Whale Creek. This is a small park with space for several boats... appears to be an old ship dock... has large rubber fender system designed for ships... the area is well lighted and not too difficult to tie up to. The only problem I saw is that the fender system is in two layers one over the other... we arrived at dead low tide and the lower fenders are cover with barnacles and would only be visible at low tide... they could cause some damage to your boat if gone undetected.