We departed from City Island, NY at 0700 hours just as the sun was rising… the forecast was for 10-15 knots winds out of the SW with late morning and afternoon rain. We had to go down the East River through New York City and new York Harbor and out into the Atlantic Ocean… there is not really any inside passage for the Jersey shore… we had to go to at least Manasquan before we could bail from the Atlantic and take and inside route. But with the SW winds we should be ok if we stayed close to the shoreline and in the lee of the wind.

The East River can pretty intense with current and you want to try and transit it with a following current… as the currents can be 4-5 knots in places… when your boat cruises at best 7.5 knots you really do not want to have a 4-5 knot current against you… but today we would… the worst area is called Hell Gate and is where the Harlem and East Rivers meet,,, the slack current was predicted for 1000 hours and it would only take us about an hour and a half to make it to Hell Gate and we would still have 3 plus against us… but it was either wait until 0900 to leave, go really really slow from City Island to Hell Gate or just go for it… we chose to go for it… ?

We experienced 3.5 knots against us just before Hell Gate and all the way through it past Roosevelt Island… then the river widens and the current velocity decreases… but we made it unscathed and soon the tide had switched from flood to ebb and we were flying along between 8 and 10 knots… YEP… 10 knots… as we passed under the Verrazano Bridge we were doing 10.2 knots… it was awesome… ? We maintained a good boost from the ebb current to well outside New York Harbor and it’s approaches and down the Jersey shoreline… it was after noon before we lost our boost.

The seas were not bad with the SW winds… we hugged the shoreline and had a few places where it was a little bouncy but there were no 4-6 breaking waves as we had seen the day before… thank goodness… really did not want another rough ride. We decided to stop early today and set our goal as Manasquan, NJ… coming north this spring this inlet had been closed due to a capsized 70 foot fishing vessel and Susan was a little concerned that the inlet would be a challenge… especially after our experience with Barnegat Light Inlet on the trip north… I assured her it would be fine and it was… smooth as silk… could not have asked for a better passage through the inlet.

One of the biggest differences about today’s leg fo the trip was that we saw a lot of other boat traffic… the minute we entered the East River we started seeing tugs with barges, fast ferrys, water taxis, a large motor yacht that passed us and sent a 4 foot wake our way… not very considerate boater… and of course New York harbor was filled with traffic of all types… mostly commercial… a huge ship passed us we were approaching the Verrazano Bridge… and one of the Stanton Island Ferry’s was being escorted by two US Coast Guard boats… must have been someone important on board…

And as always one of the best things is seeing the Statue of Liberty… so beautiful!!!

At approximately 1550 hours we were safely docked at the Shrimp Box Restaurant at Manasquan, NY. We had traveled for 8 hours and 50 minutes covering 55.33 nautical miles averaging 6.28 knots.

Trip totals to date:

Distance: 191.07 nautical miles
Hours: 31 hours 31 minures
Avg Spd: 6.06 knots

We departed from Westbrook, CT at 0645 hours just before sunrise and the winds were basically non-existent… the forecast was for 10-15 knots winds out of the NW increasing to 15-20 knots… seas 2-3 feet… figured it would not be too bad as the trip would in a westerly direction all day and we could stay closer to CT southern shoreline and more in the lee of the NW winds… sadly but not surprisingly the forecast was wrong… the winds started to pick up and by 0730 we had 15 knot winds out of the west… directly on our bow and the current was flooding… which had it moving in the opposite direction of the wind… this makes for some short and steep waves… very rough ride!

The ride was rough but at least we had the current with us giving us a slight boost… but this soon was lost as the winds picked up to a steady 25 knots by 0900 hours and what boost we were getting was taken away by the wave action… we soon were moving at between 4.5 and 5.5 knots… at times I saw the speed below 4 knots and we were pounding in the waves… decided to try and ease the ride and we began to tack back and forth across our desired path… this helped somewhat eliminating the hard pounding but the waves were still 4-6 feet with some large rouges every few minutes… the spray was flying over the top of the pilothouse… that makes it flying over 20 feet in the air… the pilothouse windows were being continually hit with the spray as if someone had a fire hose pointed at them… and we only had another 8-9 hours to go…. :)

As the afternoon hours came upon us we wer now getting gusts to over 30 knots… only good thing was that the current had switched from flood to ebb making the current and wind in the same direction… the waves remained at 4-6 but they were now not as steep and close together and the ride got a little better… and as we moved to the west we were also moving closer and closer to the west end of Long Island Sound and some bit of a break in the wind and waves… by about 1700 hours things had actually smoothed down to a very tolerable ride… but we now had a full ebb current against us so we were still only making 5 knots… :(

The thing that I will never get over wondering “why” is… we passed a lot of small recreational fishing boats… they were bouncing up and down like small corks… why do these people put themselves through this just to “fish”…

At approximately 1830 hours we were safely docked at the North Minneford Yacht Club on City Island, NY. We had traveled for 11 hours and 45 minutes covering 66.18 nautical miles averaging 5.63 knots.

Trip totals to date:

Distance: 135.74 nautical miles
Hours: 22 hours 41 minures
Avg Spd: 5.98 knots

We left this morning at 0723 hours on our return trip to Florida from Rhode Island. This leg of the tip was pretty uneventful… we had 10-15 knot winds out of the SW which really did not have any effect on us until we turned to the west at Point Judith… then we had a little chop… 1-2 waves that did nothing more than let us know we were on a boat…. Up until then it had been flat calm. We had the current running with us also up until this point and that also changed. We now had a strong current on out bow that lasted until just past Fisher Island where the curret changed to push us along… sometimes we were doing over 9 knots… it was great to have this push from the current.

We are running a little slower on this trip south to try and conserve some fuel… diesel at almost $4.00 a gallon is a great motivation to slow things down. Our normal crusingin speed is 7 - 7.5 knots… we have slowed that to 6.5 knots this trip dropping the RPM down to 2200 compared to 2750… should save on the fuel… we’ll see as the trip progresses.

We arrived to Westbrook, CT and were met by Susan’s brother George and a long time family friend John Kroner at the Brewers Pilots Point Marina. They helped us with the lines and we were safely docked at approximately 1819 hours.

We traveled 69.56 nautical miles in 10.56 hours for an average speed of 6.36 knots.