After a few days in Port Washington to get groceries, fuel and liquor and a couple days with our friends Chuck and Maryanne it was time to head off down the East River and out into NYC Harbor.
We left Port Washington at 5am so that we could catch a favorable tide down through Hells Gate and it worked out well as we passed through at over 11 knots.
Upon coming up to Roosevelt Island, we were abruptly stopped by the marine police as the west side of the river was closed due to a large contingency of high profile politicians were meeting at the UN.
They diverted us down the eastern channel and all was well until we arrived at the Roosevelt Island bridge making about 10 knots and finding that the bridge was only 46 feet high........ and we weren't going to fit under it. A few calls on the VHF finally got the bridge operator and he raised it up for us.
New York Harbor is always extremely busy and along with the strong currents it can make for a tricky passage. Here you can see the pick of our chart plotter showing all the AIS targets not to mention the ones who don't have AIS transponders. All the triangles are ships for those of you who aren't familiar with AIS.
Lower Manhattan is looking as nice as ever from the water. The new Freedom tower towers proudly
above the New York Skyline.
Even though we all depend on our fancy chart plotters you still have to use discretion and common sense. Here you see the Navionics version of the New York Harbor. It shows depths in mid channel as 14 FEET. They have it printed in meters instead of feet even though all our settings were set to feet. Can you imagine a 100,000 ton tanker with a draft of only 13 feet. More like 13 meters.
The weather was perfect that day so we decided to pass directly from Port Washington down towards Cape May, NJ...... 120 miles south of us.
The devastation along the Jersey shore from Superstorm Sandy is very prevalent. The beaches are being rebuilt with sand being sucked in by huge dredges. They have built steel supports in the beach head and supported by rocks then covered with tons of sand.
Half way down we found a beautiful anchorage in Barnegat Light Harbor in 11 feet of water, I wasn't sure if there was sufficient water for us so a quick call to Towboat US helped us to decide to go in for the night. I'd recommend this anchorage to anyone.
A peaceful night was had after a long day. We've installed blue LED lights below the solar panel which give off a beautiful blue glow.
Next morning it was off again bound for Cape May. The sky was bright although it was a little cool. WAIT.... what's this?
ATLANTIC CITY SEWER PIPE LINE..... PRIME FISHING AREA
I don't think I'd like to eat anything out of this area.
Atlantic City has not changed from what we saw. The Trump Casino is massive as you can see and dwarfs just about everything there. The complex was being built when we passed a couple years ago. The boardwalk seems to have been replaced and things looked pretty well back to normal in this area.
A restful night was had in Cape May before rounding the bottom end of NJ the next morning to start making our way up the Delaware Bay. Near the north end of the Bay you have the Stony Point Nuclear Power Plant. Today it was operating at maximum capacity and the steam eminating from the stack actually created it's own weather system in the form of clouds. Now you know where clouds are manufactured.
Continuing on at a comfortable speed of 8.3 knots we entered to opposing current at the end of the Cape Cod Canal and were slammed back to 5 knots.
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