What a wonderful night we had last night. The wind picked up slightly, coming through the v-berth hatch cooling things off, the waves gently rocked us to sleep, no helicopters flying overhead and no noise of the city! Heaven.

Today was hot, so hot, and humid. We did not do too much this morning on the boat other than try to keep cool. After lunch Jorge and I headed into the marina with the dinghy to get some fuel. Last night when we tried to get fuel for CS'ta Time, it was all I could do to reach up and touch the dock. Today it was an easy reach. Quite high tides. Most, if not all of the marina/yacht club has been rebuilt. Hurricane Sandy wreaked havoc here last year, putting some 100 boats onto shore and it took a crane almost six weeks to untangle the mess of boats!

We walked the main drag of Atlantic Highlands today. As Jorge's sister, Silvia would say, we are like iguanas always heading out in the heat of the day! We visited a hardware store, a marine store and of course two wine/beer stores. Diana and Gilbert met us as we were heading back towards the marina. We checked out a few more stores on the way back and then had happy hour in the bar/restaurant overlooking the marina with them.

Atlantic Highland Yacht Club/Marina.

Ships anchored at jetty outside Atlantic Highlands.

Happy hour overlooking the marina.

Back to the boat around 1945. With the boat closed up for the afternoon it was like a sauna, temp reading 30.7C. We quickly opened all the hatches and like last night the wind started picking up, cooling the temperature and making the evening quite enjoyable. I believe tonight will be a repeat of last night.

The morning started overcast but by noon most of the cloud covering had burned away. The anchorage between Ellis Island and Liberty Island was not as calm as we wanted. And the city of New York noise was still with us. I spent the morning vegging out in the cockpit and Jorge went between reading a book and browsing the internet.

We pulled anchor at 1345 a bit before the outgoing current. The wind was again out of the south, on our nose, so no sailing. By an hour out of the anchorage the current had changed and was in our favour. Again we dodged ferries but this time only a couple to the Statue of Liberty and the ones to Staten Island. There were a few large ships that passed us, creating quite a wake but we handled them pretty well. The trip to Sandy Hook was basically uneventful, just as the weather had predicted, 5 to 10 knots and continuing from the south. As we got closer to Atlantic Highlands Marina the winds did pick up and we were able to open the genoa for a bit but we were so close to the marina it almost wasn't worth it. We pulled up to the diesel dock for fuel but the attendant had left early so I guess we will fuel up later in the week. The same with water and pump out.

We returned to the entrance to the marina and anchored just inside the breakwall. Oh my, I almost forgot what the gentle slapping of the water against the hull sounded like after being in New York City for 8 nights. This is going to be heaven! No rocking and rolling or bouncing (I hope.)

While scouting out showers, we met a French man from France who kindly offered us the shower on his boat as the marina does not have facilities. We took him up on his offer. He has a 50' French built boat (can't remember the make) that he has been outfitting for the past 4 years in the hopes of sailing the world. When he gets it finished it is going to be gorgeous! It's not too shabby now.

We dinghied back to CS'ta Time, had a later supper and are ready for a quiet night.

Video of the trip to Sandy Hook.

Here is a video of CS'ta Time behind the Statue of Liberty.

The Empire State Building from CS'ta Time on the Hudson River.

Manhattan skyline from CS'ta Time on the Hudson River.

Tourist trap going by the Statue of Liberty.

The Statue of Liberty and ferry as CS'ta Time was approaching the anchorage.

 

From our dinghy, CS'ta Time anchored behind the Statue of Liberty.



(These are yesterday's pictures.)

Good-bye NYC. We had our last showers, last last-minute shopping and last coffee shop visit today in the Big Apple. At 1330 we left our mooring ball and headed towards an anchorage just behind the Statue of Liberty.

After playing Russian roulette with the ferries, water taxis, police boats, barges, ships, tourist boats and pleasure boats we arrived at our destination two hours later. The 10 knot winds and 2 knot current were both against us for the first hour and then we had a change in current to help us.

I think the general consensus is we are glad to be leaving 79th Street Marina. While it was only a short dinghy ride from the mooring balls to the marina and so convenient to the subway, Central Park and downtown Manhattan, it was a busy, bouncy mooring, totally exposed to all Hudson River traffic. When the wind was stronger then the current (and it was every night), the mooring ball would be right along side the boat, constantly hitting it just about where my head was in the v-berth. Many times I thought I would wake up in the morning to find an imprint of the mooring ball in the fiberglass! The marina served its purpose though, where else could you spend a week in NYC for $180.00.

We took a gazillion pictures this afternoon of the anchorage and the boats by dinghy (and its taking me forever to download the pictures - tomorrow!), had supper and then enjoyed the night lights of Manhattan from the cockpit. Totally awesome! The waters are a little calmer here and with no mooring ball to hit us tonight, hopefully we will get a full night's sleep. As I was finishing this entry, there was an incredible display of firewords over Ellis Island in front of Manhattan. Jorge figures NYC got his birth date wrong!

I'm not sure where the morning went but it went! Early afternoon we dinghied into the marina. Jorge went one way for gasoline and I went the other for groceries. We have to be off the mooring ball tomorrow so provisioning up. I think we might make the big jump to an anchorage behind the Statue of Liberty, some 1 hour sailing down the Hudson!

We had invited an Australian couple to the boat for drinks and appetizers at 1730. They have been cruising for 12 years, including staying 2 years in India and 2 years in Turkey. They are winding down their cruising career and heading back to Australia now, hoping to arrive sometime next spring. Some very interesting stories and of course a few words of sound advice.

Although we didn't do much today, the week of touring NYC had caught up to us. No pics today folks.

IMPORTANT:

I must apologize to everyone who has posted a reply to our blog. From our end, there were very few comments listed. Lo and behold, Jorge was on his US phone this morning and the comments have been going to our gmail account, a gazillion of them! Of course we were not checking that account. I have gone into the blog settings and changed them to allow "everyone" to comment not just "registered users" (I don't know who those people are). Hopefully the comments will be posted right on the blog for us and everyone to read from now on. In the meantime, I will try to catch up on the replies via the gmail account.