New York, New Jersey, and the Hudson River

We left the inlet to go on the Atlantic Ocean open water to travel until we reached Sandy Hook, New Jersey.  Another boat left a little ahead of us and reported that the ocean was large rolling waves but a good day to venture out.  So we traveled to Sandy Hook in 4-6 foot swells that were spaced a long way apart so it made for a good travel day.

We anchored inside Sandy Hook at the Atlantic Highlands area and proceeded to sit at anchor for 2 days waiting for the fog to lift.  The storm off the coast of Florida and Georgia made all the weather sit and our weather just stayed crappy.  Finally after a couple of days of fog, mist, rain, and wind, we left and headed into the Big Apple.  We were in a couple of the shipping canals that the really big ships use and numerous ferry boats that shuttle folks back and forth to New York.  We hit another foggy patch or two but luckily we have good radar and could still see a quarter to half mile without it.

We made into New York harbor and although the pictures are still hazy it was an awesome sight.  Here is a couple of the first views of the harbor.

The statue of liberty greeted us.  Here are some of the many pictures we took of her.  This statue is over 300 feet tall and has so many memories for so many people tied to it.  You can not help but think of the many of all of our ancestors that saw this for the first time arriving in America.

The thrilling part of us actually arriving in New York was that we anchored in Liberty State Park and as you can see from the next picture, we were at the back of the statue of liberty and we could see the entire harbor as well.  It was a beautiful, and very peaceful anchorage.  Hard to believe we were in the middle of such a enormous city and have such a quiet spot.

The next morning we left to explore the Hudson River.  I know, many of you would have gone into the city and enjoyed the sites, but if you haven't already guessed it we are not "big city folks".   The next pictures are going up the first several miles of the Hudson.  New Jersey is on one side of the river and New York is on the other.

Staten Island Ferry

Ellis Island (this is the processing point for the immigrants)

One of the two Twin Towers (note the progress on the completion of the building)

Both of the twin towers

New Jersey side of the Hudson

More of the New Jersey side

The Empire State Building

Since it was Memorial Day week end there were many additional activities planned in New York City.  One of them is Fleet Week.  They bring in several of the Navy ships and also the tall ships into the harbor so that folks can tour on them.  Here are some of the pictures we took as we cruised by.









Of course, here as well as all over the country, there is a security detail for every one's safety.  We could not get any closer as this Coast Guard boat was patrolling the area to protect all of the ships.











That machine gun mounted on the front of the boat was enough for us to keep a safe distance.

The Hudson River is very wide as you leave New York Harbor.  There is a series of bridges that span the width of the river and are very impressive.  I think one of our cruising guides stated it the best, this harbor and river are for the BIG ships and your boat will feel quite small in comparison.  The pictures do not do justice to the size of the bridges.  It was hard to capture that. 



There are also a number of lighthouses on the Hudson River, keep in mind that we traveled this river for about 150 miles (all upstream).  We anchored two nights on the Hudson.  It is a beautiful resource and we were surprised that there was a some boat traffic for the holiday weekend, but not a lot.

This is the captain checking out ahead of us.  We use these binoculars at least 30 times a day and they are a very important part of the trip.

One of the spots we anchored by was Pollepel Island.  This island has the ruins of a Scottish castle called Bannerman castle.  Note that the folks on the kayaks were enjoying an up close and personal view.

There are many sites as I said, one of them is West Point Academy, the others are the rolling hills and many rock cliffs along the banks.

We traveled past Albany, New York and took a picture of this ship there in the harbor.  We will be staying at Waterford Visitor Center at the Erie Canal.  We will keep you posted.

Delaware and New Jersey

We are now making great headway in a northerly direction.  We started out from Baltimore and as we left the harbor I took this picture as a lasting memory of the city.  It is the famous Domino Sugar sign that is larger than life and right at the plant in the harbor.  When we arrived at the harbor they were unloading the big ships with the sugar to the plant.

We started our trip by traveling the Chesapeake and Delaware canal which connects the Chesapeake Bay with the Delaware Bay.  It was an interesting canal.  This is two of the bridges that are very close to each other over the canal.

We are now traveling again with some of the big ships, not just the smaller boats.  We had a nice trip on Delaware Bay which we were very grateful that the seas were kind to us.

It always is very interesting to see how much cargo is shipped by boat.  At one point we could see over half a dozen of these large ships moving goods across the waters.


This is one of the interesting lighthouses in the middle section of the Delaware Bay.  

We traveled on toward Cape May, New Jersey and as the weather was not predicted to be good, we choose to take the "inside route" up the coast.  The "outside route" would have been in the Atlantic Ocean.  Even though we new that the water depths would be a challenge for us, the inside route proved to be a good choice mainly because there were several days of high winds, rain, and crappy weather.


We did well, but not to say that we did not touch the bottom of the New Jersey inland waterway.  We did not require assistance, but did get hung up a couple of times.  Those times that we did get hung up by scraping the bottom the able captain Erwin and the wind plus the rising tide allowed us to make it.  We anchored in a town called Ventnor City, followed by Albany Ave, and then Atlantic City.  I never knew that all of those properties you could purchase on a monopoly board were actually in New Jersey!  Here is Ventnor City:

We did not take a lot of pictures as it was yucky and rainy.  This picture is worth a thousand words though. This is a bad day.  Maybe this boater was distracted by his cell phone?  You would have been traveling at a high rate of speed to get it that far up in the grass.  I am sure the tow boat captain had a laugh at dinner that night.

We were looking forward to walking the board walk at Atlantic City, but the basin we were going to anchor in was almost entirely blocked by dredging equipment.  It did not look friendly at all and we did not want to pay the high price of a marina which can be over $2 per foot per day.  So here are a couple of pictures of Atlantic City as we went by.

So we did finally finish the inside route as far as we could, here is a picture of one of the bridges as we finished that section.

We anchored at Metedeconk River close to the Manasquan Inlet and left on the outside, yes the wide open Atlantic Ocean.  We had a sunny, but cool day with 5 ft seas, but they were just big rolling waves.  It was not as pleasant as some of our passages, but it was not as bad as some of the rough ones.  We are now at anchor in Sandy Hook, New Jersey.  As soon as we have a sunny bright morning or afternoon we will go to Liberty State Park and anchor to take pictures of the Statue of Liberty.  This will be a highlight of our trip.  Then we will begin passage up the Hudson River.  Stay tuned..........

Fun with Marilyn's sister in the Chesapeake

After a visit back to Michigan to see our great children, grandchildren, family, and friends, we returned to the Chesapeake Bay area and Marilyn's sister, Lonnie joined us for a week of fun.

We had a slight delay as the water heater on the boat decided to go out.  Erwin ordered a new one and installed it the next day when it arrived.  It turned out to only be a one day delay.  We left the Solomons, Md and traveled to Cambridge.  Here is the boat at anchor with a boat called the "Nathan".  It is a skip jack boat.  Here is a picture of the kids on the boat right next to our boat at anchor.

We hiked all over the town and showed Lonnie how boaters explore a new town.  We saw a majority of the town and then Marilyn spotted a place called the Ruark Boat building which had a sign out front that visitors were welcome.  We wandered in and we got a personal tour of the place.  They had a group of 8th grade girls from Philadelphia that were there for the week.  They were learning how boats were built and refurbished.  They were the kids on the skip jack boat and they will each take a model boat home at the end of the week.  What a great way to learn that skill!  Here is a picture of the place.

We had a great time in Cambridge and then traveled to St. Michael's.  They are both on the Eastern shore of the Chesapeake Bay.  We went to the Maritime museum.  We would all agree that this is a must see if you are in the area.  It is 35 acres dedicated to the history and preservation of boats of the Chesapeake.  Here are some of the pictures of the museum:

These are boat name boards from some of the local boats

Here are some fun pictures of me and my sister.  We are one of the restored boats and we are posing with one of the placards for the tourists.

This is one of the boats in the harbor that was providing a learning experience for the local school children.

This is the lighthouse on the site that they are in the process of restoring so we could not explore it.

We then crossed back over the Chesapeake Bay to the Western shore to Annapolis.  This is the capital and has been a working capital since the 1700's.  

Here are a couple of the lighthouses that are on the Chesapeake between Annapolis and Baltimore.

Here is the bridge that crosses over the Chesapeake Bay.  I think this may be our first double bridge.

We traveled to Baltimore Inner Harbor and stayed there for a couple of days.  We finished up a great week with Lonnie and toured the ships in the harbor.  The Constellation, a coast guard light ship, and a coast guard cutter.  Here is the cutter.

That is all three of us on the deck of the warship.

We also hiked up Federal hill and we went to the 27th floor of the Baltimore World Trade Center.  Here are some of the pictures from the top floor.

Here is a picture and if you look carefully you can see Solitude (the one with the blue on top) on the dock next to the big ship on the right.  We were at the dock right downtown by all of the water taxis, dinner cruises, and little paddle boats that are shaped liked dragons.

Here is the three of us at the dock next to Solitude.  We met a couple of businessmen from Egypt.  There are many nationalities in the city and it has been fun talking to them as they stop and ask about the boat.

Here is the three of us enjoying a wonderful ice cream treat. It was a wonderful week and we all enjoyed it.