Daytona Beach

A simple question for you all.  Would YOU trust this helmserer...?

Note the toe on the autopilot control and the fingers on FaceBucket...

Answer?  Yes I trust her.  She is actually double checking the Navonics app against the Garmin chart plotter.  Ata girl..

Saint Augustine

The namesake city of my favorite saint.  If you have not Augustines confessions, you should!  The picture below is  Flaggler College, once the Ponce De Leone grand hotel, which put the sleepy little place on the map a century ago and the reason Henry built his railroad down the east coast of Florida. Ornate is not sufficient to describe the place.  It is so opulent that you need to buy a tour ticket just to see the college cafeteria which is the oval grand room surrounded by the largest collection of Tiffany stained class in the country.  I used to do stained and beveled glass in my earlier years, so I was agog at the spectacle.

Our stop here included lots of provisioning to get ready for the Bahamas.  Christine couldn't resist the Robinson Caruso hats made from palm leaves sold by a street vendor.  We are now all set..

I am now done fixing broken things on the boat.  I look forward to merely improving things that are already mostly working.  The latest thing was re-wiring the rather complex setup of alternator, external regulator, and battery isolator.  After an evening of study, I felt like I understood how it was all supposed to work.  I am not sure how the existing setup EVER worked since there was a gross wiring error.  Now corrected, we are now back to being able to charge house batteries with the main engine which saves us from having to run the separate generator while underway allowing us to do things like run the water maker while motoring.  Little things that can make a big difference.  We now have three sources of electricity: main engine, generator, and solar panels.  Redundancy is good in an environment where thing have this habit of failing.

Now that all the major systems on the boat are working, I can start in on my long list of improvement projects at leisure.  Ahh.....

It's good to be back in the Blue waters of the Atlantic

After a long Summer hiatus, we are BACK in the Blue waters of the Atlantic and we were welcomed back by a few of our closest friends.

We just completed our longest offshore passage to date.  408nm direct from Oriental NC to Saint Augustine FL.  Only one exciting moment when the alternator bracket on the engine failed, and Mark had to MacGyver a solution to keep us running since we were over 50nm from shore at the time.  Your standard boating adventure.

Brother aboard

We met my brother Bob in Baltimore and we spent a week together cruising the Chesapeake Bay. Wonder time had by all.

A natural at the helm

Big Apple #5 Great Kills

Kind of a strange name for a very nice harbor.. Great Kills.

Yesterday we saw the NE wind forecast from the NE, and the coastal flooding translating into greater than usual flood tides up the Hudson.  That spelled only one thing to us after several nights of severe rolls on the 79th street moorings when the winds ran counter to tide.. we had to get out of there.  The night before the mooring ball was bumping into the hull keeping us up and worried about damage. So, in the morning we started looking for a better solution and found Great Kills harbor on Statten Island.

We left in pretty iffy conditions and managed to loose a winch handle I had left (I thought locked) to the winch on the mast.  Oh well, another expensive PLUNK.  Fortunately we had more than one handle on board.  After a wild ride abeam of the 25knt winds and waves we made it through the narrow pass into the harbor and were rewarded with dead calm conditions.  Ahhh.. nice.

The plan now is hang out here until the gale conditions abate on the coastal waters of NJ so we can make our way south.  No rain and moderate winds predicted today (Sunday), so I think we will go ashore, take the train to the ferry and go into Manhattan for some exploring.  We have yet to see the Freedom tower and memorial and hope to get to that today.

"New York, New York, it's a wonderful town, the Bronx is up and the Battery down, the people all go in a hole in the ground.  New York, New York... it's a won-der-ful TOWN!"

Big Apple #4 Provisioning ON BROADWAY

The 79th street boat basin is just two blocks from Broadway.  So we went in the dingy on a wet ride with the Hudson River running at what must have been 3-4 knots of current.  It is a little exciting to get on and off the boat in those kinds of currents.

So we walked up and found the local grocery.  Imagine ALL of the products in a full sized Safeway on the West Coast crammed into a space 1/3 the size.  Almost claustrophobic!

We continue to keep an eye on the progress of Hurricane Joaquin.  If she heads toward NYC, we will retreat up the Hudson.

Big Apple #3 Mooring in the Heart of NYC

While at anchor near the Statue of Liberty, another boat came in, ParPar with Henry as captain.  With the dragging excitement the night before, I decided to take the dinghy over and introduce myself and compare ground tackle.

Turns out that ParPar is a veteran traveler with thousands of miles under her keel.  They had been in Guatemala,  and were heading back south from a visit to Nova Scotia.  It is alway nice to compare notes with other live aboard captains.

So Henry and I got to talking and he mentioned a mooring field at 79th street on the Hudson just 3 blocks from Broadway,  another two blocks to Central Park etc... all for $30/night!  How's that for cheap NYC accommodations.. you just need to bring your own floating house!  Wait.  We have one of those!

We couldn't pass that up, so followed ParPar up the Hudson with the tide.  Only the tide did not exist! There had been a bit of rain, so the tide tables were completely off and what was scheduled to be a flood tide turned out to be pretty serious ebb given the flood waters coming down the river.

Now the odd part.  We got to the 79th street boat basin and took one of the yellow transient mooring balls.  We arrived ahead of ParPar because we were larger/faster and it turns out that I took the LAST transient ball.  Not good.  Here I just made a new friend in Henry and I end up taking the last ball!

Major credit to Henry though.  We contacted each other on the radio and he was remarkably good natured about the whole thing.  I offered to raft up, but the marina/conditions really didn't allow that. So they anchored just north of the mooring field and we exchanged cell numbers and I promised to call him when one the transient mooring balls came free (first come first serve only).

Anyway, last night was serious rolls.  Finally the flood tide got going (North set) with 20kn winds from the North.  Bad things happen when the wind blows one way, and the water is moving the opposite way.  It would appear that on the Hudson the result is about 4ft standing waves.  Gypsy Queen with her full keel wants to set to the current flow, but the wind blew her sideways to the standing waves.

So, our usual sleep pattern emerged again.  Christine sleeps like a rock and Mark gets up repeatedly to check on the boat and store items that had become airborne and banging back and forth.  She owes me a nice nap today!