After cleverly getting my visit with my good friends in Stanford to coincide with a few days of wicked southwest winds, the weather was suitable for continuing. Bernie was busy with deliveries but he put me in touch with a friend and I also lined up fellow forumite “Four Points” and his girlfriend for the leg to Atlantic Highlands inside Sandy Hook.
John came aboard after supper and we turned in at 1900 in view of the planned 0130 arrival of the rest of the crew at the yacht club gate. It’s hard to go to sleep at that time but I managed it. About 10 minutes after I fell asleep, the cell phone rang. I was instantly in full awake departure mode thinking it was Brian and Jen. No, it was my son calling from college. I’ve been pestering him for weeks by email and text message to call me and tell me how his freshman year is going. This is the moment he picked. Still, I was glad to hear from him.
I was up at 0100 and had us organized and ready for a quick departure when the rest of the crew arrived. Jen went right into a bunk and the three of us cast off. You’ll remember that I arrived at this narrow channel alone after a rugged few hours just as the wind was going from 20 gusting 25 to 25 gusting 30 and a blinding rain shower was obscuring the buoys. Going out, I had an experienced sailor/navigator on each bow, one with years of experience with this very channel and a spotlight.
Strangely, we came closer to going aground than I did on the way in. It’s that thing the airlines call CRM, Cockpit Resource Management. I had verified the current GPS accuracy by visual comparison with the landmarks in the narrow harbor and alone, could have just followed my route which I had overlaid on my inward track line. However, with a person on each bow, I couldn’t see the buoys and my attention was distracted. John picked them out for me with the spotlight but I must have been looking at the GPS for one set because I saw a can and headed for it not realizing that it was the second in the sequence. GPS and depth sounder alerted me to the mistake just as John was calling, “To Starboard”. No contact but my outbound track wasn’t as pretty as my inbound one. It shows the value of a thorough briefing and plan before such a departure but this is real life and I doubt I’ll do it on my next 0200 departure either.
What a difference there is on a dark cold morning sitting with a couple of good shipmates telling sea stories and hunched over alone. It increases the comfort almost as much as I think a snowmobile suit would.
We eventually got down to Throgs Neck Bridge and proceeded into the East River where we proved Bernie’s advice never to go west of the bridge in the dark. Yikes. Between the radar clutter and the city lights, every tug and barge had to flash us with their searchlight before we identified them. Never again.
We entered Hell Gate just at dawn and seeing the light wash over the city and shining through the windows of buildings on Roosevelt Island will be one of the most memorable events of this cruise so far.
John went to sleep off Governor’s Island. I took advantage of an open traffic situation to cook Spam and scrambled egg wraps for the rest of us as we went down the Brooklyn shore. Past the bridge we met increasing chop right on the nose and had a splashy run with light spray down to Atlantic Highlands.
We tied up at the launch dock (with permission) just long enough for the crew to depart and I headed back out into the harbor alone to seek fuel and rest.
John came aboard after supper and we turned in at 1900 in view of the planned 0130 arrival of the rest of the crew at the yacht club gate. It’s hard to go to sleep at that time but I managed it. About 10 minutes after I fell asleep, the cell phone rang. I was instantly in full awake departure mode thinking it was Brian and Jen. No, it was my son calling from college. I’ve been pestering him for weeks by email and text message to call me and tell me how his freshman year is going. This is the moment he picked. Still, I was glad to hear from him.
I was up at 0100 and had us organized and ready for a quick departure when the rest of the crew arrived. Jen went right into a bunk and the three of us cast off. You’ll remember that I arrived at this narrow channel alone after a rugged few hours just as the wind was going from 20 gusting 25 to 25 gusting 30 and a blinding rain shower was obscuring the buoys. Going out, I had an experienced sailor/navigator on each bow, one with years of experience with this very channel and a spotlight.
Strangely, we came closer to going aground than I did on the way in. It’s that thing the airlines call CRM, Cockpit Resource Management. I had verified the current GPS accuracy by visual comparison with the landmarks in the narrow harbor and alone, could have just followed my route which I had overlaid on my inward track line. However, with a person on each bow, I couldn’t see the buoys and my attention was distracted. John picked them out for me with the spotlight but I must have been looking at the GPS for one set because I saw a can and headed for it not realizing that it was the second in the sequence. GPS and depth sounder alerted me to the mistake just as John was calling, “To Starboard”. No contact but my outbound track wasn’t as pretty as my inbound one. It shows the value of a thorough briefing and plan before such a departure but this is real life and I doubt I’ll do it on my next 0200 departure either.
What a difference there is on a dark cold morning sitting with a couple of good shipmates telling sea stories and hunched over alone. It increases the comfort almost as much as I think a snowmobile suit would.
We eventually got down to Throgs Neck Bridge and proceeded into the East River where we proved Bernie’s advice never to go west of the bridge in the dark. Yikes. Between the radar clutter and the city lights, every tug and barge had to flash us with their searchlight before we identified them. Never again.
We entered Hell Gate just at dawn and seeing the light wash over the city and shining through the windows of buildings on Roosevelt Island will be one of the most memorable events of this cruise so far.
John went to sleep off Governor’s Island. I took advantage of an open traffic situation to cook Spam and scrambled egg wraps for the rest of us as we went down the Brooklyn shore. Past the bridge we met increasing chop right on the nose and had a splashy run with light spray down to Atlantic Highlands.
We tied up at the launch dock (with permission) just long enough for the crew to depart and I headed back out into the harbor alone to seek fuel and rest.
, John was the one yelling back most of the time... The part about hunkering down in the cockpit with a few people swapping stories making the cold go easier is spot on. I was thinking the same thing while we were sitting there when I stopped to reflect on my recent Annapolis trip standing watch alone...