Made it to the big apple!

Yesterday we made the trip from Atlantic City to NYC.  It ended up being just under 100NM but the sea was beautiful and completely clam.  We saw dolphins, schooling fish, and a lot of the NJ shoreline.  It was really a great day to be out on the ocean traveling.  Amy's only complaint was that we didn't see any humpback whales.  We saw a couple tour boats circling something but could not tell what it was and the Coast Guard was on the radio talking about a sighting off of Coney Island.  Despite all that we still missed them somehow.  We were traveling with a couple of buddy boats and stopped by the Statue of Liberty to get a few pictures of each other and our boats in front of the statue.  Our crew wanted to keep moving up the river to get some additional miles under the keel but I convinced them to spend the night at the anchorage behind the statue.  Looking at the weather report it looked like it was going to be a really calm night despite all of the wave action we were getting from the ferry's at the time. As predicted it calmed right down about 8pm and we got some breath taking views of the city lights at night followed by a beautiful sunrise the next morning.  I think we all really enjoyed getting to spend the night there.

Unfortunately we are now on a timeline to get home.  Annabelle flew back into the the USA after completing her junior year as an exchange student in Denmark two days ago and already has plans to go back to Europe first visiting London with her Girl Scout troop and then flying over to Rome to spend some time with Sara one of the exchange students we hosted last year.  So to make a long story short we are now in delivery mode looking to get as many miles in a day as possible to knock out the last thousand miles of our trip.  So sadly we were not able to visit family or NYC while we where there.  So shortly after sunrise we started our trek up the Hudson River and past the amazing NYC & Jerry shoreline.  I had forgotten how pretty the trip up the Hudson River was as we progressed further it truly was breath taking and pictures would not do it justice.  It reminded me a lot of our journey from Chatnewga to Knoxville where it felt like we were boating though the mountains with the large gorges beside us and the mountains in the background.

Tonight we made it to Catskill, NY.  Last time we did this trip was on a new to us 31 foot sail boat we named Escape Plan.  It took us 3 days to make it here from Sea Bright, NJ going about 5kts most the way. Once we got here we then had to wait to take down our mast and ended up spending 2 nights in this cute little town.  We pulled into the marina across the street from where we stayed last time which is now owned by the same guy.  Last time I had made a note that these were the best showers we had seen so far and as a much more experienced boater I can now confirm they are still pretty nice.  We took a bike ride though town and not much had changed.  Most the restraints I remembered were still there as were all of the cat statues.  We attempted to eat at the owners restaurant but the line was pretty long so we ate on the boat then went out for ice cream.

It will be interesting to see if we can make this trip any quicker now that we have a power boat vs the sail boat.  The first time it took us 16 days.  So far we have covered the same ground it took 3 days to do in 1 and can skip any boat modifications required to travel though the canal as this boat is under the 15ft requirement to travel end to end though the canal system.  I suspect the 7 days we spent in the canal system last time will be about the same or maybe we can eliminate one day or so due to our increased speed on some of the longer legs between locks with no speed limits.  We'll see!