Day eight of bringing the boat back to the Great Lakes - Kington, NY to Troy, NY

Last time we did this trip with the tug we were able or maybe just motivated to travel from the Statue of Liberty all the way to Catskill in just one day. We are now essentially on day 3 of going the same distance  motoring up the river with the catamaran. Last time we had timed the tide perfectly to push us all day additionally helped by the fact the tug travels about 2kts faster than this boat and seemingly they both burn about the same amount of fuel.

We had planned to be moving about 730 this morning but woke up to a rain shower and it felt good to roll over for an extra hour of sleep. By 830 the rain was gone but it was still quite foggy. We weighed anchor and continued our trek north.

We had the tide with us for the first 3hrs or so after that we were fighting it rest of the day. This day going up the river was much like the other two passing beautiful Mansions on the river banks, neat old light houses, and the occasional train along the way.

After about 53 miles we decided to stop in Troy for the night. Originally we had planned to stay at the Erie Canal visitors center but when we called, it seemed their space was somewhat limited for a 70ft boat and the Dock Master convinced us that Troy was the place to be. Troy was also our first fuel stop. At this point in the trip our tanks were just under 50%. I think we took on about 120 gallons thinking this should be plenty to get us through the entire Erie Canal and probably back to the west side of Lake Erie.

Once tied up we met some folks that were just coming out of the locks having spent their summer going through the Canadian locks & the Georgian Bay. It was nice to hear about their trip which is still one we would like to do one day and had planned to do with the tug but decided to push up the circumnavigation plans instead. Thinking the other trip would be easier later than sailing around the world as we continue to get older. After a week or so it was nice to get to talk with some other boaters and Troy did turn out to be a nice stop. That night we decided to relive our first trip up the river when we stopped here for fuel and lunch at Browns Brewing. Dinner was good. Afterwards we took a walk finding a remarkable ice cream place called the Dutch Utter that is now in my top 5 favorites. We met the owner, he easily translated his passion for creating new flavors and was really into what he does. He also told us that we could not miss the farmers market the next day where I needed to seek out some cake that would be life changing.

Day seven of bringing the boat back to the Great Lakes - Croton, NY to Kington, NY

Going up the Hudson River is always a beautiful trip. Oddly I'm still surprised how pretty it is each time we do it. You feel like your in the mountains fully surrounded by nature at times going past all the big granite cliffs, reminded that your near a big city by the bridges that your regularly going under while also getting to pass light houses and mansions from the early 1900's. Then about every hour you'll see a train traveling along the bank. It seems the passenger trains are mainly on one side while the freight trains travel the other side of the river. On the surface it seems like all of these things would be at odds with each other but somehow it all just works making for a very enjoyable trip.

We got a bit of a late start leaving around 10am or so. We had waited till morning to return the rental car then decided to wait for slack tide to depart the dock. This leg of the trip was quite uneventful. It was just a nice motor up the Hudson. We motored most the day with the tide (finally) waiting until about an hour before dark to pull into one of the few nice anchorages we found on the chart. While we were anchored just in-front of the town neither of us really felt like heading in at dusk to walk around the area. Instead we relaxed on the boat made dinner and just enjoyed the sunset. 

West Point from the river

Day six of bringing the boat back to the Great Lakes - Croton, NY - Halfmoon Bay

Front side of the dam

This marina is in a fantastic location. It feels a bit like the middle of no where but there is a rental car place only 1/2 mile walk away, a grocery store, ice cream, a couple restaurants, and more. Best of all the price was quite reasonable. We made some phone calls booked a tour of West Point, rented a car, and unfortunately found out that the Culinary Institute was not open yet as the students had not returned to campus yet. Guess we have to save something to see next time we come by here :).

West Point Catholic Church

We booked the first tour of the morning. The drive over to the pick up location was about 25 minutes away. The pick up location is the West Point Visitor center and military museum. Both are very much worth visiting and free. I'll even say they were better and more interesting than the actual tour. As West Point is an active military base the only way to get on campus for most of us is via a private tour company. They load you on a bus for about 2.5hrs. Let you out about 4 times then drop you back off where they picked you up. I'll say I'm glad I did it once but I would not do it again. The campus is neat to see, the guide gives some of the history of the original fort, talks about a few of the statues and various monuments around campus, takes the group to the Catholic Church, then takes the group to the wall that overlooks the river and a couple other stops. After which everyone is packed back on the bus and driven back to the visitors center. I'll say that we both enjoyed the tour of the Navel Academy much more. We spent 2-3 hours in the visitors center and museum then found a really good Chinese place for lunch and headed out for our next stop.

Back side of the dam

The Croton Dam was amazing. I had only seen pictures of it from some of our friends that stopped by here on their loop. Unfortunately pictures don't do this place justice. To me it felt like a place they should be filming a James Bond movie or big action movie at. The dam was completed in the early 1900's and is supposedly the second largest man made stone structure next to the pyramids. At one time this was once of the major spots that NYC got its water from. The backside of the dam is a bit like a pyramid in that it has a large number of stone steps that is probably 2-300ft high that allows water to run over into the river below. Along side those steps is essentially a man made river that is also moving right along a huge granite cliff. The amount of water flowing through here is incredible and is not been something that I could visualize at a dam before. The entire area is hilly and very upstate New Your feeling.

The front side is pretty impressive as well. At one point there was a road across it but it seems that has been shutdown for a while now. Fortunately the dam is located in a park and there are several hiking trails that let you make the trek to the top. I easily spent an hour and a half just marveling at this thing as we walked around the various trails. I'm not sure Amy was a bit less excited than me but this stop was really a highlight for me. I could not tell you why but it was just neat. It probably also helped that it has been raining the last two days allowing for a fair amount of water to be flowing when we were there.

After our two stops we headed to the grocery store then back to the marina where we lounged in the pool for a bit, had dinner and turned in for another early night to bed.

Dam wall

Partial view of the marina, our boat is in the very back

Day four and five of bringing the boat back to the Great Lakes - Cape May to New York City (Croton, NY)

When we awoke early this morning I checked the weather as any respectable sailor does first thing each day. It seemed our desired window was still there but just moving in a bit slower than we planned with the rain pattering down on the boat we went back to sleep for a couple hours and hung around the marina until about 11am when we got the next slack tide. Our desired weather window still looked good but unfortunately we had lost about 5 hours of daylight travel time. This meant would might be coming into New York Harbor between 3 & 4am if all went well. This didn't sound like a bad thing as there might not be as much commercial traffic running at that time. Which would allow us to focus on all of the various channel markers in that area.. I won't mention how much more exciting it might be to navigate these in the dark.

The 18hr leg from Cape May to New York Harbor was fairly uneventful. The day started out a bit rolly but settled down after a couple hours and stayed that way until about midnight when we got a light rain and a 4-5ft following sea. We passed a lot of ships drifting waiting for their pilots to bring them into the various ports along the coastline. I chatted with a couple of them on the radio but most didn't seem very concerned about us. This might have something to do with our AIS (sort of like a transponder for marine traffic) probably not working very well as it can't broadcast very far with the mast down and no antenna hooked to it but from what I gathered the big ships could still pick us up once we were within a half mile or so of them.

As we turned into the Lower Harbor coming by Sandy Hook around 3am our following sea was now on our quarter which made the boat roll in all kinds of fun ways that makes steering really fun especially when one can't see the other side of the boat and the other half of the channel markers your trying to stay between. I woke Amy up, convinced her to head to the bow, and with our headsets on we worked as a pretty good team. Sitting up front she could see the markers I couldn't and even found some without lights that I would have never seen from the helm. We spent the next three hours or so navigating like that until we got near the Verrazano bridge where things get a bit easier channel wise and we were getting first light. Unfortunately this is also when the commercial traffic starts running. For those that have not experienced it commercial traffic does not care much about pleasure craft. Our job is essentially to stay out of their way. Fortunately its a big river and we move slow so its not to bad.

I had taken a nap the day before knowing I had the night shift. I had taken the helm around sunset at 730 and by the time we got to the Statue of Liberty around 8am I was tired. I usually love to see NYC from the water but by 9 I was done and just needed a nap. So Amy got to enjoy all the city views on her own. We had been fighting the tide for a couple of hours and decided we should find a stopping place. Being cheap by trying to avoid marina fees for a 70ft boat in NYC I started looking for anchorages. Seems there are not many recommended anchorages on the Hudson. So we decided to splurge on a marina just past Terrytown called Halfmoon Bay. It was supposedly close to West Point, the Culinary Institute of America, and the Hudson Dam that I wanted to see but never made the time to stop at previously.

After we got checked in and tied up after our 25hr journey we had some lunch and both took well deserved naps. Later that night we wondered out and found ice cream but we really didn't feel like doing much most the day. Looking forward to exploring this stop more tomorrow!

Day three of bringing the boat back to the Great Lakes - Chesapeake City to Cape May

Seems we both overslept a bit. We had planned on leaving Chesapeake City around 8am, unfortunately we did not have the anchor up until around 930. The leg from here to Cape May would be around 60 miles or about 10hrs. This time we had planned well to ride the tide but unfortunately had trouble executing so we had the current pushing us along for the first 3hrs or so but then lost it when the tide switched causing us to travel slower then usual.

Emerging into the Delaware River from the C&D canal can be challenging if you don't plan it correctly as its sort of like two bodies of water mixing right there and there are a lot of different markers where the various channels are coming together and diverging from each other. Luckily we had some experience coming through here four years ago with our Nordic Tug when we did the Great Loop. We had plenty of daylight and it was a nice day weather wise making this area fairly uneventful.

On our way down to Cape May we past a lot of big commercial freighters. This was made a bit more exciting by the fact that our mast is laid down on deck. For those that have not had this experience is a  very much like driving a car with a ladder running from the dash board in the front seat to the back of the trunk. It basically means you can't see anything for about 180 degrees on the passenger side of the car or boat in our case. Amazingly even though these freighters are huge the mast can still cover them up as well as all the red bouys that one generally uses to navigate channels with. This meant I really preferred to hug the green marks I could see which is a bit like driving on the wrong side of the road.

We had good weather most the day. Unfortunately the wind picked up a bit towards the end of the day creating a wind against current thing that made a four foot chop with around a three second period for the last three hours of our trip down the Delaware River. This kind of short chop is never fun as the boat rolls and bangs around a lot but our mast never moved which felt very reassuring.

With our mast down we were able to enter Cape May via the Cape May Canal. Unfortunately we entered at low tide which made it a bit more exciting as the channel is narrow, shallow, and there was a fair amount of traffic going both ways. I would guess the channel is about 45ft wide but we took up 26 of it thus a boat had to be pretty brave to come around us against oncoming traffic that they probably could not see coming at them until they pulled up really close to us. Needless to say we had a nice escort of 6-8 small boats that really wanted to go fast but were stuck following us at sailboat speeds. Once we got into Cape May it was about an hour till dark and it seemed both the anchorages were full. Amy started making phone calls and found one marina that had a dock big enough for us. We both really hoped this would work as if it didn't we might be shoving our way into an over crowded anchorage in the dark which neather of us were excited about. The marina said they had one dock available and it was a 90ft dock they generally put any big boats staying with them into. Amy asked several times what the dock width was but it seemed they did not know.. just that it was their big dock and it would for sure handle us. Once we pulled into the marina and started lining up for the dock I knew right away we were not going to fit but they were quite instant we could get into it. Well as you can see above we didn't fit. The dock was maybe 25ft wide? So we wedged the front 1/3 of our boat in between the two posts. The marina was ok with us hanging out of the dock as long as we left early in the morning and Amy was happy to not have to figure out how we might fit into an over crowded anchorage in the dark. The only other option would have been to start our Atlantic leg early but the weather conditions were not in our favor yet.

The marina was kind enough to only charge us for a 50ft boat instead of the 70ft boat we are with the mast down even though we probably only took up 30ft of dock space (with the other 40ft hanging out into the fairway) and we didn't have a cord long enough to get power. Fortunately our hose was long enough to allow us to refill our water tanks.

Cape May was another cute East Coast town/area to walk around. We found a restaurant and ordered a much needed adult beverage and tried not to think about any new gelcoat damage we might be acquiring at the dock.

Day two of bringing the boat back to the Great Lakes - Tolchester to Chesapeake City

Traveling on a sailboat with the mast down is a pain in the rear and nerve wracking! One is always worried about the mast moving then adding to that it makes walking around the deck quite challenging as we had all kinds of ratchet straps attached to chain plates and deck cleats all over the boat. Meaning there is a lot to trip over and bang your head on. It also means most our cleats were being used to hold the mast down vs being easily available to tie to a dock with. Not to mention the added joy of the boat now being 70ft long with the mast down and hanging 15 ft over the front of the boat and 5ft off the rear. Last time we did this we both said never again. But here we are because we were too cheap to have the mast shipped to our final destination. 

The scariest part of this trip was going to be the Atlantic leg from Cape May to the Hudson River. We figured that we needed a good 28hr weather window to accomplish that leg. The reality is we expected the journey to be around 18hrs but I like to plan a buffer into our sail plans should something unexpected happen. It appeared we were going to get that desired magic weather window in about three days. So after a few long days of getting the boy dropped off at college, getting the boat provisioned and ready, then a long day on the water heading north in the Chesapeake we decided a short leg was in order and traveled about 20NM from Tolchester, MD to Chesapeake City, MD located in the C&D canal.

This turned out to be a great stop. We arrived around 11am, we were the first boat to drop the anchor beating the weekend traffic and were able to head into town just in time for lunch. We were able to visit one of the two museums, walk around the shops a bit, found some ice cream then settled at a B&B with an outdoor bar and live music for a while. We had great weather and it made for a really relaxing day. 

Starting our adventure back to the Great Lakes - Trappe to Tolchester

When we last saw the boat we were a bit concerned about the way the yard had put the mast on the boat. We also noticed before leaving that one of our dock lines had been cut. We were thinking it happened somehow when the marina moved the boat from their Oxford location to their other location in Trappe. The line must have dropped off the side along the way allowing it to get sucked into the prop. 

Fortunately the yard also noticed this and decided to pull the boat and ordered some new parts for the prop to resolve the damage. So when we got to the yard after dropping Max off at school the day before they had the boat in the lift and waiting for the new bits to come in the next day. Additionally they had also spent some time working to get the mast mounted better on the boat which also resulted in getting the total height of the boat off the water to 14 feet 9 inches (once I removed the wind generators). This meant we would not need to cross Lake Ontario or deal with a schedule for the Welland Canal. Instead we would be able to travel the full distance of the Erie Canal that eventually ends around Buffalo, NY making for what might be a less stressful trip.

View of the Chesapeake Bay Bridge

We spent the next day provisioning, making fender boards, and attempting to tie up all of the loose ends that need to be resolved before leaving for what we planned to be a 2-3 week trip bringing the boat back to Lake Erie. The yard got our prop put back together, called in a fuel truck to ensure we could leave with full tanks, and got the boat back in the water. It was a productive day. In addition to this the yard owner had some really good news for us. He had found the owner of the Jet Express Ferry service that takes folks over to the various islands on Lake Erie and told us they would be willing to pull and store our boat along side their ferries for the winter. This meant we could eliminate 600 miles from our planed trip to Lake Michigan during a time of year that is less than ideal for travel on the Great Lakes. Plus the boat would only be an hour or so from our house vs 3.5 and on the other side of the state. 

The next morning we dropped off our rental car. Said our goodbys to all our new boat yard friends and headed out on the high tide. Logically this seemed like the right thing to do but seems I still have a lot to learn about the Chesapeake Bay. Apparently we headed out a bit too soon as we got ahead of the tide and stayed that way for the entire day which meant we were going against the tide and traveling about two to four knots slower then we would have if the tide stayed with us. Luckily we had a nice weather window with calm waters and after a full day out on the water we ended up dropping anchor just a little north of Tolcheaster, MD for the night where we got to enjoy a beautiful sunset.

We dropped the boy at college

Summer is just about gone and with that its was time to do the thing every parent dreams of and dreads at the same time. We all want our kids to be strong well rounded, independent adults. We want them well educated. But we also hate giving up the direct time we get to spend with them when they live at home, and ultimately the amount of influence we once had in their lives. We like to think it's a good influence to keep them "on track and doing all the right things" that will hopefully pay off later in their lifespan. However eventually they do have to leave the nest and start doing their own thing.

August 24th is the day we officially became empty nesters and dropped Max off for his first year at Central Michigan University. I'm sure he will do well and it seems he is already on track trying some new things and making friends. I look forward to seeing him grow over the next four years. The house will be different without the kids around as much. I look forward to figuring out what this next phase of our life's will look like as the kids continue on their own journeys and we start to develop our new routines. For now I'll enjoy what I'm guessing will be a 60% reduction in our weekly grocery bill. I'll be less excited about picking up all of his chores and having to resume my role as the lawn guy around our house but hopefully there will be slightly less work with only two of us making messes on a daily basis.

FINALLY! That's CAPTAIN to you! (with sailing endorsement, of course!)

Seems I've been deemed special enough to have received my official Captains Credential. I submitted all my stuff to the USCG on July 1 and just got the completed paper back on September 18th. Unfortunately I still don't have the medical certificate in hand. However they notified me today that it has been approved and will be mailed soon. Seems the credential is not truely valid until you have the medial certificate, MMC credential, and TWIC card all in hand at the same time.

So what did I really get here. Well I may have gotten a bit carried away with the endorsements for something I really have no plans on using but figured I might as well do them all while the base information was fresh in my brain. In addition to the test for the standard 6 pack license I went ahead and got the endorsement for the Master level which means I can drive pretty much any vessel under 50 tons full of people. I can be a Ferry Captain if I want or I can take out large charter groups on inspected vessels. Additionally I also got endorcements for Towing and Sailing. This means I can run sailing charter boats with more than 6 customers and I have the option to be a tow boat captan. 

It's nice to have options but am I really qualified in any way to do any of this stuff? Probably not. But the USCG says I'm good to go. I'm sure I could figure it out with a lot of on the job training but for now I'm smart enough to know I should not be jumping into any of these things without additional experience. While it sounds impressive to say you're a Master rated Captain with endorsements for sailing and towing. It really just means one can pass a few tests the main one being that I could get all the paperwork together and filled out correctly. Frankly I'm a bit disappointed that there is no actual proof needed that one can safely operate a boat like what is required for a drivers license. In my case I filled out a couple forms that said what types of boats I've owned, how much time I've spent on them over the years, and where I took them. It's all an honor system. Until one has to demonstrate some actual seamanship skills I won't be very impressed with their licensing system.

Now that I've nearly completed the process I will say it was a bit of a roller coaster ride. A ton of information was feed to us during the in person training class I took for the 6 pack endorsement. I spent a fair amount of time in class and memorizing a bunch of stuff that is interesting to know but not really required to know to successfully operate a boat. Getting the notification that I had passed all of that felt like an accomplishment. Passing the four tests required for the entry level endorsement was not trivial. Oddly adding the endorsements for the Master rating, Towing, and Sailing did feel somewhat trivial and required much less time. With that said putting together the application and submitting that was quite time consuming. After uploading everything I was quite worried that I might have missed something, paid for the wrong drug test, or not checked a box correctly somewhere along the way. Fortunately after watching a number of YouTube videos on the process I seemed to have gotten everything correct the first time. Its feels like another weight has been taken off now that I've made it though the process successfully.