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!