We are finally on our way again. We leave from Lockwood's, which is a marina on Route 35 in Morgan, NJ. We have no easy time getting out because we must pass through a ConRail railroad bridge and the Route 35 highway bridge. Both are extremely busy because it is Friday at 6PM at the shore. There seems to be a train every ten minutes and the highway bridge only opens on the hour. We arrive first but eventually there are three sailboats circling outside the railroad bridge. The bridge tender graciously opens for us, but then the three of us are circling in a tiny space between the two bridges. We get out and all of us breathe a sigh of relief.

We motor to Sandy Hook and anchor in the dark for our first night on the hook. It seems like forever to us since we have gently rolled at anchor.

We leave Sandy Hook at 10 in the morning. We need to go through Hell's Gate, which can have currents up to 6 knots, so obviously, we want those going with us. The trick is to arrive at the Battery at two hours before Mean Low Water. The current carries us very quickly up to the Battery, so we arrive about an hour early. Unfortunately, I misread the "trick" for going through Hell's Gate. We were supposed to arrive two hours after MLW. Since we are an additional hour early, we are now 5 hours early. Six hours is the complete opposite of when we want to arrive, so boy are we going slow! I decide to take it easy and just sail up the river. But that is not all that is slowing us down. Our dinghy took a wave somewhere. There must be 400 lbs. of water in there. It is so heavy that we cannot pull it up to the boat to empty it. With the current going against us and with the dinghy essentially acting like a sea anchor, we are going just 2 knots. When we get to Roosevelt Island, the narrows increase the current speed and we are going just 1 1/2 knots even though we are motoring. It takes us forever, but we get through and once we get past the Whitestone Bridge, we start going 3 knots which at the time seems like a lot.

We just take our time. It is comforting to know that the boat and the engine can handle this severe current. With the current going slower we are able to pull the dinghy up and pull the drain plug. It makes a great difference and we plan to pull the drain plug every time we tow the dinghy (which is every time). We continue past Riker's Island and Jennifer reminds me to not pick up any stray swimmers. We go under the Throg's Neck Bridge, past City Island, by the Stepping Stones, and turn to starboard into Manhasset Bay. Manahasset Bay is the largest yachting center in New York State. We pass the Manhasset Bay Yacht club, the Knickerbocker Yacht Club, and the Port Washington Yacht Club. We anchor among local swans as a finish to a long day.

The next day, I am not feeling very well, so we decide to stay another day. We go ashore at the town dock. We grab some lunch-to-go at a deli and spend the rest of the day reading the Sunday New York Times. In the evening there is a really cool sailboat race with the spinnaker marker right by our boat. At least 40 boats pass right by us, round the mark and then raise their spinnaker. It is exciting seeing each boat trying to position themselves to round the mark ahead of others and then go through the complicated mechanics of dropping the head sail, raising the spinnaker and, at the same time, not interfering with any of the oncoming boats. Halfway through the race, half the boats are going down wind with their bright colorful spinnakers and the other half are trying to find a path to the mark without violating the right-of-way rules.

In the morning we go ashore at Manhasset and get a short run in. I am still not feeling to well, so I do a lot of walking. We bring the boat into the town dock and get a free holding tank pump out. Yippee!

We leave Manhasset and cross the Long Island Sound. We are challenged by the tides here. Most tides are diurnal, that is, they occur twice a day. This means that each full tide is about twelve hours with 6 hours of tide in your face and six hours of tide against you. The tides are substantial, like 2 knots. If we average 5 knots through the water, but the water moves against us 2 knots, then we only go 3 knots over the ground. If it is with us, we go 7 knots, or in other words, over twice as fast. So we have to respect the tides and avoid tides in the face.

Today the tide is in our face from 9AM to 3PM, which are pretty much the prime daylight sailing hours. We decide to leave around 2:30 and plan to travel until 6:30PM so we will have some daylight left to anchor. We make our way to Norwalk, which is in Connecticut on the other side of the Sound. There are a number of islands there and we plan to anchor behind Chimon Island. However, there are lots of rocks on the chart and, as we poke around, we cannot tell where they are. Rocks are scary so we chicken out and anchor on the west side of Cockenoe Island. The protection is not the best, but the weather prediction is really good and everything is OK.

Again we have the tide problem. The high tide reaches each place at a different time but over time, that time of high tide changes. Each day it advances about an hour. However, we are moving east and every place we get to the change in location and the change in tide time cancels each other out. The tide for our trip is just about the same as yesterday. We plan to do an early morning shift and a late afternoon shift. Our morning shift is to Charles Island, just outside of Milford, CT. Along the way, we see a lot of working boats and, surprisingly, The Lady Maryland, which we saw in Baltimore.

As we arrive at Charles Island, the Coast Guard gives a severe storm warning and so does the weather radio. They predict 55+ winds and hail. We anchor and refuel from our deck jugs. Instead of staying at anchor, we decide to go to the Milford Town dock for safety. We have been there before and we know that it is pretty nice. We get in around eleven. We walk about 1 1/2 miles to a supermarket and reprovision. We go to lunch at Archie Moose's and are disappointed in the service. Later in the day we stop for a beer at 7 Seas and then go to the Old Stone Mill for dinner outdoors. I have twin lobsters for $20, which I enjoy immensely.

We plan to do two shifts again. We leave at 7AM and on our way, the long awaited thunderstorm comes through. We stop our trip and drop a hook behind the breakwater at New Haven, CT. The storm is very severe but it passes through in an hour, so we continue onto the Thimble Islands. The Thimbles are really stunning outcrops of rock as you can see in the pictures. They are about fifty feet high with only a 200-foot channel between them.

We have a nice anchorage until about 3PM and then we move on to the breakwater at Duck Island Roads. A storm passes north of us and we get a great view of the following rainbow.

We anchor by the breakwater mark in the picture and again we are treated to a race right by our boat. This time it is the opposite of the race we saw in Manhasset Bay. The boats come to the mark near us with their spinnakers up and then must round the mark and lower them. The wind is really light and once the mark gets crowded there are a lot of calls of "Starboard Tack!" from the upwind boats.

Again we split the day into two shifts. The wind is finally getting pretty good. We have been mostly motoring up to this point. We leave Duck Island Roads and travel east to Niantic. Niantic is not very protected but we are just staying for 5 hours so we duck behind a landmass and hide from the wind. We are rolling pretty well though and Jennifer does not feel all too terrific. When we leave, we pull up a huge amount of kelp. The kelp leaves are brown and about 6 inches wide and 6 feet long. There are about twenty of them on the anchor and we pull them off with the boat hook. With the wind, we are screaming down the Sound and eventually duck behind Fisher's Island. On the way, we see a storm pass just two miles north of us. There is a field of boats on moorings and we can see them in the pouring rain. To the left of the boats it is foggy; to the right is dark and stormy, and further to the right it is sunny. We are in the sun the whole time. The whole thing is done in about half an hour and we are treated to another rainbow in the east with the sun setting in the west.

As we enter the channel at Fisher Island, we start the motor to go to the anchorage and charge up the batteries. As usual when sailing downwind in winds over 15 knots, it is always exciting when you try to bring the sails down. You must turn the boat into the wind to take all of the strain off of the sails or they will not come down. At some point you end up perpendicular to the wind with the sails completely filled, the boat heeling over and the hull charging through the water. This is especially true on a Hunter, which, because of its B&R rig, restricts how far you can let the main out. We make it around safely but suddenly I am getting no power from the motor. I can only go 4 and a half knots even though there is a strong wind behind us. We finally anchor in the East Harbor of Fisher Island. I am afraid that we may have picked up another lobster pot. Jennifer gamely dives below and removes a huge clump of eel grass. With that behind us, we spend a quiet and flat, non-rolling evening.

We leave in the morning with the tide running behind us. After we get out of the Fisher Island channel, we turn south to make the 15-mile run to Block Island. The winds and tides are perfect and we make the run entirely under sail. There is a local tradition to enter the Old Salt Pond under sail. The winds are perfect, and even though the channel is narrow and busy, we sail in listening to Andreas Boccelli singing "Con Te Partiro". It is too cool. The total 20-mile trip takes less than four hours.

We grab a mooring across from Champlin's. We motor to the town dinghy dock and squeeze apart two dinghies and somehow insert our dinghy. We take a run over the hilly Block Island terrain. We go from the New Port to Bayard's at the Old Port on the other side of the island. After our run, we visit the Block Island Historical Museum, where they mainly talk about moving the SouthEast Lighthouse away from the crumbling cliffs. We go to a place called Finn's for dinner, for obvious reasons. On our way back to the dinghy we stop at a club called Captain Nick's. They have a group called Ways and Means. They have a trombone, trumpet, saxophone, baritone sax, a few guitars, a drummer, and an organist. We have a good time but this has been a long and busy day and we are awfully tired.

 July 14^th - Point Judith, RI

The next day we make a quick 2-and-a-half hour sail back to the Rhodes Island mainland at Point Judith. We anchor behind a big V-shaped breakwater. Since we are still tired from the previous day, we simply rest up. Rhode Island, oh yeah! That means grandchildren tomorrow.

We get up early and dinghy ashore for a run around the beaches of Point Judith. We also pick up a few groceries. While we run, I spy a building that advertises diesel fueling. I go in and ask the guy if I can buy 10 gallons of gas. He says yes. We bring the dinghy around and it is this giant dock for fueling the big commercial fishing boats. We can barely climb up to the dock with the diesel jugs. The fuel was cheaper by about 30 cents per gallon than any we have seen. The guy did us a favor and we certainly appreciated it. It turns out that the guy grew up in Jersey and was a lifeguard at 18^th Street in Belmar. What a small world!

We move the boat in closer to the dinghy dock so that we can pick up Artie and Marie and Patrick and Jacqueline. It is pretty hairy with lots of slop and wake breaking over the bow of the dinghy. We board Finn and make another great sail to Block Island. We can't make a straight run and we have to tack but other than that the sail is perfect. The kids nap in our cabin and even Artie and Marie take naps up on deck. We are sailing great and the autopilot is doing most of the work. We eat lunch on the trip out and then we eat dinner at an outdoor restaurant overlooking the old harbor. Artie and Marie and the kids take the ferry back to Point Judith.

When we walk back to the boat, we stop for drink at a bar along the beach. It has lovely sweeping view that is worthy of any of those in the Caribbean.

In the morning, a guy comes around in a boat. He is selling bakery goods. To vend his wares he yells "Andiamo! Andiamo!" We call him over and buy a croissant and a sticky cinnamon bun. With this mellow start to the day, we decide to relax and stay another day at Block Island. We rent bicycles and pedal all over the island.

It is very hilly. And there are lots of dirt roads like the following that lead down to desolate coves.

The island is covered with stone walls.

We stop at a nature preserve, Rodman Hollow, on the south side of the island. We walk for over an hour going down into hollows and climbing to ridges with views to the sea like the following.

We visit the lighthouse on the Southeast side of the island. Astonishingly, this 4 million pound structure was lifted and moved back from the crumbling cliffs.

We leave Block Island in a parade of boats out the inlet. There is a fleet of Catalinas that leave the same time we do, as well as a few powerboats. Some of the Catalinas are sailing out the inlet and holding everyone up. We have very little wind and motor most of the way to Newport. As we approach the harbor we go right through the starting line of a sailboat race. The boats in the race are from all over the world, including Australia, Great Britain, Ireland, New Zealand, Italy, and Canada. We zigzag through the boats and John tries to keep Australia from the starting line. We get to the anchorage before the other boats that followed us over from Block Island and get the last perfect spot. The next two boats in spend half an hour finding a suitable spot in the crowded anchorage.

We have been to Newport several times before and know where everything is. We row over to the town dinghy dock with our boat cart intent on re-provisioning at the grocery store by the tennis courts. A fellow boater in a car kindly picks us up and gives us a lift to the grocery store. We get to the store, get the cart out of the car and thank him for the ride before he drives off. John goes into the grocery store to find a place to leave the cart while we shop. After he is inside, I realize that I have left my purse, which also has John's wallet in it, in the car! Panic sets in and I run in the direction the car went.

I am unable to catch the car, or even remember what it looks like. John is still in the store so I go find him. I am very upset thinking that all our money, credit cards, identification, ATM cards, EVERYTHING, is in some guy's car whose last name we don't even know. John is very calm. He reassures me that the driver will come back. And sure enough as we wait outside the market a few minutes later the guy comes back holding my purse. What a nice guy! We learn never to put all our "eggs in one basket" again.

Somewhat shook up, we return to the boat. John prepares a nice meal of tuna steaks and fresh asparagus in the comforting safety of our own boat.

We get up early and run along the Cliff walk. There is a guy in a bathing suit playing a mournful French horn on one of the rock outcroppings. Back at the boat, I call the pumpout boat on the radio. It takes several attempts, but eventually he assures me that he will be by in the morning. It is nine o'clock. We hear the pumpout boat tell another boater, who has been waiting longer than we, that it will be after eleven before he gets to him. We know that we are in for quite a wait, so John takes the laundry ashore while I wait for the pumpout. John returns from the laundry at eleven and the pumpout boat still has not come by. We eat lunch and then call the pumpout boat again at one. Apparently the pumpout boat is having an engine problem. He assures us that he will come today. Meantime I row ashore to use the facilities there; our holding tank is full. By three o'clock John has written the following poem.

Despite all the drama, we do eventually get pumped out, but it is close to dinnertime before the guy arrives. The pumpout does cost $15 and the governor of Rhode Island's name is Lincoln Almond. John is not making that up. Sail magazine had quite an expose of the pumpout problem in Rhode Island. Our experience echoes theirs.

We try to salvage what is left of the day by heading back into town. We have appetizers at The Red Parrot. Then we stumble on to a summer, college-league, baseball game. The Manchester Silkworms soundly defeat the Newport Gulls. It is not everyday that the worm gets the bird. After the game we have a simple dinner at American Seafood.

There are about a dozen 12-meter boats that are racing around the harbor. A few of these America's Cup defenders zoom right by our boat. We head ashore again and visit the American Museum of Yachting. It has an exhibit on cat boats. We learn that cat boats are beamy, about twice as long as they are wide, with their mast set all the way forward. There is another exhibit that covers all of the America's Cup defenses and challenges. In fact, just outside on a mooring is the renowned 12-meter boat, Courageous- US26. It is the one that was captained by Ted Turner.

We figure out how to use public transportation, which has become one of our hobbies, and go all the way across town to Aidan's Irish pub, where we have tasty fish and chips with Harp beers. We walk around and view the various architectures of Newport. We make a stop at the Seafarer's Church, which is a hospice for sailors. There is an Internet connection, but we cannot get it to work for us. There are showers, bathrooms, a book exchange, a café, and laundry facilities. We stop at an outdoor bar named O'Brien's and have a couple of beers. We head down the street to The Deck and listen to guitarist sing great 70's songs. For dinner, we go to a Greek pizzeria and have pizza with chourico, a Portuguese sausage.

We leave Newport and head for Cuttyhunk Island. It is in Massachusetts and it is the outermost island that separates Buzzard's Bay from Martha's Vineyard and Nantucket. The island is very small and has a tiny inner harbor. The channel leading is small but nowhere near as bad as some of the inlets in the Chesapeake. Once inside there are 45 moorings in a small square area. We find two mooring balls that are free. However, they are actually touching the boat in front of them. We would have to carefully motor up. Place our bowsprit over the swim platform of the forward boat and grab the ball. We reject that.

We exit the inner harbor and go outside. We pick up a mooring there even though they are less protected. We do roll quite a bit. We hang out on the boat most of the day and eventually someone from Green Frog marina comes and collects our $30 mooring fee. We are getting a little short on water and fuel, so we motor ashore with all of our jugs. We get water at the marina dock, but no fuel. The water jugs each hold 6 and a half gallons and we are shocked at how heavy they are. They actually slow our dinghy down. However, we pour them into our tank and are grateful to have them. It has been 10 days since we last got water and we do not know when we will next be able to get some.

We leave Cuttyhunk and head west up Buzzards Bay. We stop at a town called Onset, because it is right at the entrance to the Cape Cod Canal. We anchor outside of a mooring field. We motor to the town dinghy dock and let the harbormaster know that we have left our dinghy. We walk around; go to a hardware store; pick up some groceries including Diet Coke and cheap wine (3 bottles for ($9.99). It is a nice town with an active public beach. We head back to the boat and prepare for our trip through the Cape Cod Canal.