New York City

Finally, we made it to Croton on the Hudson, New York.  You have heard me before that  a big problem in boating is to make a deadline.  Mother Nature always wants to mess with your deadline and make it difficult if not impossible to make.

So we are here a week in advance.  Max and Leo Wurth (our 13 and 10 year old grandsons are flying into New York a week from tomorrow.  We have been planning this for months, and working our way north to be sure we are here to meet them.   That has made us move on days we should have stayed put.  And this Spring has been full of cold bad weather with high winds.  But we made it!!!

Our last leg was from Great Kills Marina on Staten Island, just south of New York Harbor, up through New York City on the Hudson River to this marina at Croton on the Hudson.  We wanted to leave Great Kills at 7:30 am to play the tide as it flowed north through the harbor.  But a thick band of fog kept us in port.

But with my upgraded Chartplotter, my digital radar, and my AIS system (which identifies all ships and the direction they are moving) I felt comfortable leaving in the fog to work our way north.  Here is what it looked like.

My Nav station in thick fog.  Maybe 200 yards of visibility

Out of the fog, a Red marker confirms my location.   Yea!!

It was a bit nerve racking as we approached the busiest port in the country, where we were so limited in our visibility.  Shelley was great though, as she kept a sharp eye for the big ships that I knew were out there.  Finally, this big guy came by and I tucked in right behind him to navigate our way through the harbor.  Pretty cool.

We followed this big boy into the harbor.  

Two years ago, we had a beautiful day as we came into New York.   This time it was quite a bit different, but still the New York skyline is breathtaking when you approach from the water.  It still sends chills up my spine.  Plus this year the new World Trade Tower is completed to its 1776 ft.  Very impressive.

The World Center is back with Pride

It is a busy harbor and fun to navigate, with the world famous skyline.

The Statue of Liberty is still closed from Superstorm Sandy

The Air France Concorde next to the USS Aircraft Carrier Intrepid

George Washington Bridge over the Hudson River as we move north.

It is an experience of a lifetime to take your own boat through New York Harbor.   We have been privileged to do it twice now.  It is impressive both times, and an experience that I will never forget.   Now we will pick up Max and Leo and move north to Canada.   There are many more adventures yet to come on this trip.  Marc

From the Chesapeake out into the Atlantic Ocean

We have a time schedule on Rock Chalk.   This is a good thing and a bad thing.   The deadline is that our two grandson's Max and Leo Wurth are flying from Austin into JFK in New York City on June 7.  That is a good thing, as we are really excited about having the two boys with us for a month or so.  The bad thing is that we have a deadline.  That is never a good thing for boating.

So we have been persistently making our way north from Annapolis, out of the Chesapeake, and down the Delaware Bay to the Atlantic.  I really like the north end of the Chesapeake.   The bay narrows, and the water is fresh water.  You do not have to worry as much about weather as the fetch is relatively small.   We were accompanied one morning by this tall ship making her way under engine.

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Its Springtime on the Chesapeake, and the birds are hatching their eggs.  Look at this male Osprey as he stares us down protecting his mate who is sitting on their eggs in their nest on top of a red marker.  Cool.

Look at those eyes

In the early 1800's they built a rough canal that connected Delaware Bay with the Chesapeake.   This shorten dramatically the time for ships to move goods and people from Philadelphia to Baltimore and further south.  During World War II the canal was improved, widened and its course changed a bit to accommodate large ships.   Its called the C and D Canal  (get it....Chesapeake and Delaware)  and its only 22 miles from Bay to Bay.  At the east end is Delaware City, a place we have stayed before to prepare ourselves for the next 3 big legs of our trip.

Delaware Bay is very tricky.   First of all it is a big river starting in the Pennsylvania mountains and flowing through Philadelphia.  Then it runs smack into the Atlantic which creates all kind of trouble.  The marina in Delaware City is extremely helpful in looking at all the data to tell you when to go, and more importantly when not to go.   We did not go for 3 days waiting on a weather window.   Tim the Dockmaster gave us a heads up on the third night.  If you can get to Cape May (52 miles) in 4 hours then go at 5:30 in the morning.  We did.  We left as the sky was just getting lighter in the east, and he was right.   We had a nice smooth ride down the bay.   But we were running fast (16 mph) where I burn about 15 gal/hour.  Normally Rock Chalk only burns around 2.5 gal/hour at our normal cruise of 8 mph.   But one of the reasons I like this boat is that it gives us the flexibility to go fast and beat weather if need be.

No sooner had we pulled into Cape May and the wind started to howl.  It got ugly.  Whew!!  Thanks Tim.  

We stay in Cape May for another 3 days again waiting for the storms to pass.  Our next leg is out into the Atlantic and north up the coast of New Jersey.  Our first destination was Atlantic City.

Atlantic City Casinos from 5 miles out.   Notice the smooth ocean.    Yea!!

This was our second trip up the New Jersey coast and each time we have anchored out in a neat little bay across from the casinos.  We were not going to go gamble or eat an expensive dinner, so it's just easier to anchor out.   Especially when the marinas are charging $3.00/ft. for dockage.   That is $132 a night for Rock Chalk, which is really expensive.   But we are headed north into some of the more expensive marinas.

We had a nice day up to Atlantic City, and the forecast was good for the next long day to New York.  So once again, we were up at dawn  and moving north.  It is not often that we do this, but we went 7.5 hours today to Staten Island all at 16 mph.  Going fast and burning fuel, but we had to in order to make the 90 mile day.  The ocean was beautiful and I saw a whale surfacing in front of us.   He/she was there for just a moment, so no pictures, nor did Shelley look up in time, but it was a testament to a calm sea.

It started to rain on us the last few hours as we approached New York, but again, the winds were fair.  We got just a glimpse of the Verrazano Straights Bridge in the mist, which announces New York harbor.  Hopefully tomorrow as we head into the Harbor and up the Hudson, that the winds will stay down, and the sky will clear.  Cruising into New York City is one of the most exciting and impressive venues that we can take.  My next post will hopefully have pictures of the City.

The mist is hiding the city and some BIG ships!

The Adventure continues.    Marc

Mt. Vernon and the Fredericksburg Civil War Battlefield

I have been to Washington DC on several occasions, both business and personal trips.  With so much to offer along the Capital Mall, one can come to Washington and stay for days and never get too far from the White House.  But just a few short miles down the western bank of the Potomac River lies Mt. Vernon, Virginia.

The lovely Bowling Green that leads one up to the front steps of George Washington's home

Our first President inherited from his half brother, 2500 acres situated on a beautiful hill above the Potomac.  After President Washington refused a third term of his presidency (you think our current president would give up his power so easily today?)  he and Martha retired to Mt. Vernon.   The land originally was granted from the British crown to George Washington's grandfather.   He had a small home on the property that was left to Washington's father, then to Washington's half brother, who had no male children, so eventually this beautiful property landed in George Washington's hands.

I was impressed by how humble our first President was, but he also understood the importance of his position and how the world viewed a young America.   So he built a mansion surrounded by beautiful gardens, open fields, pens for all kinds of farm animals, and a wharf on the Potomac to land all their needed supplies.   The buildings have all been beautifully restored for historical  accuracy.   But we most enjoyed the gardens.

Stuff grows here, unlike Austin Texas, which is really a desert.  Shelley spent an hour in the upper garden full of blooming flowers and many many vegetables.  This is a place that Shelley's sister Sandy, or our daughter in law, Trisha Slough, would love.  They are both active gardeners, and these were spectacular.  Washington had designed a greenhouse in which he kept plants from all climates during the cold winters of Virginia. The slaves would keep the fires burning in this building to keep the temperatures at a proper level.   I think photos would do it more justice than my words.

Flowers, fruit trees and vegetables 

A Peony in May

 Shelley is loving this garden

Cabbage, Kale, Turnips, Lettuce, Chard, Artichoke and so much more

Peony, Phlox, Iris, Columbine,
Larkspur



























I think Shelley could have walked these gardens all day.  They were really beautiful.  But we wanted to also drive down to a Civil War Battlefield at Fredericksburg, just 40 miles south of Mt. Vernon.  Four major battles were fought in this area along the Rappahannock River.  Why so many right in this area?   The Rappahannock is a natural barrier situated half way between the Confederate Capital of Richmond Virginia, and Washington, DC.  Fredericksburg, The Wilderness, Spotsylvania, Chancellorsville, and late in the war, Petersburg and Appomattox.  It would take months to visit all of them.

We walked the Sunken Road protected by a rock wall with the high ground of Mariel's Hill behind it.   This is the high ground that the Confederates held as the Union soldiers marched up from the banks of the Rappahannock in an open field.  Needless to say it was a slaughter and huge victory for the Rebels.  They had canons on the high ground mowing down the troops and lines and lines of soldiers behind the rock wall protected from the charges of the Union soldiers.  Just like the battlefield at Shiloh that we visited two years ago in Tennessee, it is an erie feeling to walk these grounds where so many died and suffered.

The stone wall at the Sunken Road that gave the Confederate Army a major advantage

The National Cemetery at Fredericksburg where 20,000 soldiers lie.  

It has been a great week for us in Annapolis to see that great city, and to drive to these historical places that neither Shelley or I had seen before.  They are all well worth the visit.  Marc

Annapolis

If you like boating of any type, and are surrounded by some of the country's best cruising waters, you have a formula for a city built for the boating culture.  Annapolis is the Yachting Capital of the US.  That honor is well deserved.  It is hard to describe the accolades for this city, but there are many.   It is the state capital of Maryland, very historic, beautiful countryside, and many fine restaurants and bars.   Shelley has a radar for bars that serve Guinness beer.  We found quite a few.  Then add the United States Naval Academy right at the water's edge, right in the middle of the city, and you get the feel of this city's excitement.  We approached it from the Chesapeake Bay and all you see are the shorelines lined with boats and marinas.   Every square foot of shoreline has a dock on it.     Annapolis is the site of two of the world's largest boat shows every October. The Annapolis Sailboat Show and the Annapolis Power Boat Show.  They float in thousands of feet of dock for 100's of sailboats to display the first week, then quickly shift all those boats out and bring in 100's of power boats for the second week.

United States Naval Academy as you approach from the Bay

The Waterfront with the Capital Building on the hill

The town is laid out for yachtsmen/women as there are water taxis that scurry folks from the downtown docks to restaurants all up and down the creeks and marinas, or out to their substantial mooring field.  We stayed on a Mooring ball for several days and just called the water taxi to take us to shore.  $3.00



This is Graduation Week so the city is full of Midshipmen in their dress whites walking the town with their families.  You can see the pride in the parents for their graduating son or daughter.  The city is packed with visitors which makes the downtown area really fun.  The one problem they have here....parking for cars.   They do a much better job parking boats.  Cars...not so much.  Very difficult to find a parking space.


How do I know this about cars?   Well we rented one so we could do some traveling around the area and do some reprovisioning.   There are no spots on the street, so we parked in the city garage for $20/night.  We took the short drive yesterday to Washington DC and then south.  I am constantly amazed at how close cities are here on the east coast.  For those of us schooled in Kansas and Texas, we understand that to get from one major city to another typically takes 3-4 hours.   We left downtown Annapolis, drove through its western side and within 15 minutes were on the outskirts of Washington DC. The same is true if you want to go north up to Baltimore.   And only 20 minutes northeast of Baltimore is Wilmington, Delaware, which is really a suburb of Philadelphia.  It is just one big mass of folks around here.

I will leave to another blog update to tell you about our trip to Mt. Vernon and Fredericksburg.   However, we truly enjoyed our stay here in Annapolis.   The marinas are a bit expensive, but there are many.   They have a large mooring field which is much more economical and you still have access to all that Annapolis has to offer.   All in all this is a great stop on our tour, and one to which we will return this fall.   We are weighing anchor tomorrow morning and heading up to the Delaware Bay.   This is our last step before we make three days of open water passages to get to New York City.  But I will have more on that later.  All I can say to end this blog is that you do not have to have a boat to enjoy Annapolis.   It really should be one of the top destinations for your travel plans.   Marc

Sometimes a Fella just has to Rest!!

This has been a tough month!  I am sure that many of you are now gagging on your evening meal as you imagine our life on Rock Chalk being described as tough.  Admittedly I am not getting up at the crack of dawn and beating my way through traffic to fight the battles of my former career.  And Yes I am retired and not worrying so much about my next paycheck.

So what is so tough you say?  What could possibly be so difficult that I would have to write about it on my blog?  Well, let me tell you about our battles with Mother Nature.  Now there is a foe even bigger than my former career challenges, where I worked every day for 34 years to slay the dragon.   No the challenges are different and as the past month has proven quite humbling.  

I remember that adrenaline rush I used to get before every one of my "stellar" high school football games.  (Stellar is being used loosely here to protect my reputation with my grandsons.)  You know the feeling.   Your body is getting ready to battle and all senses are on high alert.   I can honestly say that I did not get that rush before or during very many works days over those 34 years.  But since we left Charleston, SC in mid April, my body is producing said adrenaline every morning.   I won't mention the first affect that has on me every morning, but I digress.

Each night I would check our forecast and it was consistently cold temperatures and high winds.  Yeehaw, this is fun, right?  Every morning for this last month, I could feel that adrenal rush getting me ready to slay this new dragon.   Showers and high winds resulting in poor visibility and high, steep waves, closely aligned to give you the biggest bang for the buck, tend to get my attention.  Oh boy, when is this going to settle down?  That was the question that Shelley and I kept posing to one another.   I have been wearing jeans, and three layers of sweat shirts for the last month.  Shelley is in shorts, but I am freezing.  Oh, I am so ready for shorts!  Women.

Today it did....finally!!  I write this at dusk on Thursday, May 16 watching a beautiful sunset off to the northwest.   (Red sky at night...Sailors delight)  We are at the Spring Cove Marina in Solomons, Maryland. This is a very nice yachting center about half way up Chesapeake Bay on the Patuxent River from Norfolk.   There must be 20 marinas located in this very protected creek off the Patuxent.  Many of the people that live in this small quiet village,  work in nearby Washington DC., which is a short 40 miles across the peninsula formed between the Potomac River and the Pax.  Today was beautiful and I needed this to recharge our batteries.   In fact we have been here 3 nights just "chillin"  and working to get Rock Chalk back to some sense of order.   Hence, the mantra that sometimes a fella just needs to rest.

I actually love my routine of cleaning the boat and getting the mud off from North Carolina.  It is relaxes me.  If Rock Chalk was a cat, she'd be purring right now.   We have given her lots of love and attention.   Plus this is a really nice town.   The marina has free bikes to ride around the town.   These are those big tire, one gear, big seat bikes that would make Lance Armstrong cringe.  But we do not need blood transfusions to ride these babies to the grocery store and back.   The Maritime Museum is right next door and is full of the fishing/nautical history of this region, which is extensive.  Well worth a visit.  (Shelley did her speed walk through it)

This is the place that I would normally share with you some wonderful photos of what I am describing to further enhance your experience of our blog.  Well, Shelley left the camera in the ON position for the last two days, and the battery is being recharged.  Damn, that sunset would have been beautiful.  

Tomorrow we are off again, (wind forecast of 5-10 mph, waves 1 ft) in favorable conditions, with a goal to reach Annapolis by 2:30 pm.   It is 50 miles up the coast of the Bay, which should take us about 6 and a half hours.   We missed Annapolis the last trip through The Bay,  as we spent all of our time over on the Eastern Shore exploring the Delmarva peninsula.

Which raises the brain teaser of the day.  Who drew the state lines in this place?  The Delmarva peninsula is a pretty place, very quiet, and I guess so valuable that three states wanted a piece of it.   Look at Delaware.   Who drew that state line?   It makes no sense. Why not take the entire peninsula?   No they had to let Maryland have some of the middle, and Virginia made a land grab for the lower mouth of the Chesapeake.  Wouldn't you like to have been in that room when they worked up maybe 30 or 40 renditions of where state lines would fall?  Me thinks they had a little too much whiskey in those negotiations, and the fellow from Delaware got really drunk.

So we are off again, with more big water ahead of us until we reach the Hudson River.  All of you in Texas, just keep the tornadoes and let us have about 10 days of fair winds.  But with our luck so far this Spring, Rock Chalk and Mother Nature may have to battle once more.  Marc

Where is Spring??

It has been some time since my last blog update where we were in Charleston, SC.  After a pleasant visit to that beautiful city, we headed north up the Intercoastal Waterway for a Looper Rendezvous in Norfolk, VA.   Since we had been in Charleston, with a brief trip back to Austin by air, for 11 days, we were hoping against hope that spring had arrived in the South.

There was plenty of evidence that it was trying.

Swamp Dogwood in full Spring bloom along the Waccamaw River

A Mother Osprey sitting on her eggs

But Mother Nature has other plans this April/May.  From late snowstorms in Minnesota and Colorado, to cool temperatures in Austin, it is an unusual weather pattern we are experiencing this year.  On the east coast, the weather pattern has been cold damp weather, with lots of wind.   Serious wind.   We do not mind the rain on Rock Chalk.   We can comfortably move the boat on rainy days inside our protected pilot house.  What has hit us right in the teeth is the high winds.

What, you ask yourself do we have to worry about when we are inside the Intercoastal?   That is partly true as much of the Atlantic Intercoastal follows rivers, like the Waccamaw above, or along coastal estuaries.  No problems there.   But once we got to Cape Lookout, North Carolina, we turn north into the two big sounds behind Cape Hatteras.  The Neuse River is a big open river as it flows into Pamlico Sound.   We traversed the first part of the Neuse on a cool but relatively calm day.  After a two night stay at a marina, we came back out into the Neuse to some real ugly winds and waves.  Winds were clocking above 25 mph, right on the nose.   Pamlico Sound is only 12-15 ft. deep in most places, so when the wind kicks up you get 4-5 or 5-6 steep waves, very close together.   Even with a 44' boat, a 6 ft. wave sends the bow way up into the air to only crash down into the next one.  The entire boat shakes as you crash into the next wave, and tons of brackish water crashes over the bow.   Yikes.

Shelley had the boat prepared with everything off the counters and sitting in sinks, and everything off the walls.  Nevertheless, there are always casualties to this kind of banging and shaking.  I lost the bedside lamp to a crash on the floor.   My computer bag, with the computer zipped into it,  slipped from the couch to the floor.  Thankfully, no damage.   We fought 7 miles of this that took over an hour, before our heading changed 120 degrees where we could run with the waves.  So far so good.

Then the next day we left Bellhaven, NC at dawn to try to fight our way up the 22 mile Alligator River and across Abermarle Sound before the winds picked up.  Nice try.  The wind God's had other ideas.   The Alligator runs pretty much north and south, and the wind was blowing over 25 mph out of the NE.  There is one low swing bridge we needed to get under for us to get out of the Alligator.  After cruising for 4 hours that morning to reach the bridge, it closed a half hour before we got there due to gusts in excess of 35 mph.  The bridge has an air clearance of 14 ft. and Rock Chalk needs 15 ft.   Add to the 3-4 ft. waves flowing under the bridge and we were essentially trapped behind the bridge in the river with no place to go and the winds and waves increasing.

Shelley quickly checked the guide book and found a small creek on the west side of the Alligator that maybe had just enough depth at its mouth that we could sneak into it and anchor.  The creek had a nice couple of snake turns, which provided a good break from the now 4-5 footers crashing the shoreline.  We made it over the shoal and into a back creek off Catfish Point and anchored in 12 ft of water.  We had no internet, and one bar on the cell phone.  There were about 20 other boats trapped as well below the bridge, all anchored in various spots to try to hide from the winds and waves.  The only real communication going on was by VHF radio.  Just like the old days.

We sat there the rest of that morning, and all that afternoon and night, and most of the next day.  Reported wind gusts were now at 56 mph out on the river and we felt it at our anchorage as Rock Chalk just zoomed back and forth on its anchor.  But it held, and I gained a ton of confidence in my anchoring system that it can hold me in gale force winds.   Finally at 2:00 the next day, the winds fell below 25 and the bridge tender called out that he was going to do a quick opening to let us all out.  So off go 20 boats weighing anchors, and fighting their way north to the bridge.   Back into the river and its big waves, we motored our way up to the bridge, and thankfully through the bridge.  Whew!!

Decision time:   We could immediately tuck into a marina and sit for another day or two until winds subsided, or head across Abermarle Sound right now.  We were behind schedule now and feeling pinched because we were supposed to be in Norfolk to attend the Looper Rendezvous.   Those of you that know Shelley and I, know what we did.  It is hard to sit.  Full Steam Ahead!!

So in a last second decision, I turn for the outer markers of the Alligator and out we go into the sound.   I had figured that it was 12 miles across the Sound to get to the north shore where the waves would not have the big fetch.  And my thinking was that the winds had died down to a reasonable 25-30 mph.    Wow!!   We thought the Neuse River the day before was bad.....This was bad.   These were the biggest waves, closest together, that we have seen in 3.5 years and 7000 miles of cruising.   They were easily 5-6 with some 8 in there.   All big and all close together.   There is only one way for Rock Chalk to cross that kind of water, and that is to get up on plane.  So I did.  I pushed the throttles forward and she responded by getting her nose up and getting to about 13 mph.

Boom, boom, boom.   We crashed into and over one after another sending major jolts through the boat and massive water over the bow, over the pilot house and over the top of the boat.  We had a 1 ft glob of mud still stuck on the anchor from our overnight anchorage, and all that mud was getting thrown into the windshield and smeared onto our roof.   There was nothing to do but gut it out and trust our boat.   She did well.  I can't say that Shelley and I had our doubts, but it was scary.  Nothing failed and after almost two hours of pounding, we finally started to see the big waves get smaller as we approached the north shore of the Abermarle.  We made it!

Shelley was finally able to get downstairs and assess for any damage.   Again, everything was off the walls and onto the floor, and one picture had lost its frame, but there was no major damage.  It was quite the adventure.  

Sorry for no photos of all the high waves and high winds, but we were occupied elsewhere.  You will just have to take my word for it.  We made it to Norfolk and made the Rendezvous.  Now we are making our way further north through the Chesapeake Bay.  That is an even bigger body of water, so we want to be careful and not fight anymore waves.  You can see that things have settled down.

USS George Bush and the USS Truman Super Carriers in Norfolk

Wolf Trap Lighthouse on the Chesapeake Bay

We are making our way north.   Our next deadline (always bad to do on a boat) is to be in New York City June 7 to meet our two grandsons, Max (age 13) and Leo (age 10) who are flying into JFK.   We plan on having them both for most of their summer break. It is Mother's Day, May 12th, so we have 3 weeks to get to New York.  Let's hope the weather God's are kinder to us this spring.   Please!!!!!   Happy Mother's Day to all you Mother's out there.    Marc