Pride of Baltimore

Shortly after the other posts fog started to roll in. And on AIS who I see? Pride of baltimore! I hail them on the radio and negotiated a close pass. The fog was much thicker later, to the point I tracked stuff by radar. Were fine now, but very hot..

Newport Sight Seeing..

I almost forgot, we walked for a ways and stopped at the US Tennis Hall of fame. It's neat all grass couts, people playing on them and wearing all white. It's where the original US Open tennis tournament was and according to them it's the oldest grass courts still in use in the world. Wimbledon is second by the way!!

We brought my dad back to the boat and my mom and I walked around town and decided to rent one of these three wheeled two passenger scooters. What a blast, we hit all the mansions(didn't go in just stared in disbelief) and did a cliff walk(Amazing). If I were to come again I would definately spend some time looking at the Mansions.

Well thats it..

June 26, 2007

We got a 6am departure and heading to Old Saybrook. Two days of New Port is enough for my dads wallet, to say this place is dangerous for women is a serious understatement. My mom found one store where she spent a hour and half the first day and about 45 minutes or so the second day.

Not being a Sailor and hearing the groans that we are from Annapolis is funny especially being in a motor boat. At a quick glance from my two days of expert analysis it's a toss up as to which is the sailing capital. Newport is a resort town that has some big saiboats, and the sail and other boat oriented shops are intermingled with t-shirt shops and restaurants. Where Annapolis is a working state capital and well the sailing shops are more out of sight in Eastport and other areas. Annapolis also seams to have quite a bit more sailboats, maybe a fact or 4 or 5 times as much. But then again, they may be more widely dispersed and not in dense area like naptown.

I do wish Annapolis would take some hints from Newport and have some more small walking areas, the shopping area in Newport is HUGE! The main drag along the water is every bit of maybe 6 miles, and not main and west streets like annapolis. Newport has also seemed to do a good job of making new buildings blend into the old colonial buildings where as some of the buildings in Annapolis quite simply don't belong. The marinas are all also bigger and more accomidating to transients then Annapolis, also the Mooring field is HUGE!!! Naptown could do the same thing if they extended it more in front of the academy and put them out there for larger boats. Oh, one other thing I like.. They have a very strict 5mph speed limit there.. Not 6knots, not no wake.. 5mph and enforced..

Hmm.. What else, oh another cool thing is there is this tall ship from Singapore there and coming in on sunday when you enter the harbour they had kids from a local school or something playing there. Nice touch!! As we left this morning it looked like they had USCG cadets or something climbing up the masts huridly up and down each side.

Lobster pots.. So far there aren't any in any density like they are in the bay or the carolina's. BUT!! Unlike bay crabs where it seems they don't put pots down in over 45 feet of water, there seems to be no rhyme or reason why and where they put them here. I've seen them in 35 feet, and seen them in 110 feet of water.

Well thats it for today.. We are heading south and hopefully will be home around Sunday or Monday weather permitting. We are not in any huge rush as we having a blast.

june 25

Well we decided to stay another day, and take in newport. I really like this town. The pic is one of the grass courts at the tennis hall of fame. Tomorrow we start back, as slips are scarce near the 4th.

Saturday June 23rd continued..

Ok, sorry folks the phone only allows you to post so much. I sent a second text message but it didn't go through, it's not surprising as the phone coverage is spotty in the middle of the sound(mental note cell phone amplifier on the list). Ok, in the middle of the journey we here from the CG about a high wind warnind for the Long Island Sound, no speed, no duration, no specific location. All I know is it started to howl, but nothing I haven't been in before. I'd say tops the winds were in the 40 knot range andit didn't last longer then for the seas to get into a 4ish foot chop. Nothing the boat couldn't handle like it was nothing.

Anyway we arrived at Mystic around 3;30, we got a late start but between the winds being behind us and favorable currents I was doing 9 knots for most of the trip at 1600 rpm and at one point 9.6!!.. Thats right I backed off from 1800rpm as the weather forecast said it was going to calm down later in the afternoon. We tied up at Seaport Marine which has some fantastic new concreate floating docks and it right downtown. 2/3rds of the slips are still not redone but we are lucky and they are awesome, tons of room for our boat. Of all places they tied us up to another Krogen "Infinity" and the owners were more the helpful at pointing out restaurants and attrations. We could easily spend a second day here but we have two places we really want to go on the list. One is Block Island the other is Newport Rhode Island, the latter is were we leave shortly. Should be a short trip maybe 5 hours 6 at the most and hope to enjoy the sights. FYI, it's where the Tennis Hall of Fame is Olivia and Sean!! It is also the original place of the US Open Tennis Tournament and the club and courts are OLDER then Wimbeldon.

Well we are off soon, I'll talk to you later.. And no we didn't get some Mystic Pizza but I broke out the movie last night for my mom and she wishes she did.

JP

sat june 23rd

One of my friends commented that I need a better camera. Well I've been posting these pics from my cell phone. I do have better pics and will try to get some posted. Today the are from the northwest and since I'm going northeast its a nice ride.

Port Jefferson

We arrived yesterday after a awesome day of cruising, a bit chilly going through New York at 6:30 am up on top but I wanted to have the panoramic view for potential Ferry Boat run downs and well the panoramic views. I will say this the amount of security around New York is considerably higher then even what appears in DC. Maybe I've just gotten used to my surrounding there but you on a typical day of cruising around in the harbour you would see at least 3 to 5 different police boats many military type helocoptors, etc, etc, etc..

Long Island Sound is beautiful and the water appears to be much more clean then the Cheseake Bay. I can see why sailors like it up here other then some well charted rocks, it's very deep around here and the wind appears to be very steady.

Well about the Town.. Here's a url for where we are at.. http://maps.google.com/maps?f=q&hl=en&q=port+jefferson,+ny&ie=UTF8&z=13&om=1

The town at one time was a ship building town and still may be but other then a industrial side to it I really don't see any of the large buildings I'm used to seeing that are assosiated with that. It's a very neat little town kind of like St. Michaels but bigger in number shops, docks, and size. There is a ferry boat that comes in every 30 minutes to go to Bridgeport, and thank god for the walls around the marina as we rock just a bit still when they come in. There are also numerous very well kept tug boats here of all sizes.

Well anyway this was going to be a quick stop before heading to the west shore to conneticut. BUT, mother nature got involed and gave us a forecast of 10 to 15 knot winds building to 15 to 20 with gusts of 30 knots. Not that I haven't been in anything like that before but I'm learning that to another port as a transient doesn't always give you great slips. So, we decided to stay here another day, rest, wash the boat of the salt from our outside trip, and walk the town a bit more.

So yes we are heading to Mystic tomorrow and I'm sure my mom will be thrilled to crawl through the small shops around here for a full day of shopping.

JP

New York New York..

Well yesterday June 20 we tied up at Liberty Marina in New York(Thanks Bill), and took care of some personal things. The marina is Awesome, there is a Ferry boat for 5 bucks that drops you right in the financial district, a VERY good VERY expensive restaurant. Heck the restaurant even had a shakespearean play going on to entertain the outside guests. We enjoyed ourselves so much we decided to stay another day and celebrate a early Anniversary for my folks. We were looking forward to "The Producers" but instead caught "Wicked", and it was pretty cool. The whole story was about the Good witch and the Wicked Witch Pre-Dorothy. VERY funny play and recommend pretty much anyone to see it, and I'm not the type typically who goes to these things without arm twisting. By the way in this marina you have night views of BOTH the NY skyline AND the statue of liberty. Well the statue may be a stretch, but you can walk 10 minutes and see it VERY clearly..

Well today we looked at the charts and are planning on going to Port Jefferson(Again thanks bill), the town kinda reminds me of a St. Michaels at least on the web. It will be nice to find another small town thats quaint. Well if you all have any suggestions let me know.

Oh, a funny.. We've gone about 300nm so far, anchored out, run the genset(A/C) to keep the flies out(Thanks Deleware river). Anyway all the dockmasters give us a puzzeled look as we tell them no thanks to the fillup. I'm only down about 150 gallons which is right on par for 3 gph and 1/2 gph for the genset.

Hmm.. Oh, New York harbour was a piece of cake(Thanks AIS).. The ferry boats do just rip through, but you can see them long before they get to you on the AIS. The stabilizers help remove lots of the lumpiness, so it was pretty darn smooth and I was very surprised..

Hmm.. What else can I say... It really is nice going to a place like New York and coming to "Home". You have plenty of water to shower like you wish, wash clothes, no trips to the marina bathroom for showers and clothes!! Heck, you throw in some clothes while your underway and save your onshore time for exploring!! Even though we really did love our American Tug 34, it really is nice having some of the features of the Krogen that we have now. We really feel spoiled on this boat.

Oh my Mom (Peggy), says that she loves this boat, "It Sizzles and smooth as a Rolls Royce". My dad has been totally into a book I gave him(Crossing under Power by Ken Williams).

Oh one funny.. The ferry boats here have to pilothouses, a true double ender!! When they go a.. Backwards?? The GPS shows them doing 35 knots backwards!!! Very strange when looking at it.

Anyway until tomorrow early 6am departure.. Email me, I'm bored at parts of the trip.

JP

Electronics..

AIS going up and down the shore so far has been pretty darn good. I'm receiving coordinates from ships as far away as 30nm right now up there in New York. So far unlike the bay I haven't seen wrong information passed as of yet and maybe the additional scrutiny of going through a controlled port like NY is what does that. What does bug me though is that almost none of the big commercial fishing boats had AIS, it would be nice to know that info when going out and maybe get info like in the act of fishing whatever. I did see so far 3 sailboats with AIS, one big old boat I mentioned earlier and one 34 and the other 50 ft sailboats. It's probably a wise idea with some of the commercial fleet going up and down the coast and since it seems that many of the sailboats pull all nighters.

So far my combination of Furuno(GPS Plotter/Radar) and Simrad autopilot are great. I do wish you could select a AIS target on the plotter and not have to be looking at radar overlay or radar. Another item on my wish list is that the radio get populated of the MMSI info and name from the AIS, it's nothing but a sentence string and just makes sense.

I'll probably eventually add Max Sea software on a laptop and connect it in. I think the benefits will be higher resolution then the current VGA quality I currently have with the black box solution, it shares EVERYTHING with the Furuno(course, fish finder, radar, etc), and you get a really fast redraw rate.

It seems as though the wish list is growing for Satelite radio and TV. It's nice to read out here and all, but you do begin to feel a bit disconnected. We have now stopped at two marinas and both offered cable that just didn't work.

Well thats it for now..

John

40 18.2971n
73 56.9536w
8.8 knots at 1800 rpm's
Seas 2 to 3 ft, waves from the south rollers..

Passing shark river inlet

We stayed at manesquan inlet at a marina that escapes me now. First I had a 15 knot easterly blow with 2 to 4's. Was it squirly? Yep.. But it was deep and even at low tide the channel had 3ft below me(7.5 ft). We ate at the anchor grill, food was grt

Cape may canal

I would give them two thumbs up but no cable! But they were good people, nice facilities, and the lobster house 5 minutes away by foot didn't hurt either. Well offshore today ill let youknow how we do. 38 57.0456 n 74 53.1523 w

Prince william

Huh, ill have to look this ship up later, it had tall ship youth trust on the side.

950 am deleware river

finally slowed down at one point we did 11.3 knots when we should have had 8.3. WAY ahead of schedule, trying to figure out when we arrive at cape may

Turkey pt light

So far getting favorable currents is working.. Getting 8.4 knots right now at 1800, we left our anchorage at about 615am. Hopefully we will ride a flood tide though the canl and arrive at cape may early.

Sat jun 16

39 19.7884n 76 08.5172w anchord in still pond, quite the party spot! Two raft ups 4 deep, everyone 40 plus feet! Quite a party! planning on a 6am departure.

Departing

Left annapolis at 430 pm, will anchor hopefully at the sassafras river.

Sorry, this is me babbling to myself

I'm thinking about two courses of action.. One is leave Annapolis really early and stop in cape may.. Then from there go to Manasquan inlet. That allowed me two things, first to make a lot of distance during the boring part of the trip, and two it enabled me to get close enough to New York to time the tides...

But great plans are not all they are meant to be.. There are rumors that Manasquan inlet is shallow, and that area is also covered in nasty mosquitoes.

So plan B is that we probably will stay in Chesapeake City or someplace a bit closer. Then get up early in the AM and make it down through Cape May Canal turn north and stay in Atlantic City. After that we may get in to New York or Sandy Hook, who knows..

Here are some links..

http://www.trumpmarina.com/index.cfm/fuseaction/content.page/nodeID/89117741-4a99-45f5-9d32-fbfe95d8a53f/

http://www.chesapeakeinn.com/

Well any comments are appreciated as this is all new territory to me.

John