Ballyhoo ’24-25

We left October 20th this year, later than ever. The aftermath of 2 hurricanes south of us was largely to blame for the unsettled conditions in the North Atlantic. Nevertheless, a bonus benefit of waiting turned out to be a warm front that gave us daytime temperatures in the 70s all the way from Maine to North Carolina.

We left mid afternoon but we didn't get very far. Our depth sounder wasn't registering which, alone, didn't concern us. We would be traveling in primarily deep water until the ICW and could deal with it before then. The chart plotters, however, got progressively less and less reliable and approaching dusk, we were eventually using our tablet and phones to navigate. We turned into the Small Point Harbor and dropped anchor just as it was getting dark. Dave did some chart plotter resets and, by morning, we were good to go.

The Gulf of Maine was pretty frisky to start but improved over the course of the day. Buzzard's Bay was forecasted to have strong unfavorable winds that night so we got through the Cape Cod Canal and anchored in Onset, MA. By morning winds were light and we were blessed with calm seas and summer like weather all the way through Buzzard's Bay, Block Island Sound and Long Island Sound. Feeling optimistic that the good conditions would last through the night and wanting to catch a favorable current in Hell Gate we stopped for fuel in Branford, CT and continued on.

We entered the East River right at sunset. Our first time ever cruising through NYC at night, we had a blast at the beginning. The lights were spectacular. Right when we got into Manhattan, our comfort level changed. We were approached by blue flashing lights and had to attempt to slow way down amidst the rough conditions that are caused by the converging currents of Long Island Sound, the Hudson River and the Harlem River. The NY Marine Patrol officer yelled to us that our navigation lights were off (and it was dark now!) It turns out our starboard light was, indeed, working but our port light had burned out and our stern light only worked by turning on the anchor light. Fortunately, the officers were respectful of the conditions and let us carry on.

After that we were tense for the remainder of the trip through New York Harbor. As we were passing the Statue of Liberty, cross currents were causing stand up waves and ferries were passing us with their wakes making steering a real challenge. Approaching the exit from the harbor into the open ocean there were several large commercial vessels coming in, which we're used to. One, however, we were not able to identify until we got past it, causing us great angst. It turned out to be a huge dredge no where near the channel. Phew!

The weather models suggested that we could get down the NJ and DE/MD coasts before the sea state worsened so we decided to do an overnight (which, of course, we said we're not doing anymore!) We stopped to get fuel in Rehoboth Beach, DE right at daybreak and continued on. We made it to our anchorage in Portsmouth, VA late afternoon Tuesday.

Now in the ICW, we knew we could relax a bit. Wednesday the Albermarle Sound was a breeze and by Friday we made it here, to Beaufort, NC. We did an oil change, this time with the Reverso pump working properly. It's a big job since the engine is big, but the Reverso allowed us to do it with very minimal mess! We leave tomorrow with no foreseeable opportunity to go offshore in the near future. ICW, here we come....Read more