More from Manhasset Bay

"It was just on such a blustery day as this that Owl's house blew down," Peter recalled this morning, referring to the Tales of Winnie-the-Pooh.  Indeed, the sustained wind since the wee hours has been around 13 knots, with gusts up to 25.  The rain has been almost constant, and the overhead hatches are leaking again on the table and the floors in several places, so repair of those has moved up on the to-do list.  Despite the fact that it is only 70 degrees, Peter is switching on the air conditioning for a while to get some of the dampness out of the saloon and cabins, where we are sheltering for the day.

A blustery, rainy day on Manhasset Bay

I have not been keeping up with this blog when we have been anchored, but Peter assures me that I have enough data on my plan to use the hotspot on my phone to post, so I am giving it a try.  I return to my narrative, as we departed from Cape May.

Within an hour of weighing anchor in the harbor, we were well out to sea and sailing up the coast of New Jersey.  With 10 knots of wind behind us, we lowered the jib and put up the big blue and red spinnaker.  We were averaging 8 knots over ground.  Ula had made sandwiches before we left the harbor, but she decided we didn't have enough and went below to make a couple of more.  This was a mistake.  She didn't look well when she came back on deck, and soon she was hanging over the lee side emptying her stomach.  Unfortunately, she never felt better until we arrived at our destination.  Peter was coping, Enis had taken a dramamine before departure and I was feeling fine.  (I only darted down below, having learned from past experiences, to use the head and check the chart.)  Enis and I decided we wanted something to eat in the late afternoon.  After a few bites of pita bread and hummus, my stomach rebelled also, and I made it to the lee side but not over the rail, so a couple buckets of water were needed to clean up my mess!  But I felt fine afterwards.  Peter went down below to rest as the sunlight faded.  The wind and waves built up and the three of us on deck marvelled as we surfed down the side of waves at 12 knots.  In our excitement, we did not consider the effects of the gusts on the spinnaker.  Ula and I were both lying on the cushions in the pilot house and Enis was at the wheel when we all heard a loud ka-boom.  I thought we had jibed, but what the three of us saw was the enormous spinnaker floating on the surface on the lee side.  I yelled for Peter. Without panic, we all went into action.  Enis brought the boat closer to the wind.  The rest of us put on our life jackets and headed to the foredeck, where we manually hauled the water-weighted foresail up on deck.  Fortunately the sail had not become entangled on the keel or the rudder and the cloth was not damaged except for one small hole.  The wire cable at the top of the sock had frayed and severed, which is what had caused the sail to collapse into the sea.  Within a half an hour, we had the spinnaker secured on deck and the jib up and were sailing at a steady speed of 8 knots.

The wind continued gradually to rise to 25 knots.  Prudently, at 9 p.m., we put two reefs in the sail.  Despite the strong winds and 4 foot seas, I was tired enough to sleep, although fitfully, below in my bed, and we were not heeling enough to require a lee sheet.  I just started out in the middle of the mattress and rolled from one side to the other when we tacked.  I missed the drama of entering New York Harbor at night, dealing with the waves and ship traffic near the entrance.  I did get up before we reached the Verrazano Narrows Bridge, hanging like a glittering diamond chain between Staten Island and Brooklyn.

Verrazano Narrows Bridge from the deck of Mantra (difficult getting a sharp photo from a moving boat in the dark)

The Statue of Liberty from our anchored boat

Sunrise over the city

We were all on deck for the remainder of the trip to the Statue of Liberty in the dark.  There were a lot of large anchored cargo ships but not much traffic after the entrance, and we were all excited to see the Manhattan skyline emerge from behind the bridge and loom larger and larger as we approached our anchorage.  The sky was just beginning to brighten with natural light when we dropped anchor behind the Statue of Liberty at 6 a.m. on Saturday morning.  We tidied the boat up and stayed up to watch the sunrise over the city before all going to bed for a few hours.

To me, it didn't make sense to only look at New York from the boat at anchor, so in the afternoon, we pulled up anchor and motored to ONE 15 Marina between Piers 4 and 5 on the Brooklyn waterfront at the south end of the East River.  The flow of the river, which is not actually a river but a strait between New York Harbor and Long Island Sound, made docking in this marina, which does not have a true breakwater but only a barge anchored at its entrance to protect it from currents and wakes, a challenge, but we managed to move the lines from the starboard side to the port side as the boat swung around.  We found the floating docks to be as rocky, if not more so, than the boat, so we were walking about like drunken sailors.

After we got everything secured, we left the boat for the Brooklyn waterfront, which has been transformed over the last decade or so into a public areas including pedestrian paths, bike paths, play grounds, picnic areas with charcoal grills, soccer fields, roller skating rinks, ramps for kayaks and other sports venues.  There are small beaches and lots of trees and plants.  It was a sunny afternoon, with the temperature in the low 70's, the the waterfront was packed with adults and children involved in a variety of activities.  The majestic Brooklyn Bridge was to the north, the skyscrapers of Manhattan loomed on the other side of the river and the Statue of Liberty welcomed immigrants to the south of us.  We encountered a small, free concert at the end of one pier, part of the Brooklyn Americana Music Festival.  People had come with chairs and blankets, and children were dancing and frolicing to the music.  We continued on to the heart of DUMBO, which we have visited in the past to enjoy Bargemusic.  We were beginning to feel hungry and consulted Yelp to help us choose a restaurant.  The two restaurants with the most stars in the immediate vicinity had long lines of people queuing.  The restaurants were neighbors, and the lines passed each other going opposite directions.  We decided that the food could simply not be worth that kind of wait and backtracked to a pizzeria we had passed which was around the corner.  Even though it had only three stars, we had no complaints about Ignazio's, and the pizza was delicious.

We strolled back along the waterfront to the boat and toasted our adventure from Baltimore to New York with a good bottle of red wine and then went to bed early and slept well.

Peter had heard from his Aunt Virginia in Syracuse, New York, that Will Fisher (Peter's second cousin or something like that) and his girlfriend Caitlin would be arriving in New York City on Saturday, so we had made arrangements to have breakfast with them in Brooklyn Heights on Sunday morning.  Ula and Enis packed up, not allowing us to shanghai them for more sailing, and we walked with them to the Clark Street subway station, where they were catching a train into Manhattan to have breakfast with a friend before getting a train from Penn Station for Baltimore.  Ten minutes later and just across the street, we met Will and Caitlin at Clark's, a restaurant popular for its breakfast fare.  The food was good and Caitlin was not disappointed in the size of the meal, which she had anticipated based on the tales she had heard.  Afterwards, we walked to the boat.  Caitlin was not very comfortable with the rocking, and they wanted to explore more of Brooklyn and find the school where Will would be taking a computer course for three months, so they did not stay long, but it was serendipitous and delightful that we had a chance to meet in New York.

Caitlyn, Peter, Will and Sherri on the dock by Mantra, with lower Manhattan behind us

By 3 p.m. on Sunday, Peter and I were ready to cast off from the dock and head up the East River and through Hell's Gate to reach Long Island Sound.  As if "Hell's Gate" does not sound ominous enough, the guidebook is filled with warnings in bold and colored type about how treacherous the East River can be.  As advised, we donned our life vests (which we usually don't wear unless we are out at sea and outside the pilothouse), had a horn at the ready and were on full alert as we left the marina to go with the flood current up the river.  Unlike the previous day, it was overcast and dreary, so there were not many recreational boaters out and few jet skis.  There didn't even seem to be much commercial traffic.  Listening to the radio, we realized that we had just got out before the East River was closed to all traffic as delegations to the UN were arriving and being transported by helicopter to the headquarters on the Upper East Side.

We have navigation software that we love (Coastal Explorer) and plotting and maintaining a course with this aid is surprisingly easy.  The current carried us along and we breezed through Hell's Gate to Manhasset Bay, where we found it easy to anchor in sufficiently deep water with hundreds of boats on mooring balls between us and the waterfront of Port Washington.

Tomorrow, we will be leaving here, although the weather is not expected to be much improved, in order to meet Peter's Aunt Virginia along with her daughter Jane, son-in-law Peter and granddaughter Frances--all visiting from Freemantle, Australia--at City Island for lunch.  We will continue east on Long Island Sound from there.