Cape May to New York
Swiftwing
Fri 29 Oct 2010 19:45
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Cape May to New York Duggie in racing mode off Cape
May.
 We left Cape May early in the morning to sail the 60 miles to Barnegat Light, another harbour on our journey North towards New York. You really see very little on the Atlantic side, it was a bit like 60 miles of sailing past Westport Beach with nothing of interest in between, but had to be done if we were to get to New York. The huge black mirror-sided skyscrapers of Atlantic City
were visible long
before the shore and looked surreal rising out of the remenants of the mist below. We sailed on, a time to read, sleep and generally recharge batteries when off watch  .A tug pushing a barge, pushing a lot of water. Barneget Light is the name of the town and is marked by the light house which was built a quarter of a mile inland to protect it from coastal errosion, the first one falling victim to rampant errosion and only lasting about twenty five years before succumming. Again the entrance is a dredged channel with breakwaters sticking about one mile out to sea , before rounding tightly to port, hugging the rock that the light is perched on to stay in deep water before travelling about one mile South in completely sheltered water to drop the hook inside the arm of a sandy spit. Again we had to negotiate dozens of little sports fishing boats bobbing with the tide and completely blocking the channel.  A dredger in the channel, seems
to have to work constantly to keep the deep channel open.
The 'might is right ' rule is
applied
and they soon clear out of the deep channel when they see Swiftwing stemming them with a bone in her teeth.  Radar super-imposed over the
chart, showing clumps of little fishing boats in the channel which is
bottom right of the screen.
A large wooden dock type harbour
contained dozens of eighty foot fishing boat and some smaller prawn
boats.
 Barnegat fishing fleet.
There was a lot of tidal swell at
the entrance with a standing
wave on the North side of the channel. The anchorage was nice and flat with about six other boats at anchor.  Just rounding Barnegat
Light.
The following day was Sunday and the morning was very foggy. About 10am it seemed to have cleared so we headed for the channel, only to be met with a thick bank of fog and dozens of small fishing boats some of which where heading out to sea at speed. Even with Will on the bow as look
out
it looked very dangerous so we turned round and went back to the anchorage. About mid-day we made another attempt as the fog seemed to have burned off, but again as soon as we got to the channel entrance the fog got much thicker and with so many fishing boats just bobbing about at the entrance Duggie decided on caution and that the wise thing to do would be to return to the anchorage and have a day ashore. So back to the anchorage, by this time we knew the way in very well and we headed ashore to investigate Barnegat. We walked up to the lighthouse and watched all the small sports fishing boats coming back in and with wind against tide it all looked quite hairy. The deep water turn into the harbour is very close to the light and if one of the big commercial fishing boats come in at speed punching five knots of tide the small boats get rocked about ferociously. Nobody seems to care, everybody just enjoying their day off with a small boat and a fishing rod.  A piece of local art-work a
painted clam.
Monday morning was a very different story, clear sky, no other boats about and we headed out of Barnegat for the Hudson River. The Hudson is very tidal and the advice in the cruising guide is to wait at Sandy Hook at the entrance to the Hudson for a suitable tide. Sandy Hook is a big sand bar that provides some shelter from the Atlantic. We anchored in a place called the Highlands, well behind Sandy Hook to get maximum shelter. The shore behind is the highest in the area with hills as high as 400 feet. That's high for this coast! and the largest hills we had seen for months. Fast ferries run from this spot to down-town Manhattan and lots of cruisers leave their yachts here and take the twenty minute ride in. We hadn't sailed Swiftwing all this way just to get a ferry into New York Harbour The following morning with a favourable tide we headed up the Hudson at 7 to 8 knots. The Coastguard monitor and control all movements in and out of the harbour and after checking in by phone and registering our intended route through the harbour we were granted permission to enter but to keep a good radio watch for ship movements. We kept one radio on the shipping channel and another on the coastguard channel.  The container ship that
passed under the Verrazano Narrows Bridge at the same time as we
did.
We passed under Verrazano Narrows Bridge that was 235 feet high and links Staten Island with Brooklyn, but with the optical illusion it still looked low as we passed under with our 55 foot mast, then we watched as a huge container ship also passed under it right along side us.  The four Staten Island ferries are bright orange and run constantly from Stanten Island to Manhatten, directly across the main channel and there was a thousand other craft of all shapes to keep us on look out.  There were half a dozen
supertankers discharging to smaller barges inside the
harbour.
 Manhatten Island with the Empire
State building to the left of the photo.
The wonderful sky line of New York arose before us and as we rounded to starboard the lady made her presence known, the Statue of Liberty which was a wonderful moment came into view to lots of excitement on board..  You are not permitted to land your dinghy on Liberty Island and there is an exclusion zone around it but we were headed for an anchorage behind the statue in Liberty Park. To get to it we had to cross the main shipping lane as the Statue is on the port side of the channel and we were on the starboard side, the correct side for travelling up the Hudson. After a slightly hairy crossing, it's a bit like crossing both sides of a motorway on a push bike , we entered the buoyed channel next to the Statue and motored into LibertyPark Harbour, passing within a couple of hundred feet of thousands of tourist visiting the statue some who now turned their cameras on us.  We were not out of the woods yet
as the Liberty and
Ellis Island ferries charged about like London taxis in the very narrow channel, but as we entered we found that we had won a watch with only one other yacht at anchor. We had arrived. |