Block Island - Still Our Favorite

We are back at Block Island and it feels like home. We stayed in East Haven until Saturday. Friday night we had a very nice evening with Dave and Alice Droller. We took them out to Ariel for drinks and then we went out for a very nice Italian dinner. It was so much fun spending time together. We know Dave from when I worked at Bayer and just met his wonderful wife Alice for the first time.

We arrived at Block on the weekend to a very crowded Great Salt Pond. We anchored in 32 feet, a much deeper area than we are used to at Block. The next morning we called Wind Chaser to see where they were and discovered they were also at Block and actually very close by. They were on the opposite side of the big tug that has become a fixture here. With hundreds of boats they were lost in the crowd. Sunday was a day of storms so we stayed with the boat. (Wind Chaser is boat centered in picture)

New York, New York

We had a very fast trip up the East River and through Hell Gate. We picked up a favorable current just before the Narrows which carried us all the way into Long Island Sound and at times exceeded 4 knots. We returned to Port Washington to pick up a free mooring for the night. It was too hot and humid to do much so we just picked up a few groceries. We continued on the next day to New Haven, Connecticut. We had the wind and the current against us all day. We felt the anchorage areas in New Haven were too exposed with expected rain and possible thunder storms forecast for the next couple days so we backtracked to East Haven which is only slightly better. About an hour after we settled in on our anchor we recognized Wind Chaser approaching. We had not seen Brian and Jan since Florida. Like us, this was not their original destination. We spent much of the next day with them walking and having a great pizza lunch at a local deli. It was raining hard at times so we spent several hours at the deli catching up. We are both heading for Block Island next so we expect to spend more time with them there.

Delaware Bay And The New Jersey Coast

We stayed overnight at the Chesapeake Inn and Marina in Chesapeake City on the C&D canal which connects the Chesapeake Bay with Delaware Bay. This was to position ourselves to travel down the Delaware Bay. The current on the Delaware Bay changes direction progressively moving up the bay such that there is a 2 1/2 hour difference with the change at the mouth of the bay and at the point where in C&D canal intersects. This was to our advantage last fall when we traveled up the bay giving us favorable current all the way up the bay and through the C&D canal. Of course this works the opposite going the other direction where it is only possible to get about 3 1/2 hours of favorable current and the rest of the time it is against you. We left Chesapeake City at 10:30 am to reach the Delaware Bay at the optimum point for the trip down the bay. We decided to skip a stop in Cape May and just round the corner and head up the coast of New Jersey. Last fall when we were just starting out we never would have considered this option. We just cleared the shoals around Cape May when the sun dipped below the horizon. The moon was soon up, very red at first but later a real advantage as we could see the waves, which was really nice. We pretty much had the open waters to ourselves through the night. We saw the lights of a couple tugs with their tows but none closer than two miles away. The only excitement was caused by a very large commercial fishing boat returning to port. I locked it in on radar a couple miles away and as he approached the radar sounded the alarm that he would be too close as he crossed our bow. I changed course in plenty of time to pass behind him. We were both able to sleep well on our off shifts. This is a big improvement over our previous overnight trips and a sign we are getting more comfortable with night travel. We arrived at Atlantic Highlands behind Sandy Hook at 3:45 pm the next day. We had covered 185 miles (per GPS) in 29.3 hours. As it turned out our knot meter which records the boat speed through the water read 183 miles so the overall impact of the current was negligible. We like Atlantic Highlands as the town is very convenient. We decided to stay for a day to rest up before moving on. We did laundry, bought a few groceries and went to a movie (Mamma Mia). We both liked the movie and the air conditioning very much.

Time Off For Family And Friends

We are in Chesapeake City on the Chesapeake and Delaware Canal on our way to Maine. Ariel was on a mooring in Annapolis for a full month. Between the five weeks last fall and four plus weeks this spring, Annapolis seems like our new home port. This time we were away most of the time enjoying time visiting family and friends. We did return to Ariel for a few days with the car to do major restocking and a couple of maintenance projects. We were in Annapolis for the Independence Day weekend and had a great spot to watch the fireworks from our mooring. We also saw our doctors and dentist for our checkups while we were back in Massachusetts so we should be good to go for awhile.

Family gathering at Mohegan Resort at Mohegan State Park in Ohio

Family Fun Day - canoeing near Mohegan at Loudenville

Kim, Michael and Evelyn at Bay Science Center

Karns Family Reunion

Our good friend Ellie

(from our former neighborhood in Franklin, Massachusetts)