At sea once again

So I have left New York Harbor, but Gesa and the kids remain in the city. Let me explain.

We are off to cruise in the Chesapeake Bay for a month of so before returning to the Caribbean. The trip from NYC to the Chesapeake involves about a hundred and eighty miles of sailing along the Jersey Shore and up the Delaware Bay. Harbours are few and far between, so it is best done in four long hops. So I have taken aboard a crew, Dietmar, who is a friend of other cruising friends. Gesa and the kids are staying in the city with Mike and Pam, my aunt and uncle, and will travel with them to meet us at the other end of my trip.

So this is a chance for me to have some enjoyable day sailing, nice food and a few beers in the company of my new friend. Hopefully the kids will give Gesa some time to relax on shore and we can meet up ready to head through the Chesapeake and Delaware Canal and into the huge network of rivers and creeks that is the Chesapeake Bay.

I'll have a little time, hopefully, to write a bit more about our time in New York so look out for that over the next few days. Right now we are enjoying a gentle sail in the warm sunshine, a couple of hours away from our stop for the night at Manasquam. We have sailed out of New York and under the Verrazano Narrows Bridge and so my dream of sailing in that harbor is fulfilled. Now I'm happy to visit by aeroplane again, for the harbour offers scant reward for the effort required to be there. There are only a few places to keep a boat, and all but one of them are extraordinarily expensive, rates up to five dollars a foot would have seen us paying $250 a night in a marina. Fortunately the 79th Street Boat Basin has moorings on the Hudson for the bargain price of $30 a night. It's great, but the River is wide and busy, so it is far from a calm anchorage and our mooring was a long dinghy ride from the dock. We were happy to stay ashore for most of our time here, and so lucky to have such generous hosts in Mike and Pam.