After an enjoyable week cruising Narragansett Bay, we took our first weather window to head south to the Chesapeake. We were watching for a 60+ hour window (2 overnights) without winds and waves from the South. Just the two of us this time — these will be our last overnight passages until our plans to cross the Atlantic next year!
In a previous season visiting New England, we had gone north through New York Harbor, anchored at the base of the Statue of Liberty and then headed up the East River and out through Long Island Sound, which is a very fun route. As much as we wanted it, the reverse of that trip wasn’t an option for us this year.
The United Nations began their sessions earlier in September, and there is a security zone on the East River that may be closed while they are in session. Here’s the trouble for route planning: while the river might be open for boat traffic during the UN, it’s nearly impossible to know with 100% certainty more than a couple days before we want to go down the East River. The trip all the way through Long Island Sound and to the East River is more than 125 nautical miles. That’s a lot of potential backtracking, so we opted for the ocean route from Newport to the Delaware River.
Our first day out of Newport was calm, motoring on light seas. However, as the day progressed, it became increasingly clear that some winds out of the south were going to develop sooner than desired, and there was a chance of some thunderstorms at sea. Rather than continue on along the coast of NJ to the Delaware River as originally planned, we opted to divert to Sandy Hook and wait out the possible storm before heading back out on the ocean.
After about 24 hours of travel, we anchored in Sandy Hook, off Atlantic Highlands, NJ. On our approach and from the anchorage, we had a clear view of the Manhattan skyline. Given our travel occurred on September 11th, we were thinking a lot about the 25th anniversary of the attack on the towers.
Turns out, once again, deferring to the weather was the right call! We had a relaxing 48 hours at the Sandy Hook anchorage. We got to make a couple of shore excursions for dinner and nature walks, and enjoyed about 4 hours of heavy rain (but no thunderstorms). We are always happy for a “free boat wash,” because we pick up a lot of salt with water over the bow when we are out on the ocean and can’t waste the water in our tanks to wash the boat. We also still comment how nice it is not to be in a tent! Did enough of that over the years in the rain…..
Not only did we enjoy some time at anchor, the weather fully cooperated for our run from Sandy Hook down to the mouth of the Delaware. We had a brisk wind from the N/NW and were able to sail at 4.5-6.5 knots the whole way – it took about 24 hours. Since this is our last overnight for the season, we were particularly grateful for the time under sail.
Once we entered the Delaware, we were fortunate to catch a favorable tide and kept going up the river to the Chesapeake & Delaware canal, through the canal and to our first anchorage on the Chesapeake. It’s a familiar route for us, and relaxing after our overnight passages.
