On to the Chesapeake

9/21/17 On to the Chesapeake

Given the choice between staying at a marina and anchoring out in some protected spot, we generally prefer the latter, and it’s not just that we’re cheap. There are some beautiful spots along the waterways, and if you don’t mind the rocking, Luna rides better at anchor than she does tied to a dock. On the other hand, there is a social aspect of marina life that is often quite endearing. At Catskill, we met Kurt and Susan, two Hudson River sailors out on a cruise around the river. Over happy hour drinks on their sailboat (good cruising etiquette, we brought our own), I complained to Kurt about the problem we had with our anchor rode out on the river the night before.

The Hudson has a fairly strong tidal flow all the way up to Albany, and so the current reverses every six hours. At its peaks, the current is strong enough to move Luna in its direction and pull hard on the anchor line, but at slack times, Luna dawdles right over her anchor. Then, as the current picks up, the slack anchor rode can wrap around her keel and restrict her motion as the line tightens. Then, Luna lies beam to the current, rolling uncomfortably. We are unable to get the anchor line off the keel without starting the motor and moving Luna up current and around the rode. This happened at least once on the last voyage as well.

Kurt is well aware of this problem, and he told me he began using a anchor sentinel  and hasn’t had trouble with the anchor rode since. That’s one of the advantages of staying at a marina. Beside the hot showers, shore access, laundry facilities, and the impromptu happy hours, there is always much to learn from other sailors.

I wasn’t aware of the term, “anchor sentinel,” but Kurt explained this is a weight you lower about 12 feet down along your anchor rode with a second line. When the anchor line is slack, the weight holds it down below the level of the keel so it doesn’t wrap around if the boat turns.

This is also called a kellet, and I was able to use our dinghy anchor, attaching a carabiner to slide it down the anchor rode. It worked fine, and I’ll use it whenever we anchor in reversing current.  Other advocate the use of kellets to weight the anchor rode and keep the pull on the anchor more parallel to the river bottom. For this purpose, a kellet is an ineffective solution. As the pull on the anchor rode increases, the force pulls the kellet up, and the rode straightens anyway. It’s only real purpose is to keep the rode down in slack water.

Hurricane Jose is taking its time up the east coast, and it looks like we have a few days before we have to make the crossing along the Jersey shore, so we have planned a couple of nights in New York City. Unfortunately, our go-to facility, the East 79th St. Boat Basin (moorings $30 per night, in Manhattan, no less), is closed to transients while they work on an electric cable. When we find this out, we’re but 15 minutes away, at the George Washington Bridge.

Lower Manhattan at Night

We motored down stream to the Liberty Landing Marina opposite lower Manhattan on the Jersey side of the river. Here we can stay in a slip and take the ferry or a train into the city. We filled the diesel tank and thought about it. $4.50 per foot and a bit of a headache getting back and forth to the city was more than we’re willing to spend. We wound up anchoring just north and slightly behind Ellis Island, offering us a spectacular view of the city (and the upper half of Lady Liberty’s back) at dawn, daytime, sunset, and night time. But the river served up huge waves whenever a ferry or tour boat went by, which seemed like always, until night time.

Luna sails under the Verrazano Bridge

Not spending more than one night at the city, we’re ahead of our schedule, and certainly of our budget. The next morning, we headed down to Sandy Hook, NJ, to get ready for the ocean passage. We intended to tie at a public mooring in Atlantic Highlands for the night, and wait for a favorable north wind in a day or two. But there is more uncertainty on Jose’s course, and the more we thought about it, the more we decided not to stay near the coast as Jose approached. So with the idea of increasing our margin of safety, we thanked the dock master, slipped the line, and headed out to the Atlantic.

Sunrise on the Atlantic Ocean

What is it like spending a night out on the ocean? It’s not frightening. The sea is a little choppy from the light headwind, but there are no big waves. The shore lights are visible to the west. Luna’s little diesel engine hums smoothly. The GPS tells us where we are and where we’re going, how deep the water is, and how fast we’re moving. Our hardest working crew member, Ray, the autopilot, never sleeps and keeps us on a straight course. The Commander and I take turns napping, but mostly we are awake. I enjoy the heightened sense of awareness at night. We’re constantly looking out for lights around us (the running lights of boats in the distance tell us whether they are coming at us or going away). the state of the sea, the feel of Luna. The stars are out, and Orion, harbinger of winter, lies low in the East.

And during the day, we take turns watching the helm, and we read. The commander has already finished three books. I get out the repair manual for the Yanmar engine. Someone has told me about cleaning the air filter, something I’ve never considered. Sure enough, the manual specifies cleaning it every 300 hours.

When we stop, I unsnap the filter cover and take out the element. It’s absolutely black with dirt. I mix up a bowl of hot water and Joy dish soap and clean it out. The water turns back immediately. I squeeze the foam element again and again, and rinse it several times until the water comes back clear.

When I start the engine again, I imagine it runs even more smoothly than it did. One thing we can do is run it at a higher RPM. Before, iff we got above 1800 rpm, the exhaust would smoke, oil pressure would fall, and the boat wouldn’t go any faster. Now it seems to relish the higher speed with no dark smoke at all.

I also read about the transmission fluid. We met another C&C owner at Liberty Landing. He and his dad were waiting for a replacement transmission to arrive, as theirs had met its demise. I wonder if there is preventive maintenance here. And sure enough, the manual specifies changing the transmission fluid every 300 hours. So, in addition to the clean oil filter, Luna gets new transmission oil and a motor oil change in Georgetown.


Back on the ocean, we spent an uneventful night and reached Cape May around noon when the incoming tide was flooding up the Delaware River. So we beat on, riding the crest and reaching nearly to the Chesapeake and Delaware Canal by 6:30 pm, about 29 hours after leaving Atlantic Highlands. The next day, when the incoming tide was running, we weighed anchor, motored through the canal to Maryland, and reached Georgetown, 8 nautical miles up the winding Sassafras River. Here we checked into the Sassafras Yacht Harbor, tied to a floating dock, and waited for the storm to pass.

Sunset, Georgetown, MD

The upper Chesapeake Bay is full of motorboats, all going at top speed. To be a sailboat among all these feels conspicuous as a dark woman at the Republican national convention, minus the press coverage. And whereas the courteous course for a motor boat to take when overtaking or passing a sailboat is to slow down to minimize wake, there is none of that ethic in the northern bay. So we spent the afternoon dodging wakes and eventually reached the Sassafras River. Here, too the ratio of motor to sailing vessels is more than 5:1. And we stayed in a marina that was nearly all given to power boats.

Last time we made this trip, I remember anchoring on the river and seeing fishermen on bass boats. Now the initial impression is just huge power boats. The energy crisis apparently does not phase this section of Maryland. There are more large motor yachts than I remember, and down in Annapolis, once, and not all that long ago, a sailor’s mecca, there are mega yachts that would give an inferiority complex to a Floridian. Just one of these monsters carries enough diesel fuel, I imagine, to power the generators to run the lights and reverse osmosis water plants for a small Caribbean island for a week, and personally, I think that would be a much better use of the resource.

Moored among the boats in Annapolis harbor

We would not have chosen to spend a few days up the Sassafras River in Georgetown marina among the power yachts. This was a situation where safety and security concerns trumped others. We would have stayed a couple days in NYC, another day in Atlantic Highlands, shopping and walking around the town. We would have waited for the north wind to push us down the Jersey coast instead of using the engine to propel us. We would have spent a night at Cape May, sampling the local oysters. In the name of getting somewhere safe before trouble hits, we made all these compromises.

In the end, there was no evidence of the storm in Georgetown. There was no significant wind, and no rain beyond a couple sprinkles.  On the third day we were there, Jose had mostly stayed out to sea, and there were heavy winds along the coast, but none of hurricane force, and no tidal surge. As it turns out, we could have stuck to our original plan and still beat Jose’s winds by a day. To take a risk, however small, of an outcome that could be catastrophic, or to take the safe course that avoids the risk: How often are we confronted with that choice? Although we likely erred on the cautious side, the Commander and I had absolutely no disagreement that we had made the right decision.