The OCC & Salty Dawg Sailing Association Drinks Party in Hampton VA USA

First up on Lydia and Bill’s list of fun things for us to do involved a 40 mile drive down to Hampton.  We loaded up the with all sorts of goodies and made our way to the Bluewater Yachting Centre, a marina at the entrance to the Hampton River opposite Norfolk, just west of the entrance to the Chesapeake Bay.

Here the floating docks were absolutely crammed with sailing yachts waiting to head south to the Caribbean on the Salty Dawg Sailing Association’s annual Fall Rally.  Seventy yachts had signed up for the rally and nearly all of them were ready to go in Hampton.  The plan had been for them to start in a few days’ time but the weather really wasn’t playing ball.

The skippers’ VTC weather briefing by Chris Parker

The Salty Dawg Rally participants get a daily weather briefing from Chris Parker (East coast USA sailing weather guru) and we were able to watch their skippers’ briefing with Chris Parker beamed in on a video link.  It was really good for us to hear the details because our plan is to follow pretty much the same routing as the Salty Dawg Rally but in a few weeks’ time.  With tales of the last of the hurricane season’s named storms causing trouble in the Atlantic [Ed: hopefully ‘the last of the hurricane season’s named storms’!], some nasty depressions pushing strong northerlies against the northbound Gulf stream and kicking up some really unpleasant seas, and some generally unhelpful wind directions, there wasn’t much good news for the rally participants.  We’re braced for the thought that we will probably have similar issues when we try to make the passage south.  By then the hurricane season will be officially over but our later departure increases the likelihood that we will be affected by a series of winter storms generally making the passage troublesome.

Having heard the professional advice we reached the same conclusion as the majority – stay in port! Fortunately, unlike the ARC, the Salty Dawg rallies don’t have a fixed start time, so the skippers were quite at liberty to hang on as long as necessary, and still able to get help from the support team, before leaving Hampton in the most favourable weather window. In our opinion that’s a great selling point for the Salty Dawgs, especially as there were a large number of crews making a long offshore passage for the first time.  And that was why we were the Bluewater Marina.

Our role was to help with a drinks party hosted by the Ocean Cruising Club (ie by Bill and Lydia who are OCC Rear Commodores and by Greta and Gary who are local OCC Port Officers) for the 170-odd crewmembers on the Salty Dawg Rally.  Sailing non-stop from Hampton to the Caribbean would be a passage of over 1000 nautical miles between ports (measured on a great circle route!) which meant that a lot of the Salty Dawg Rally participants were likely to achieve the qualifying passage distance for full membership of the OCC.  Our job was to explain all of the benefits of being a member of the OCC and why we had personally found it to be both beneficial and lots of fun. Funny old thing, with platters of food and gallons of wine laid on by the OCC, plus lots of talking [Ed: Reg’s favourite pastime?!], not much happened in the way of taking pictures of the party.  Pam and Tom on Stealin’ Timewere on the rally but had not made it to Hampton by this stage so, sadly, we didn’t see them again, but Kate and Andrew on Wildsideand Maria and Allen on Lady Jane were there and on good form.  We’ll track the progress of Stealin’ Time, Wildsideand Lady Janeon the rally closely and hopefully meet up again in sunnier climes.

Drinks party over and everything cleared away, we wished all of the rally participants the best of luck with their passage and promised to look out for them when we made it down to the Caribbean in December.  And then it was time to move onto the next stage in Bill and Lydia’s entertainment for us, but for that we needed to drive 60 miles northwest to Richmond.

Hampton, Virginia, USA

Back to the Corrotoman River VA USA

Leaving Sarah Creek

We had seen Yorktown and the battlefield but, having lost a day because of rainy weather, Jamestown is still on our list of places to visit.  Perhaps one for next summer when we come back this way.  For now though we had some appointments in our diary and so needed to be heading further north into Chesapeake Bay.

Creeping over the shallow patch in the entrance to Sarah Creek.  The George P Coleman Memorial Bridge and Yorktown are ahead and a bit left of us on the other side of the York River

A great beat up the Rappahannock River

So, on a clear, blue skied but slightly cool Monday 29^thOctober, we upped anchor in Sarah Creek at 0815hrs and headed back out into the York River.  With 10 knots of wind from the west-northwest, and more forecast for later, it looked set to be a good sailing day.  As soon as we were out into the York River we hoisted the sails and switched off the engine.  Initially we were blown downwind but once clear of the York River we hardened up and started making brisk progress.

By midday we had a reef in the mainsail and were blasting along close to the western side of the bay.  We left Wolf Trap lighthouse, Fishing Bay and Deltaville all reasonably close to port and just after lunchtime we were at the entrance to the Rappahannock River.  Here we had expected to have to give up sailing and motor dead into wind for the last 15 miles of the passage.  However, we had made such good progress that we had more time than expected to get to the Corrotoman River.  Rather than giving up and motoring we turned onto port tack and started to beat our way up the  Rappahannock River.

‘Just a couple of tacks and then we’ll probably have to motor’, we thought, but with a flood tide helping us up the river the angles worked out well.

Sailing under the Rappahannock Bridge

We ended up tacking all of the way up river, under the Rappahannock Bridge and then into the Corrotoman River; it was a great sail!

Blue Velvet on the end of Bill and Lydia’s dock next to Dragon Run

Our good friends Bill and Lydia were waiting for us on their dock to help us with our lines when we we finally arrived at 1730hrs.  When ‘Dragon Run’s twin’ (as the neighbours have dubbed BV) was all secure and put to bed, we retreated into the house to catch up on the latest news and to enjoy a lovely dinner.  Bill and Lydia had some exciting events lined up for the next few days and we talked through the associated logistics as well as finding out about a delivery trip from Newport that they were planning on doing and, of course, discussing the sailing adventures we had all had since we had last seen each other in the summer.

The leaking galley tap (L & top R) plus the
slightly tired looking one in the forward heads

Tuesday was an admin and a ‘prep for leaving the boat’ day.  Nicky did some laundry and removed all the curtains and took them in to a dry-cleaners whilst I bashed the computer to track down some spare parts.  The galley tap had started to leak and from previous experience with a similar one in our house I knew that the best thing to do was to replace the complete unit.  An e-mail to the  supplier in the UK confirmed that our exact model was no longer available but I found the more modern looking version of it.  There was even a supplier in the USA although I’d have to check the sizing of the connections and maybe get an adaptor.  It was all looking like a quick fix until the USA supplier dropped the news that they only supplied trade clients.  An e-mail back to the UK solved the problem albeit with a larger shipping charge; more spares for delivery to Phil and Lesley’s house up in Great Falls!  We also took the opportunity to order a new tap for the forward heads because that was starting to look a little tired and by ordering both from the UK we had the added bonus of knowing that the connections were all compatible with those on BV.

In the late afternoon Bill and Lydia gained extra guests, Marie and Dieter on a very impressive aluminium yacht, Greyhound.  Lydia had arranged for them to moor on one of their neighbours’ docks and we had a lovely evening talking sailing over barbecued hamburgers.  We’ d seen Greyhound in Las Palmas, just before Dieter and Marie set off on the ARC, so it was lovely to hear of their exploits in the intervening 12 months and to talk about their plans for the Pacific.

The following morning, despite all our work the previous day, it still seemed a bit of a mad rush to pack bags, empty and clean the fridge and generally shut down BV for the nearly 2 weeks that we would be away.  Add in a little time in Bill’s workshop drilling out and putting together some new engine anodes and packing Bill’s car up to the gunwales and somehow the morning completely disappeared.  And so, directly after lunch, we were off, on the stage of a fairly extensive road trip around Virginia.

Corrotoman River, Virginia, USA

Yorktown Battlefield VA USA

(Left and top right) Standing in the British lines, looking out across the scene of the siege.  (Bottom right) American (L) and French (R) flags of the era flying over their respective positions on the First Parallel

We arrived at the Yorktown Visitors’ Centre after a short cycle ride from ‘ye olde worlde’ town, just as a Ranger was taking a group of visitors out to some of the British fortifications. We joined the party and heard an excellent explanation of the events that ended the siege of Yorktown, as well as having some of the critical sites pointed out (most marked by national flags of the era).  The visitors’ centre at the battlefield is excellent and once we had had the scene set for us by the Ranger’s talk and the displays and the film in the museum we had a fabulous afternoon cycling around the battlefield, joining up all the important points, and enjoying the crisp autumnal air and the changing colours of the trees.

One of the many excellent timelines at the visitors’ centre

In essence the background to the siege is thus:  British General Lord Cornwallis had had an unsuccessful campaign in the Carolinas and so brought his army north to Virginia.  Having taken command of British Forces in the state, and after a few successful raids, in late June he was ordered to take ‘a defensive station’ in a suitable town, with good access for ships, from which campaigns could be executed the following summer.  Cornwallis settled on Yorktown, a thriving tobacco exporting town, right on the banks of the James River and with excellent wharves for loading the tobacco onto cargo ships.  He arrived in August and began fortifying the town at once.

Canon of the era of the Siege of Yorktown

Meanwhile, George Washington and his French general, Rochambeau, had decided that their objective for the 1781 ‘fighting season’ was New York.  But in mid-August they learned that the French admiral, Comte de Grasse, had set sail from the West Indies for the Chesapeake Bay, rather than further north, leaving them with much reduced naval power for Washington’s planned attack on New York.  So, they changed their objective to Cornwallis in Yorktown and hastily began a troop redeployment southwards.  At the end of the month, a second French admiral, de Barras, commanding a fleet carrying siege artillery, set sail from Newport, Rhode Island, bound for the Chesapeake Bay.

Shortly after de Barras set sail, the British battlefleet, commanded by Admiral Graves, departed New York, with the objective of hunting down and destroying the French fleets.  Graves found Comte de Grasse’s fleet off the entrance to the Chesapeake Bay and on 5 September 1781, the Battle of the Capes took place.  Technically, the battle ended in a draw but the French maintained control of the Chesapeake Bay and Graves returned to New York.  Three days later, de Barras and his siege weapons arrived in the Bay.  As well as providing a means to bring in sufficient canon etc, French control of the Chesapeake Bay was essential for Washington and Rochambeau’s troop build-up near Yorktown.  They had marched most of their troops south from New York to the upper reaches of the Bay and from there many of them were moved by ship to the York River area – a much faster and less debilitating way of moving troops over a long distance.

Yorktown on the southern bank of the York River, with the narrows and Gloucester Point just to the north of the town

So, the scene was set. Cornwallis’ troops were busy erecting redoubts and other defensive positions around Yorktown, whilst the American and French armies (the Allies) regrouped in Williamsburg, about 12 miles as the crow flies from Yorktown. With the French holding command of the waters of the Chesapeake Bay, Cornwallis’ position in Yorktown was surrounded, albeit it a distance.  His superior, Henry Clinton, who was in New York, sent word that reinforcements would be sent ‘soon’.

In late September, Washington and Rochambeau moved their armies to Yorktown.  The Americans took the right of the Allied lines, southeast to south of Yorktown, with the French covering the area from the south to the west.  The Brits’ backs were to the York River, though by this stage they had a good chain of defences around the town, as well as batteries covering the narrows of the York River at Gloucester Point on the other side from Yorktown, which at least ameliorated the threat from the French Navy.

View out from what remains of the British positions close in to Yorktown.  Redoubts 9 & 10 are out to the left of the picture behind the earthwork beyond the British flag

The Allied armies spent a couple of days recce-ing the ground and moving closer to their objective.  During this time, Cornwallis received word from Clinton that a relief force of 5000 men would arrive within a week and so, wishing to ‘tighten his lines’, on 29 September Cornwallis pulled back his troops from all the outer defences except for Fusilier’s Redoubt to the west of the town and Redoubts 9 and 10 to the east.  Unsurprisingly, the Allies took immediate advantage of this, occupying the abandoned positions and establishing their own batteries there.

The First Parallel.  French and American positions

A week later, on the night of 6 October, the Allies conducted a mammoth engineering effort, digging a 2000 yard trench from just south of Yorktown to the York River almost entirely overnight. By morning the British could clearly see the new ‘parallel’, just outside musket-range, and over the next 2 days they watched as the Allies completed it, bringing huge numbers of artillery pieces into line.  By 9 October this first parallel was complete.  To add to Cornwallis’ concerns, the next day a message arrived from Clinton saying that the British fleet, with Cornwallis’ reinforcements, would now leave New York on 12 October.  Cornwallis replied that he would not be able to hold out that long.

Views out from Redoubts 9 & 10. Good vantage points from which to see the enemy – it is clear why Cornwallis wanted to keep these in British hands and, equally clear, why Washington and Rochambeau wanted to take them

On the night of 11 October, Washington ordered a second parallel be dug, 400 yards closer to the British lines. Once again, the parallel was completed overnight but this one stopped short of the York River because Redoubts 9 and 10 were in the way.  The Allies dug as close to them as possible and then, on 14 October, began an artillery assault to weaken them prior to launching an infantry assault that evening under cover of the moonless night.  Both redoubts were heavily fortified but, to ensure that the assault took place with as great an element of surprise as possible, Washington ordered muskets to remain unloaded until the soldiers reached the redoubts.  Redoubt 9 was assaulted by French troops and Redoubt 10 by American troops under the command of Alexander Hamilton, the black American general now the subject of a Broadway/West End musical.

Looking towards today’s visitors’ centre (the British Lines) from either Redoubt 9 or 10

Given that he is immortalised in current stage culture, it will come as no surprise to hear that Hamilton’s attack on Redoubt 10 was a resounding success, with almost all the redoubt’s garrison of 70 being captured.  The French too were successful in their mission and, with that, Yorktown was now closely surrounded by Allied forces on 3 sides and, more importantly, was being shelled by Allied artillery from 3 directions.  Life was bleak for the British.  But Cornwallis did not give up, launching raiding parties to try to spike Allied cannon, though the efforts were insufficient for the number of artillery pieces ranged against them.

Moore House, where the surrender was signed, relatively recently restored to its 1871 state

On 16 October, Cornwallis tried to evacuate his troops across the York River to Gloucester Point (close to where, 237 years later, BV would be anchored in the Sarah River).  One wave of boats made it across successfully but a storm built and prevented any further evacuation attempts.  So, the next day Cornwallis sued for surrender terms, with negotiations taking place over 2 days in the Moore House (the house of a local farmer).  The paperwork was signed and sealed on 19 October 1871 and the surrender formally took place on a large open field that afternoon.  Cornwallis had asked for the traditional honours of war – to march out with colours flying and bayonets fixed – but Washington refused this as the British had refused such honours to the defeated American army at the Siege of Charleston the previous year.  In the end, Cornwallis did not attend the surrender, citing illness, and his second in command, O’Hara led the army out.

Plus ça change….

The Siege of Yorktown was the last major engagement of the British Army in the American Revolutionary War, though battles between loyalist and patriot militias continued for quite some time, with the final peace treaties not being signed until September 1873.  But the surrender at Yorktown forced the British government to consider the bigger picture and it was clear that the cost of trying to subdue and maintain the colony was too much when weighed against the costs of the war against the French and the Spanish as well as those of maintaining Britain’s presence in the West Indies, India and elsewhere.  The Yorktown campaign was “one of those relatively minor events which have disproportionate effects” and from it American independence was won.

Yorktown Battlefield, Virginia, USA

Sarah Creek and Yorktown VA USA

Sarah Creek after the rain finally stopped

Having got ourselves into Sarah Creek on Friday, our plan had been to dig out our bikes on Saturday and cross over to the other side of York River to visit Yorktown.  It was a great plan, except that it just rained solidly for most of day.

Sarah Creek in the evening light

Sightseeing was put on hold for the day and we hid down below with the heater running.  We should have started tackling the backlog of blog entries for our time in New York but instead we both turned into bookworms.  Despite the rain outside we both had a great time drinking gallons of tea and munching chocolate chip cookies whilst we worked our way through a couple of easy reads.  When the rain finally stopped in the late afternoon I took the pictures above. With the now clear skies and the mirror-like water it was hard to believe that it had been grey and overcast with rain and drizzle for the previous 10 hours.

Our bikes in their stowage under the forepeak bunk

Sunday 28^thOctober was a much more promising day for venturing out so after breakfast we pulled apart the forepeak so that we could dig out our folding bikes from their stowage under our bunk.  We also had to inflate the dinghy so all in all getting ready for our run ashore was a bit more of a faff than normal.

Blue Velvet under a very blue sky

The George P Coleman Memorial Bridge across the York River

We left BV at anchor under a beautiful blue sky and headed our heavily laden dinghy towards the nearby marina where we could get ashore.  A quick check with the staff confirmed that we could leave the dinghy there and so we proceeded to set up the bikes and head off towards Yorktown.  That took us up and over the toll bridge which fortunately had a wide service road (hard shoulder) we could cycle on to keep us clear of the thundering traffic.  Once over the other side we freewheeled round a slip road which brought us back down to sea level and historic Yorktown.

Historic Yorktown, parts of which are hugely reminiscent of rural Hampshire (England!)….

York County is one of the eight original shires formed in colonial Virginia in 1682.  The controlling town, Yorktown, was founded a year earlier as a port through which the English colonists could export tobacco to Europe.

…..but with less traffic

The trade in tobacco brought great wealth and the town reached the height of its development in the mid 1700s when it had 250-300 buildings and a population of around 2000 people.  That wealth was evident in the number of brick buildings and for us the architectural style was just like the village we’d lived in in Hampshire back in the UK.  Nine buildings in Yorktown still survive from the pre-Revolutionary era.

The Yorktown Victory Monument (finished in 1884) commemorates the victory, the critical alliance with France that helped them win, and the subsequent peace with Great Britain after the
American Revolutionary War (1775-1783)

The same waterway transport links that made the town an ideal port to support the tobacco plantations also made the town a strategic location during both the Revolutionary War and the later American Civil War (1861-1865).  Troops positioned here controlled the access to upstream portions of the York River as well as access to the Chesapeake Bay.

The town is most famous as the site of the siege and subsequent surrender of the British Commander, General Charles Cornwallis, to General George Washington and the French Fleet during the American Revolutionary War on 19 October 1781.  The British defeat at Yorktown effectively ended the war and the rather grand Yorktown Victory Monument highlights the significance of the town in American history.  To find out more about the decisive Franco-American victory and what happened in the Siege of Yorktown we had to cycle a little further to the site of the battlefield.

Sarah Creek and Yorktown, Virginia, USA

Sailing Back to Chesapeake Bay VA USA

Despite the brisk wind, New York harbour isn’t really the place to try sailing, especially as we had passed close to the Statue of Liberty; the ferries to Liberty Island take no prisoners so we kept well out of their way!  As a result we were past there and the anchored HMS Queen Elizabeth, the new British aircraft carrier, before we switched to sail power.  We had been motoring for 3 hours and so it was blissful to switch to our quieter form of propulsion.  It was 1300hrs on Wednesday 24 October and ahead of us lay a 250 mile passage which we hoped would get us south and back into the Chesapeake Bay.

The weather window for the passage was tight but we knew that after the delays for repairs in Port Washington we now really needed to be ticking off the miles heading south before the winter storms set in in earnest.  We reasoned that we could get to Chesapeake Bay in about 40 hours but that if it all got too windy en routewe could divert into Delaware Bay.  Indeed Escapadehad set off a few hours behind us and would be following that route.  It is longer but would probably be more sheltered.  However, there would be lots of motoring through the Chesapeake and Delaware Canal and there was a high risk of floating logs given the recent storms and a dam release.  After our ‘logging’ adventure in Long Island Sound, you can understand why we wanted to avoid Delaware Bay just now.

One of several hitch-hikers

We settled into our watch routine and, after having photographed everything in sight as we passed through New York, the urge to take photos was small and the camera had been abandoned in the corner of the cabin for the rest of the afternoon and overnight.  That said, this passage was unusual because on Thursday 25 October Blue Velvet seemed to turn into some sort of floating rest station for small birds.

More of the hitch-hikers

The wind had been blowing offshore at 25 knots from the northwest, which didn’t seem excessive, but maybe it was enough to blow these little guys out to sea (great wind for our passage though!). We didn’t really mind them hitching a ride for a rest except when they realised that it was much more comfortable down below.  It’s the first time we’ve had lots of birds fly down into the cabin and despite trying to shoo them out we constantly seemed to have about 4 of them hiding in the corners of the boat.  Note to bird world: don’t crap in the taxi!!!  In the end we left them alone as it seemed to scare them less and avoided their creating mess.

The camera came out again later in the afternoon when Nicky was off watch.  Glancing behind us I saw a whale breach.  I missed photographing the whale rising out of the water but did manage to get this photo a few moments later to prove that there was whale out there.

Aside from the bird and whale spotting, the passage proceeded uneventfully.  We made very good progress and arrived in Chesapeake Bay in the early hours of Friday 26 October.  I was on watch and we just managed to sneak in under the North Channel fixed bridge with the last of the flood tide.  As we motored north I woke Nicky up because 4½ miles north of the bridge is an unusual breakwater we intended to anchor behind.  The Kiptopeke breakwater is made up of sunken concrete ships and we hoped that they would provide us with a good sheltered spot to catch some sleep for the 6 hours whilst the tide ebbed.

The morning view of the uncharted piles in the southern entrance to the Kiptopeke anchorage. In the distance is the North Channel fixed bridge we went under to get into Chesapeake Bay

Having dropped the sails Nicky motored us in very carefully whilst I stood on the foredeck with a bright torch clearing the way into the anchorage.  I’m very glad that we took this cautious approach because the entrance to the anchorage was partially blocked by uncharted wooden piles.  [Ed: and there was also an uncharted and unlit piled fish weir a bit further south which we only saw by the light of the full moon and got rather closer to than we would have wished!]  The torch picked out the gap in the piles and we continued in to find that there was more than enough space for us to anchor close to a catamaran that was already there.

Views around the Kiptopeke anchorage. The breakwater was built in 1948 by sinking
9 concrete McCloskey ships in order to protect the Chesapeake Bay ferry terminal. 
The ferry terminal closed in 1964 when the Chesapeake Bay tunnel-bridge opened

More below the map

Kiptopeke, Virginia, USA

After 1 day 17 hours and 10 minutes at sea it was nice to get some sleep in more than a 3 hour block.  We had 7 hours of uninterrupted sleep before the alarm clock woke us from our slumber to catch the favourable tide towards the York River, our ultimate destination for this passage.  In the morning light we took the opportunity to look at the uncharted piles partially blocking the entrance to anchorage, as well as the 9 concrete sunken ships which make up the Kiptopeke breakwater.  But conscious that ‘time and tide wait for no man’, we raised our anchor at 0930hrs, 8 hours after we had arrived, to commence the last 25 miles of our passage.

Part of the reason that our weather window had been tight to get all of the way down to the Chesapeake Bay was that the wind was due to drop off to next to nothing.  Whilst we had been sleeping that had happened and so the last bit of our passage across to the western side of Chesapeake Bay, and into the York River, was under power.  Watching the depth gauge like a hawk because in places there was only just enough water for us, we felt our way into Sarah Creek on the north side of the York River. From here we hoped to visit the historic Yorktown and battlefield sites.

Sarah Creek, York River, Virginia, USA

Sailing Through New York NY USA

Fabulous weather for a run down the East River

On Wednesday 24 October all the planets aligned.  The forecast was good for a 2 day passage from Port Washington to the Chesapeake Bay, BV was in good shape with the prop shaft repairs complete and routine maintenance squared away, the tide was favourable for a mid-morning transit south down the East River and it was a glorious, if somewhat chilly, autumn day. Perfect!

Throg’s Neck Bridge (great name!) – the start of the East River

Nicky had spent some time over the previous few days pouring over the books trying to decide on the best time to depart Port Washington.  She had been looking to get the best of the tide along the East River without ending up with too much through the notorious Hell Gate and without losing it all before we had rounded Sandy Hook on the New Jersey coast, the entrance to the lower New York Harbour.  In the end she/we decided on leaving at around 0930, about an hour before the tide was forecast to start ebbing (running southwest) at Hell Gate, and it worked well for us.  We butted a small amount of tide in the area around Throg’s Neck Bridge but after that the tide built with us and carried BV along and through Hell Gate at a reasonable, but not breakneck, speed.

(Bottom) Going through Hell Gate

Hell Gate, an area where the river narrows whilst making two 90 degree bends and where high tidal flows occur, was named many, many years ago when the riverbed was covered in semi-submerged rocks and boats ran the gauntlet of the tidal flow whilst wending their way through the maze under sail and oars.  Over the years hundreds of boats and ships were wrecked in the area ……. and then the Army Corps of Engineers did their stuff with dynamite and the reliable internal combustion engine was invented.  But the Army Corps of Engineers left a pretty undulating seabed which sets up some impressive standing waves when the tidal flow runs fast, a matter not helped by the fact that some of the subway tunnels run on top of (not under) the riverbed. We’ve seen some of the You-Tube clips of yachts hobby-horsing their way through/over huge waves in Hell Gate and weren’t keen to add our transit to the list of views.  Happily, our timings worked beautifully and we had smooth seas to go with our 10-11knots speed over ground.

(Top) the final stages of the passage through Hell Gate.  (Bottom) We had read dire warnings about the amount of traffic on the East River but we saw relatively little

We came out the other side, still moving fast, and into midtown Manhattan.  We looked for Alan and Kate Richards walking Amy’s dog but they were not to be seen though there were plenty of other people using the riverside walk and park.

(Left) the UN Building (Right and bottom left) The Chrysler Building

And then we were entering the Manhattan of our first day as tourists.  There was the Chrysler Building and the UN Building,…..

(Top) ‘Some of the best views are behind you’, so said friends Murray and Cate on Coolchangewho ‘did’ the East River a few days before us.  (Bottom centre) The Chrysler Building.  (Bottom right) The Empire State Building, mostly hidden, but as one of the tallest buildings in New York it’s difficult to keep
it entirely out of the picture!

……the Empire State Building and plenty more interesting constructions that we hadn’t seen or noticed as we had walked around.

(Top row) Approaching Manhattan and Brooklyn Bridges; (middle row) Manhattan Bridge; (bottom left) Manhattan Bridge ‘in the rear view mirror’; (top right and bottom right) Brooklyn Bridge

All too soon we were passing under Manhattan Bridge and counting down our time on target to Brooklyn Bridge for Dinger and Julie Bell.  We arrived a little early – hopefully not too early for them – but the bridge was crowded (and high up) and there were ferries and lots of other traffic to worry about.  We didn’t see them but we did wave!

The bottom end of Manhattan and (bottom right) the Wall Street heliport 

Once through Brooklyn Bridge we were nearly past Manhattan.  All that was left was the Wall Street heliport, the Staten Island Ferry terminal and Battery Park.  And so, humming the theme tune to the Pierce Brosnan/Rene Roussau remake of ‘The Thomas Crown Affair’ we passed the heliport…..

(Top) Staten Island ferry port complete with orange ferry.  (Bottom) Iconic Manhattan with 1 World Trade Centre in the centre and Battery Park beneath

….and made it past the ferry terminal at a rare lull in ferry movements.  From there we headed west across the bottom end of the Hudson River towards Ellis Island and the Statue of Liberty.

🎵New York, New York, New York 🎶

(Top left) Statue of Liberty. (Top right) Ellis Island. (Bottom) To prove that we were actually there!

The area around Ellis Island and Liberty Island is incredibly busy with ferry traffic and day-tripper boats but we managed to get through unscathed and had time to get some pictures as well.

Not sure we could have got much closer legally without having arrived by ferry!

There’s an exclusion zone off the 2 islands so we had to give them a reasonable berth and, having originally said that we were hoping to anchor off the Statue of Liberty and get a picture of BV with the Lady behind her, with the weather window we had that was clearly not an option.

Wow!  What a morning!

So I did my ‘candid camera photographer’ impression and Nicky kept us pointed in about the right direction and we headed down the harbour towards the Verrazano Narrows Bridge.

HMS Queen Elizabeth at anchor off NYC

In doing so we passed close enough to Britain’s new aircraft carrier, HMS Queen Elizabeth, to get some decent pictures of her too.  She was anchored on the other side of the main channel to us so we couldn’t get too close and, in any case, some highly armed protective patrol vessels were keeping a beady eye out , so it’s probably just as well that we were a good distance off.

Leaving NYC and heading under the Verrazano Narrows Bridge

And shortly after we had passed the ferry terminal on Staten Island and the number of other vessels around us dropped off dramatically.  So we took the opportunity to hoist the mainsail so that we could sail under the Narrows Bridge and out of Upper New York Harbour.  It was 1300, half an hour earlier than we had planned, and the tide was still forecast to be in our favour for another 2 hours or so.  Plenty of time to get around Sandy Hook and be well on our way towards Chesapeake Bay.  What a fabulous morning’s sightseeing we’d had.

New York, New York, USA