Port Washington (Part 3) NY USA

Our wind generator in action before the
hub and blades decided to jump overboard!

The weather helped us by being uncomfortably windy to sail south until mid-week.  So, our enforced extra few days in Port Washington whilst we waited for the boatyard to re-open on Monday wasn’t too much of a problem for us; we had already decided to sit the windy weather out here anyway.

At anchor in a non-tidal environment boats turn to face into the wind, so being on board BV in the well-forecast Force 6 was a lot quieter than being pinned sideways onto a marina dock [Ed: and better for BV – no fenders scrubbing between the pontoon and the hull]. The only issue might have been getting ashore but we had no need for that because we had enough food in the fridge and the bits and pieces for our maintenance tasks were on board as well.

It did blow quite strongly though and our lazy start to Sunday was interrupted by a loud bang and clatter from the transom area.  Dashing up on deck we discovered that the wind generator mounting had sheered and the whole windmill attachment had leapt overboard.  So, we added a new task to our list for Sunday – track down spares from DuoGen, either from the UK or from a USA supplier, if there is one.

Nicky’s butternut squash soup (left) and my pulled pork

With maintenace tasks completed we set about doing some cooking.  Nicky produced an excellent butternut squash soup with croutons and toasted seeds, whilst I made a ‘slow cooked’ pulled pork [Ed: ‘slow cooked’ because, though it tastes as if it has been cooking forever, it’s actually done in the pressure cooker in about 45 minutes instead of in the barbecue in 10 hours].  In both cases, hearty food in response to the cooler weather that we are experiencing.

Oscar at work on the propeller shaft

On Monday morning we woke up early to call the boatyard.  They wanted us to come straight in, so we pulled up the anchor at 0715hrs and repositioned BV onto the dock.  Oscar arrived shortly thereafter on his golf buggy.  We fired up the engine and showed him the propshaft wobble we were concerned about.  Reassuringly he agreed that it was not right and set about checking the connections in all the sections of the drive train.  He loosened and then tightened up some, checked the alignment of the shaft, and then asked us to test run it again whilst still tied to the dock.  Halleluiah! The adjustments that he made seemed to have done the trick.  We had feared that BV would need to be hauled out again. Instead, we untied and set off into the bay for a test run.  At the full range of power settings the shaft ran as it should without any wobbles. That was a great relief to us and meant that we could move on as soon as the mid-week weather window opened up for us.

Manhasset Bay Yacht Club

Test runs complete, we picked up a mooring buoy close to the Manhasset Bay Yacht Club which was conveniently close to the town and supermarket quays.

Escapade, BV’s new neighbour [Ed: or should that be ‘Escapade, from her new neighbour, BV’?]

It was also right next to Escapade with Julie and Richard on board.  Cate and Murray on Coolchange had already left the bay and were now working their way south having spent a couple of days in and around the Statue of Liberty and Staten Island.  We had intended to be there with them, but our delayed departure had scuppered that plan. Instead though, we had the fun opportunity to see Richard and Julie again.  An impromptu coffee in the morning turned into a subsequent dinner invite. An excellent Thai curry, great company and conversation, and a severe bashing of their drinks cabinet all added up to a top evening.  We agreed that Wednesday still seemed like the best weather window for us both to move on but with slightly different plans.  We intended to jump straight to Chesapeake Bay, probably overtaking Coolchange on the way, with their stopping at various ports en route, whilst Escapade would go into the Delaware Bay and enter the Chesapeake Bay at the top through the Chesapeake and Delaware Canal.  With reports of flotsam and debris floating in the Delaware Bay, and not wishing to bump into another floating tree, sailing outside along the coastline suited us better right now.

Time Square, New York City

Whilst this was all going on, we had received a couple of messages from an old work colleague, Steve ‘Dinger’ Bell. He was holidaying in New York City with his family and suggested we meet up.  If we hadn’t hit the log we would have been a long way south by now; another silver lining to the collision cloud.  A Tuesday lunchtime meet-up changed to a Tuesday dinner with a rendezvous close to Time Square in New York City.  We’d visited Manhattan during the day but the dinner get-together also allowed us to see the city at night which is surprisingly different.  Illuminated skyscrapers towered above us and the multitude of huge advertising TV screens in Time Square pushed out enough light to virtually turn night to day.  It was an entirely different experience and one that we would otherwise not have had.

(L to R) Nicky, me, Julie, James and ‘Dinger’

‘Dinger’ had picked the dinner venue, Ruth’s Chris Steak House, which turned out to be an excellent choice.  The restaurant’s dress code got us scrabbling about to find something other than our normal rig of shorts, T-shirts and flip flops [Ed: or our cold weather equivalent], and our mooring close to Port Washington made it very easy to get the train into Penn Station to meet up.  The steaks were superb; Nicky had a huge fillet whilst I had a New York Strip (what else would you pick in New York City?).  There was also non-stop chat.  Julie, ‘Dinger’ and James (their elder son) were clearly interested in what we were up to and, through ‘Dinger,’ it was nice to get a bit of work-time gossip tracking who was doing what.  After eating between us what seemed to be half a cow, we waddled out of the restaurant and headed for a bar to carry on the fun.  We could have talked until dawn but the Bells had some tourism to do in the morning and we needed to think about sailing through New York City and out towards Chesapeake so it had to end at a ‘reasonable’ time.  It was a wonderful evening to round off our time in Port Washington/New York.

Cate and Murray on Coolchange, Julie and Richard on Escapade, and Julie, ‘Dinger’ and James, had all made our longer than expected stay in Port Washington extremely sociable.  Sailing is a great pastime but it’s also the people that you meet along the way that make this unusual liveaboard lifestyle so much fun.  Who would have thought just over a fortnight ago that running over a log would have made things better not worse?

Port Washington, New York, USA