HAMPTON RIVER VA. TO KINGSTON AND THE THOUSAND ISLANDS, ONTARIO
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DATE June 19 to July 21, 2001
Miles Traveled: 773.1 |
We departed the Hampton River on June 19th and headed north for the 55-mile trip to Deltaville. We managed to add sails to our engine power for most of the trip. Luckily for us the wind from the fish processing plant in Deltaville was not in the direction of our anchorage and so we, and several other boats including Seaturtle 5, were able to enjoy the serene countryside without being disturbed by fishy odours.
Early the next morning we set off for Solomon's Island. It was a somewhat lumpy ride with the waves on the port side. On the way we heard boats being asked on the radio to turn to port to avoid the "TARGET AREA". This got our immediate attention! We prepared to do the same; however as we approached the area where we could see the giant target, close to our original course line, the radio again came to life and a safety boat declared that the target was "cold". We took that to mean that it was safe but just in case we avoided the target area by the largest margin we could. No navy jet fighters appeared while we were there, but better to be safe than to be fish food.
We arrived around 3.00 pm and anchored in almost the same spot as when we were heading south. Seaturtle 5 was a quarter mile behind us but did not arrive. After an hour or so and a radio call, they motored in after having motored up the wrong channel. The entry around the small, rocky triangular island at the entrances to Solomon's can be quite disconcerting; a little like some of the "roundabouts" that we used to encounter while driving around England.
From Solomon's we went north to Annapolis, encountering no military presence this time but lots of fishing boats, a couple of barges with tugs, and a tanker. We arrived in mid afternoon and anchored in Back Creek in the larger of the anchorages near the fuel dock.
On the Saturday, our friend and Diane's ex-co worker, Christa, arrived and stayed with us for four days. On the Sunday we all sailed to St. Michaels, on the east side of the Chesapeake. We enjoyed the beautiful little town and spent most of the afternoon in the spectacular Maritime Museum. The museum includes a lighthouse and numerous interesting displays housed in other buildings along with several sailing vessels in various states of restoration.
On the way there we lost steering. Jeffrey was very surprised, as he knew that the steering gear was very heavily built and somehow he expected it to last forever. It turned out that a nut had come loose and was quickly replaced with lots of locktite so that it is now hopefully good for a long time.
We returned from St. Michaels and walked around Annapolis, exploring some of the historic places and enjoying the seafood for which the Chesapeake is famous.
On the final day of Christa's stay we all piled into her rental car early in the morning and drove to Washington DC. Her return flight was not until 7.00 pm and so we dropped off the car and used the subway system to check out such places as the White House, the Washington monument and a couple of the eighteen or so Smithsonian buildings. We spent most of the time in the Air and Space Museum and the remainder in one of the Art Museums.
At the end of the day Christa took the subway back to the airport and we used it to travel to the outskirts of Washington where we knew from a previous excursion, that we could find a bus back to Annapolis.
We had planned to continue our journey north at this time in company with Charlie and Joyce of Seaturtle 5, but they were having serious engine problems including low compression and high running temperatures. They were investigating either having a new engine installed locally or the having the boat shipped back to Toronto to have the work done there. Under these circumstances we were forced to leave on our own and so on June 30th we set off for Fairlee Creek and with a friendly tide, ended up going as far as Chesapeake City on the C & D Canal. Unfortunately for us the anchorage at Chesapeake City was over crowded with dozens of noisy powerboats, which were rafted 5 to 15 boats wide. The noise went on all night and we were glad to depart the next day to head south on the Delaware.
We anchored that night in the winding Cohansey River, and the next day we arrived around noon in Cape May NJ to await a suitable weather window for the start of our Atlantic run. It was with some difficulty that we anchored, as the areas outside of the channels are quite shallow. We waited a day for a storm caused by a cold front to go through and later in the evening while we were below we heard someone call our name and a dark green hull went by the windows of our pilot house. It was Seaturtle 5! We ran up the steps to the cockpit, surprised and pleased to see Joyce and Charlie. They had decided to go with the engine in its current state and hoped that it would make it back to Lake Ontario. They told us that Phil and Debbie of Chanticleer were also anchored close by. We were happy to travel with Seaturtle 5 again and to provide the assurance of some assistance if some thing happened.
The next day all three boats set out for the voyage north to Atlantic City. The trip was uneventful with light winds from the south. We motored into Atlantic City and headed for the fuel dock where we found the price of diesel fuel to be 30c per gallon more than Annapolis. I checked the price of a dock and found that it had, as we had been told, doubled over the last few months. It was now $4 per foot, $160 US or $240 CAN to park a boat our size overnight!! Needless to say we anchored out. The only marina that we had found with that price per foot was in Nassau's Atlantis Marina, where the minimum was 45 feet and every boat was a hundred feet or more.
Again we waited out a potential storm for a day and were rewarded for our patience with several fireworks displays put on by the local hotel/casinos to celebrate July 4th. On the 5th we departed for Manasquan Inlet. It was a lumpy ride out through the breakers in 10 to 15ft. rollers. The rollers persisted for most of the eight-hour voyage diminishing only a little as we headed north-northeast up the Atlantic coast. We docked on the "raft up" dock at the Shrimp Box Restaurant and enjoyed their great seafood. Later in the evening we were pleasantly surprised when we were again treated to a fireworks display. We asked some locals why they celebrated a day late and they smiled and said, "It rained last night!"
On the 6th the winds were forecast to be 10 to 20 knots from the north. This would have meant a wet bumpy ride and so we stayed in Manasquan and had breakfast at one of the local eateries. Later we were chatting with Martin and Jane from Vancouver, who were taking delivery of their new boat "Anna Marie" from the west coast of Florida, when a gentleman approached us on the dock. He introduced himself as Paul Lucier and asked us if we needed a ride to the grocery store. It turned out that Paul and his wife Cindy were in Georgetown, Exhumes on "Perfect Partner" while we were there, but we had never run into each other. He ended up loaning us the car and so Martin and Jeffrey picked up our empty propane cylinders and filled them and the ladies all managed to get some grocery shopping done. Thank You Paul and Cindy! We never cease to be amazed at the kindness of the people that we meet on our journey.
The trip from Manasquan to Great Kills was handled mostly under engine and autopilot except when we turned west to head past the tip of Sandy Hook toward Great Kills. At that point we ran into an easterly wind, which allowed us to put up sail, and helped us to plough through hundreds of boats in-between Sandy Hook and Great Kills Harbour.
The friendly members of the Great Kills Yacht Club greeted Seaturtle 5, Rosa Mari and Perce Neige and we were each allocated a visitors dock. The Commodore met us at the dock and personally invited us for food and drinks at the club, as it was friendship day when all the local clubs were invited to enjoy each other's hospitality. The lunch menu included hamburgers, hot dogs, soup, corn on the cob, and were encouraged to come for dinner (also free!) prepared by the members. It did not take too much persuasion and such hospitality should of course not go un-rewarded and so we tried to patronize the bar as generously as we could :-).
We stayed an extra day and then headed for New York City. We took photos of Seaturtle 5 and Anna Marie in front of the Statue of Liberty. We said goodbye to Anna Marie as they were staying at the 79th Street Marina, and we headed north with Seaturtle 5 to the Nyack Yacht Club just north of the Tapanzee Bridge on the west side. Seaturtle 5 had found this friendly yacht club on their previous trip south. Nyack Y.C. only maintains 3 moorings for visitors but we were lucky as two were open. The members who were there said that, as there was no one who could officially take our $10 mooring fee, it was free. Free is good! Since they do not have a bar we could not even buy them a drink. The best we could do was to use their soft drink machine.
The next day we waited until 1.00 p.m. for slack water when we were able to do around seven knots with the tide and headed for West Point. We had bad memories of problems while trying to anchor opposite West Point and the "free when available" dock looked really rough, so we bypassed West Point and headed to the very pretty Island of Pollopel. There we anchored up the narrow channel and enjoyed the view while anchored close to the ruined castle. Two kayakers came by and told us that that an arms merchant had built the castle and indeed we noted that it was labeled as an armory.
At 5.00 am the next day we left to try to catch the tide for a few hours at least, but around 7.00 am we were happy to pick up a mooring at Chelsea Marina as thunderstorms seemed imminent. After a few hours the storm abated and we continued toward Kingston NY.
During this time Jeffrey's kidney stone problems returned and forced Diane to do the steering and piloting while Jeffrey suffered extreme pain with the best grace that he could muster under the circumstances. Those readers who have given birth may understand the level of pain but the labour must have been for ten to twelve hours to be comparable. Diane valiantly ran the boat, mostly on her own for the balance of the trip and with some help docked the boat in Rondout Marina in Kingston, NY. Jeffrey took drugs of various kinds, which allowed him to handle the pain, and managed to pass the stone later in the evening. However he was so exhausted by the pain and inebriated by the drugs that he was happy to return to bed and sleep
The next day we again waited for the tides and the currents and then motored to Catskill. At Catskill we found "The Point" a great restaurant, a very short distance up the river, which not only fed us but also allowed us to stay on their dock overnight free. It was the best deal we had discovered in quite while so we enjoyed it while we could.
The following day we took the short trip to Castleton on the Hudson and used the balance of the day to prepare for dismasting the boat in preparation for the journey through the Erie Canal System.
Charlie and Jeffrey had both handled numerous mastings and de-mastings and so on both days they assisted other people who had been used to their marina doing the job. The major problem was the wakes produced by passing powerboats, which made the job difficult. Our previous minimalist supports had been used for other needs but Jeffrey had used the extra day in Rondout Marina to check out their scrap woodpile and had been allowed by the marina to take several pieces of wood to build a much improved mast support system, which allowed for easier crossing of the foredeck and improved visibility for operating in the locks.
We had heard that Geoff and Bunkie of Everden (MCC dock C-49) were going south this season and were very happy, but not in the least surprised, to see them arrive at Castleton to be masted. Castleton is one of the "crossroads" on the N-S route and we had been keeping an eye out for them since we heard of their departure from the club.
After our mast was ready to go we found that once again the good people of Castleton on the Hudson Boat Club were having a great dinner at an great price and so we joined in and enjoyed the evening while we waited for our friend Christa to arrive to add muscle and good looks to our efforts to handle the Erie and Oswego Canal locks. Later in the evening she arrived by train and taxi and the next day we departed northward for Waterford via US Lock 1 the only federal (i.e. FREE) lock that we went through.
We were motoring with Charlie and Joyce but at Waterford we had to go ahead of them as Joyce was having pain from what appeared to be a pinched nerve. Charlie decided to rent a car to take her home and acquire another family member to assist him through the locks. He was unsure when he would start through the canal system.
We began to work our way through the locks starting with a flight of 5 locks, numbered two to six. Presumably there is no number one so that people are not confused with US lock 1. It was much better going through with three people than with two, especially as going west involves more lock ups vs. the easier lock downs. We stayed at Amsterdam, a city that has lost much of its local industry, and found that the "free" dock there was now a 50c per foot dock. In Herkimer Terminal we docked with 30A power for free, found a Wal-Mart and got a ride from a friendly local lady to the nearby liquor store. Our final stopover was at Sylvan Beach where we stayed for free on the wall, checked out the local amusement park, the green lake water (yuchh!) and had dinner at the Canal Restaurant. The fourth and final day, we crossed Lake Oneida and a few locks later made the right turn into the Oswego River to head into the town of Oswego on Lake Ontario.
We noticed that there seemed to be very little traffic and the lock keepers that we spoke to agreed but did not know why. Some of the locks were in better repair than a year ago, but many still had large holes in the walls and one had a cable that was not attached at the bottom. The lock tenders were very friendly except for one person at lock 13, who demanded that we buy a pass for our dinghy (which we were towing because of our previous experience -see installment 2). A previous lock keeper had warned us about him but said that perhaps, as the motor was swung up out of the water, he would allow it. He would not accept this and in order to avoid paying Jeffrey had to go over the side of the boat onto the dinghy and take the outboard off the stern of the dinghy.
We docked at the Oswego Yacht Club, where we received reciprocals for the first time this year and the next day we stepped the mast at the Oswego Marina, whose price of $2 per foot ($82) seemed very good, until they tacked on "minimum extra labor" of $20. It still was marginally better than the Katlyn Marine in Sodus Bay who charged us $120 and allowed us to stay on their dock overnight.
We were very happy to spend another day at OYC, as they are very friendly people. We were really pleased when we walked down to our boat and found out that Seaturtle 5 had caught up with us. Charlie and his son Gary were heading for the Trent-Severn system and therefore not masting and so both boats left together early the next morning for Canada. About half way through the journey, we received a VHF call from Seaturtle 5 telling us that the engine problems, which had plagued them since Marsh Harbour, were becoming worse and the wind was on the nose and so they were following us to Kingston. We slowed down in case we were needed and two hours later docked in Portsmouth Harbour. A little later Seaturtle 5 arrived and as we helped them into dock, the Atomic 4 stalled and could not be restarted. After a few days Charlie had it trailered home to Bolsover Ontario. The journey was over for Seaturtle 5.
For ourselves, we look forward to spending few weeks in and around the 1000 islands, just enjoying the beautiful sights of Canada. We will travel west back to Mimico Cruising Club in Toronto later in the season and plan to haul out Perce Neige there for well-deserved repairs and upgrades.
This will be our final installment however we will be updating the web pages, making corrections and adding a photo gallery and possibly a new email address although we both like the convenience of Pocketmail so much that we may continue it.
We welcome your comments and corrections and hope that the information will assist anyone who is seriously thinking of going south.
Fair Winds
Diane and Jeffrey Laws
On Board Perce Neige
Somewhere in the Thousand Islands.
August 08, 2001
