omg omg omg We're UNDER WAY!

Well, it has finally happened: after five and a half months in the shipyard -- our longest stay anywhere in two decades -- we are back under way. We left with some things unfinished, but we were long past done being stuck in Mamaroneck, and we had a good weather window in the Atlantic Ocean that we did not want to miss.

Just before sunrise this morning behind an interesting cloud, making a shadow on the fiery sky.

Today is that window, and I am typing off the coast of New Jersey in seas less than one foot and light wind. We dropped lines at the shipyard yesterday during their lunch hour, for favorable tide and a lightning fast run through New York City and out The Narrows. We ended the day anchored in the bight of Sandy Hook Point (map).

Mostly finished. She looks pretty good. A bit of yard filth running down the sides below the freeing ports.

When last I posted here two and a half weeks ago, I mentioned that we were just waiting on final touch-up, which itself was waiting on arrival of paint. The paint arrived on time and the painter was able to mostly fix the color mismatch around the boarding gates, and there was a flurry of activity from the paint crew for a few short days. Then it all stopped, and work on the full typewritten page of paint punch list items, which I gave the painter a full month ago, never really happened.

While the doors were off for refinishing they covered the opening with blue plastic. It was very blue in the saloon for a week.

He would come in to the yard every couple of days and work for maybe two hours. We were approaching completion, as a mathematician might say, asymptotically -- the rate of closure constantly slowing and never actually achieving the goal. When this departure window popped up, we announced to the painter that we'd be leaving Monday night and would like all remaining items completed.

The replacement GPS cable for the one I damaged. I spliced it in a tupperware up in the mast.

The incessant delays, the mistakes, and the unannounced two-week disappearance that I mentioned last post had pushed the yard manager over the edge, and the tensions between him and the painter have been escalating. I don't know what he texted to the painter Monday morning after we went in to settle the bill, but the painter showed up mid-day and announced that we was done, and anything else we needed would have to be done by the yard. Harumph.

While I was cleaning up the mess they made, I noticed the yard guys nicked one of our power cables with the saw while they were replacing our exhaust hose. They sent the electrician out with some cable and we replaced it together.

The yard sent a worker down to dab some primer on the couple of chips that were down to bare metal, and we made the decision that the handful of list items still unfinished was not reason enough to miss this weather window. Yesterday morning they loaded us up with the leftover paint and some primer for touch-up, as well as the remaining half sheet of polycarbonate windscreen material from the replacement of our long missing center windscreen on the flybridge.

Visiting the beer store in the aftermath of the big storm. The store flooded and they had to rip out a lot of drywall. Thankfully most of the beer was spared. I stocked up in preparation for our departure.

It's been a long yard period, and I know I am making it sound like one problem after another, but the boat looks really, really good. And even with all the delays and issues, it's been the least problematic yard visit we've ever had; we would definitely come back if we needed other work. We also made a lot of little incremental improvements and fixes to the boat in our nearly six months here.

One evening about town we stumbled upon the annual military-style "inspection" ceremony at the fire station.

Not knowing when we'd be done with the yard, we have not allowed ourselves to think about what's next. Even now, we don't have any sort of real plan beyond getting below the frost line before winter actually sets in. Right now we're focused on making Norfolk, and that's the destination we've programmed into our transponder. I'd love to just continue all the way down to the Chesapeake Bay entrance offshore, but our overnight passage muscles are atrophied and my sleep schedule is so early-shifted that I can't safely stand my usual watch to 0300.

Reception problems with the VHF radio had me worried we had damaged the new antenna cables in the same way we damaged the GPS cable. I lacked the right test gear and ended up buying this compact oscilloscope to do some reflectometry.

After posting about the 'scope on social media, some more savvy folks suggested I get this inexpensive miniature vector network analyzer for an easier and more thorough job. The antennas and cables tested OK.

We can certainly revisit the situation while we are offshore tomorrow, but as it stands now our plan is to make Atlantic City tonight, possibly in time to go ashore for dinner, and then leave in the morning for Cape May. From there we will make the usual trek up Delaware Bay, across the C&D Canal, and then down the Chesapeake. What stops we make there, and for how long, will depend on how the fall weather shapes up as we arrive.

Passing the newest iteration of Empire State, the training ship for SUNY Maritime. The Maritime Administration provided several academies with these new Multi-Mission ships, which can be used to house relief workers during disasters, a much better solution than the Wright, where I was housed in the USVI.

It feels really good to be back under way, especially in these conditions. After 167 days of my own part of the yard work, with just a few days off, it's actually even relaxing. I'm not done yet -- even my list took a back seat to making the window -- and I have a couple of projects that need to be banged out in any free time I can find over the next few days. The back door needs weatherstripping, and we can't even get the sheet of polycarbonate inside the boat until I cut it down, among other things.

In the nearly six months since we passed this way, they've finished the enormous glass dome atop the Domino Sugar mixed-use development in Brooklyn.

Having said that, I'm going to try to get myself out of project mode and relax back into the cruising lifestyle. This blog, too, should return to some semblance of normalcy, with a post every week or so and mostly chronicling our travels. You'll likely next hear from me again somewhere on Delaware Bay.

Goodbye, New York. Sorry to have missed spending any time in the city this season.