A week in Brooklyn

We are underway southbound in the Atlantic Ocean, off the coast of New Jersey. Today is the first good weather window for this since I last posted here, and if the forecast holds, we will have another two days before the window slams shut. We are hoping to make it all the way to Hampton Roads while the going is good.

A final glance over our shoulder at The Battery as we leave Manhattan for Brooklyn.

As predicted, the nor'easter had us pinned on the boat the rest of Sunday and all day Monday and we did not leave Port Washington until Tuesday morning. We had a very early start on account of tide, and I was sorry I did not deck the tender Sunday when the wind was still low enough to do it. Judicious timing let us run the entire Harlem River with the mast up, and we had a fair tide the whole trip. We had the hook down in our usual spot in Anchorage 17 (map) before lunch time, and were looking forward to a nice stay.

The fall view from Anchorage 17 is spectacular in the daytime ...

Alas, it was not to be. A relentless north wind battered us our whole stay, and while the river was fine while it was ebbing, once the flood started the wind against current stirred the river into a choppy mess that pinned us on the boat. And the flood started before dinner time and went until past dark each evening. That first night we put our inflatables on and braved the river, but Louise nearly went for a swim boarding the tender.

... and also at night. One of the charms of this spot.

That was on her birthday, and so we were perhaps too invested in getting ashore for dinner. Once ashore we had a nice walk to our favorite neighborhood joint, the Tryon Public House. When we checked in at the marina we learned they would be closed for the next two years for renovations, leaving us with nowhere to land the dinghy in all of Manhattan. We also learned the current administration has cut funding for the renovation of the 79th Street Boat Basin, leaving that project in limbo.

Birthday toast at the Tryon Public House.

That would be the last time we made it ashore for dinner in Manhattan. Wednesday we never left the boat at all, and by Thursday we were stir-crazy and so went ashore during the ebb just to get a walk in. We decided we needed to get off the Hudson, and we booked a mooring ball in Sheepshead Bay, Brooklyn to wait out the rest of the weather. Expecting to be in Manhattan for a week, each of us had placed Amazon orders due to arrive Thursday, but they had not yet by the end of the ebb.

Quisqueya Plaza on Dyckman is decorated for the holiday.

As it turned out, we both got the notices as soon as we had settled in back aboard Vector. I decided to chance a wet return ride and I zipped back ashore during slack, hoping to beat the worst of the chop. I power-walked over to the Amazon locker, which is located in a housing project. I had a little bit of a splashy ride home but it was not too bad.

Obligatory photo. I weep now when I see her.

Friday morning my decision to race ashore Thursday proved prescient, as we woke to the worst seas yet. Vector was pitching so hard it was challenging to pour a cup of coffee, and the rollers coming down the river were surfing the dinghy right into the back of the boat. At one point it over-rode the swim platform and came down so hard it took a big chunk out of the paint, so now I have another thing to fix. We pulled it around to the side and hip-tied it so we could weigh anchor and get out of dodge before things got worse; there was no way we could hoist it in these conditions.

Attacked by our own dinghy. You can not normally see sky in this camera; that's how much we are pitching.

Having the dink on the hip in these conditions limited our speed to just over idle, and so as soon as we passed under the bridge we decided to trail it. That was a strategic error, or more precisely we need to work on a better technique, because the combination of 4 knots of headway and the steep waves nearly ripped it out of Louise's hands as she moved the lines and I had to stop the boat anyway. By the time we were abreast of Edgewater things had calmed down enough for us to pull over, drop a lunch hook, and hoist the tender on deck for the rest of the trip. No way did I want to tow it through the heart of NY harbor.

The result.

Getting underway earlier than planned, even at the slowest speed we could comfortably keep, put us at Rockaway Inlet at low tide, and we ended up dropping a lunch hook off-channel for an hour to wait for more tide entering Sheepshead Bay. There is a narrow, shallow bar at the entrance, which kept us out of Sheepshead for several years. Now that we have Corps of Engineers surveys available it is doable, and we've been meaning to try it for a couple of years. North wind gave us the perfect reason.

Hard to see but this is literally a hole in the river. Sheet pile goes to the bottom so they can work on the new rail tunnel.

The sounder said we could have made it at low tide; good to know for the future, but better safe than sorry. We were picking up a Miramar Yacht Club mooring (map) before 2:30. At an average of $70 per night, the mooring is double what we were paying in Manhattan, but it comes with launch service, and the harbor is far more protected.

The QM2 was berthed in Brooklyn as we passed.

We prefer our own tender to a launch, and after splashing it I headed over to get the gate code and the lay of the land. Before I even left the boat we noticed we were bumping the next ball over and I thought I would ask if they had one with more room. They did not until the following day, and then they wanted us to move anyway because they thought the anchors where we were would be too light for the forecast wind coming later in the week. I took a short stroll and when I returned to Vector we moved the eyes of the two mooring pennants directly to our cleats, eliminating the few feet of our own line that was in the lash-up, and that stopped the bumping. We did have to stow the dink on the hip.

Sheepshead vibe. This is Lokum; that disco ball is 2' across.

We ended up spending a full six nights in the harbor. Saturday we moved as requested to a beefier mooring, and that proved essential as the winds built to 40+ steady for nearly two days. By the end of our stay we had chafed both pennants, one nearly completely through, and they had to find us another pair. The two 400-lb mushroom anchors did hold us firmly in place, but we set an anchor alarm just in case. Our first mooring had two 250-lb mushrooms.

Port pennant chafed through to two strands. The starboard was not much better.

Sheepshead Bay, named after a fish, is both the name of the bay and the name of the neighborhood to its north. South of the bay is Manhattan Beach (confusingly not in Manhattan), but there is no landing on that side and it is a long way around by land. We spent most of our time in the Sheepshead Bay neighborhood, which, while diverse in the way all of NYC is, has a distinctly Eastern European leaning. Lots of Russian is spoken and lots of signage is in the Cyrillic alphabet.

Local fixture. Cheez on Anything! I passed this every day.

In the same way that we could get any cuisine in Inwood but all of it had a Dominican flair, we could likewise get any cuisine here but all with an eastern European flair. In the course of our stay we dined at Patrizia's (Italian), Lokum (Mediterranean with a Turkish accent), Next Door (Italian), and Emmons Palace (Azerbaijani). During the worst night of wind we took the launch ashore and stumbled to the closest joint, Roll'n'Roaster, which is a quick-service place that has been here forever. They at least have beer and wine, and the sandwiches were good. Our best experience was our final night, at Oda House, serving authentic Georgian food.

They no longer have skating car hops, but it was the era.

I had expected to spend more time in other parts of the city via transit, but the weather was not conducive to it, and a giant project kept me tied to the boat for part of our stay. But we did get into Manhattan once, taking the Q train from the Sheepshead Bay station to Times Square. I had errands to run, and Louise wanted to explore the New York Library. My errands were a success, but the library, overrun by tourists, evidently no longer allows you to just walk the hallowed halls and take it all in. Which is a shame.

Atlas.

We enjoyed a street-vendor pretzel, one of my NYC weaknesses, in Bryant Park before heading home. On some future visit I would like to explore more of the interesting neighborhoods in Brooklyn, which are a shorter train ride than Times Square. It's a safe bet we'll be back with Dyckman Landing closing.

British Empire Building.

I did enjoy walking around Sheepshead Bay most days, and we found a decent bagel place, a close market with great prices and most of what we normally buy, a dollar store, several pharmacies, and even a UPS Access Point, where we had our mail service send our mail. Somewhat out-of-place is an Applebees not far from the dock, which we did not sample even though it probably has the best draft selection in the neighborhood. An Aldi is also a short walk.

Skating before Prometheus has already begun.

The project that drained some of my time and energy was replacing the helm computer which provides our navigation charts and drives the boat to pre-planned routes. We've been scraping by with an old Windows 8.1 machine (the chart software is Windows-only) that I beat into submission a decade ago, and I have been nursing it along every time it has a hiccup. It's down a USB port due to a lightning strike and it goes through a CPU fan every couple of years, but I can no longer reliably get parts.

Old helm PC vs. new. Quarter for scale.

One of the Amazon deliveries in Manhattan was the replacement, a diminutive Windows 11 machine that I ordered when the current CPU fan started making its impending-death noises. In addition to heading off the fan crisis, the new machine allows us to upgrade the chart software to a more current version and also will stop all the drama from various things telling me that Windows 8 is no longer supported.

Installed and connected to instruments. This scrap-wood shelf originally held a laptop.

I'll spare you the gory details, but anyone who has ever done this kind of upgrade will tell you that more things break in the process than just transition seamlessly, and I spent many hours getting it all running, our charts and licenses moved over, and all the instrument connections working. Even with all the testing it would not talk to the autopilot when we left the dock, and I had to hand-steer and fix the problem at the next stop. So far today in the Atlantic it's doing fine, although I learned I need to tweak the screen colors in night mode.

They're building the winter market in Rock Center. Also Bryant Park.

Yesterday conditions were just barely good enough for us to move over to Atlantic Highlands, in Raritan Bay, where we needed to take on fuel. After dropping our moorings we briefly stopped at the yacht club dock to take on water, and we had a nice chat with Josh, a retired firefighter who maintains all the moorings in the bay and also drives the launch part of the week. We learned we can use the dinghy dock for just $25 per day when conditions are good enough for us to anchor in the limited space at the end of the bay..

These very nice (and expensive) stainless steel fences are all over Sheepshead, perhaps one house in three. A local style.

Rather than cut straight across from Rockaway Inlet to Sandy Hook in heavy westerlies, we hugged the Coney Island shoreline until the Hudson and then came down the Chapel Hill Channel into Raritan Bay. We bunkered 200 gallons of diesel at the Atlantic Highlands municipal marina before dropping the hook in the protected harbor (map). The fuel attendant was kind enough to give us a ten-cent per gallon discount for that quantity.

The market had this very tasty porter from Poland for less than three bucks per half-liter bottle. I stocked up.

I say protected, and it was comfortable enough as an anchorage, but we had quite the zesty tender ride to dinner. Just as last time, Thursday night was prime rib night at On The Deck restaurant adjacent to the marina. Louise also found the chicken pot pie quite good.

And every kind of candy, in bulk. If you can read Russian.

The current around the tip of Sandy Hook can be wicked, ramping quickly from zero to nearly three knots in the blink of an eye. In order not to have it against us this morning we weighed anchor at 4:00 AM, and I am a little bleary-eyed as I type. I did have a nap after sunrise, when I turned the conn over to Louise. The early start will let us get all the way to Atlantic City with a daylight arrival.

Final view of the city from our anchorage last night.

If this weather window holds, tomorrow we will depart on the direct outside route to the mouth of the Chesapeake Bay, bypassing the slog up Delaware Bay and back down the Chesapeake. We will make the final decision as we approach the sea buoy for Cape May.