We made it! The journey to Essex, CT

Our course over the last 30 days

The picture above just about says it all.  On May 16 we departed Soldier Cay in the Berry Islands and last night at 8:15pm we dropped the anchor across from the Essex Yacht Club in Essex, CT.  It has been a 1,278nm trip with the one goal ...... to make it to the Seven Seas Cruising Association GAM that is being held here this weekend.  We did it!!

We've documented the first part of the trip so we'll go right to the Florida portion.......  Since the winds were not in our favor we went up the inside to St Augustine as quickly as possible.  By chance the bridge at Titusville wasn't opening when we needed it so we anchored nearby for the night.  It was a good night and as lucky as we are, we were in the right place for the Falcon 9 space launch that night.  Very cool!

Our last rainbow in Florida

Up goes another rocket!

From there we made it up to St Augustine for our semi-annual Pizza Alley fix and jumped offshore.  Our goal was to make it further than we ever have and we succeeded.  409nm and 3 nights later we pulled into Beaufort, NC.  We had thoughts of going around Cape Hatteras but tropical storm Colin was on the move so we took the prudent direction and went inside to Hampton, VA.  Since we had a chance to sail more than not we decided to do the Coinjock/Virginia Cut run and stopped at Midway Marina.  Coinjock Marina was 100% full of big boats so perhaps we found our future stop over.  Besides, Tim the dock master drove us down to pick up dinner at Currituck BBQ.  Oh boy.....talk about good food!!!!  The Dinosaur BBQ doesn't even come close to real southern BBQ.  It was a great find!!

Spotted and Bottle nosed dolphins

They stayed with us for close to an hour!

More fun then ever to watch

Robie, your pretzel rolls!

The big powerboats at Coinjock Marina

What is left of Currituck BBQ!

From there it was through Portsmouth and up to the Hampton Public Piers.  This is our second stop at the marina and it was, once again a nice stop.  It also served as a pick-up location to have our "rock star" crew, Bobo fly in and get a taste of offshore sailing.  Lucky for us we think he really enjoyed the sail up the east coast.  Hopefully he'll be able to join us again for more offshore trips!

One of many ships in Battleship row

Hampton Public Piers

The day after Bob arrived we headed north, out the Chesapeake and up the Delmarva coast.  Captain Bob got his first initiation going out of the Chesapeake when suddenly we were hailed by a US Navy patrol boat....now this boat had real guns and then we heard....."move out of the channel for a US submarine!"  Yep, we did as directed and we had a great chance for pictures.

Look Out!!

And we did get out of the way!

Two nights, three days later we pulled into Port Washington, NY, on the north shore of Long Island.  We had logged another 310 nautical miles and pulled within a day of achieving our goal.  Along the way we:

• Sailed out the Chesapeake and saw our first, up close and personal sub.
• Battled a thousand black flies that appear to hatch in the open ocean.
• Had two good nights, the second of which was a great reach up the Jersey coast, arriving in NY harbor at dawn.
• Our first sail/motor into and through the waters of NYC, the East River, Hell Gate and Long Island sound

Looking towards the Verrazano Bridge, NYC

"Jenny" and the Verrazano Bridge

"Lady Liberty" herself!

The currents of the East River

The Manhattan skyline

The Brooklyn Bridge

The "Freedom" tower

United Nations building

check out the beautiful stone work

Bob headed back to reality on Monday and the next day we took advantage of NW winds to head east on the Sound.  We didn't think we could do the whole run in one day but the wind gods were kind to us.  We even made it up the Connecticut River before the current switched.  So.....the SSCA (Seven Seas Cruising Association) GAM is next and then we will have to make some more plans.

The Essex waterfront