Will reminiscing on his time spent in the Big Apple.
Our trip from New York to Norfolk, Virginia was great! As the old saying goes, we had fair winds and following seas basically the entire time.
We motored our way out of the Lincoln Harbor Marina and down the Hudson, passing great landmarks again like the Freedom Tower and the Statue of Liberty, dodging ferries, freighters and police boats the whole way. As we approached the Verrazano Bridge, the exit of New York Harbor, we took one last look back at the city and bid it a fond farewell. We then hoisted the sails and set a course for Virginia.
Last view of Lady Liberty
The wind was in our face for the first portion so we had to motor sail for a bit, but we knew as we headed further south, the wind was going to shift to our stern and we would get our first chance at some downwind sailing. After a few hours the wind did exactly as we hoped, so we eased the sails and turned the engine off. It was blowing a very easy 10-15 knots and the sea was beautifully calm, perfect conditions for our autopilot Jeeves to handle. We basically adopted the phrase "set and forget", meaning set the sails, set the autopilot, and forget you even have to do anything because the boat is doing all the work for you! This allowed us time to relax and enjoy the three day journey we had ahead of us.
Blissfully calm.
The first night was great, but definitely cold! The wind and seas remained calm, coming from just off of our starboard stern quarter, putting us on a nice broad reach. We maintained a boat speed of 6.5 knots the entire night, occasionally having to dodge some massive freighters and tankers along the way. We even had a few dolphins come and pay us a visit, swimming along side the boat under the glow of the almost full moon!
It was so cold we even had to bring our sleeping bags up into the cockpit during the night watch.
The wind and seas held right up through the next day until night fell upon us again. The wind shifted to our port stern quarter, forcing us to jibe and the sea rose to some steep 3-4 foot waves. Basically, it got a little rough. Nothing Jeeves couldn't handle though! For the most part...
Jeeves has this one little weak point where this small metal pin holds the whole mechanism together. It's already busted on us once, so it was almost expected when the seas picked up. The pin snapped, causing Will to have to drive for a bit until he woke me up for my watch. We swapped the pin with ease, having done it already before and kept on cruising. Despite the seas picking up, the wind still held at around 15 knots and the full moon lit up the ocean, without a cloud in the sky.
We reached the mouth of the Chesapeake Bay at around Noon on Thursday and made our way through the massive bridge at its entrance. We kept the sails up but had to turn the engine on because we were fighting the current the whole way in. Despite it taking a while to get into the Chesapeake, we are proud to say that we had our first day where it was warm enough to wear shorts and a t-shirt! There is no photo provided, for our pasty white man thighs aren't the most photogenic right now. We made our into the Elizabeth river, passing these gargantuan skyscrapers as the sun fell on Norfolk. As we got closer, we came to realize that these were no tall buildings and skyscrapers, but massive Naval ships. The entire way into the dock at Portsmouth you pass these restricted areas with police boats cruising around on patrol, standing guard for these behemoth ships. Definitely a little nerve-racking, especially at night.
After a few hours of being our a best boat behavior, we approached the free dock on the Portsmouth side of the river and tied up next to some ferries that were made to look like old river boats. We then went out in search of some cold beer and some warm food. The town had this eerie deserted feel to it that night though. We walked around for a good hour and finally came upon the main strip. We walked down it and saw that every single restaurant was closed, and at only 7:30 at night!?! Eventually Will and I realized why. It was Thanksgiving of course!! So unable to find an open restaurant other than a Chinese food place, we headed back to the boat, cooked up some clam chowder, and passed out. Welcome to Virginia!
We took almost a two week hiatus on Fisher's Island, NY. This little slice of Atlantic paradise is located just off of the coast of Connecticut, on the outer edge of the Long Island Sound. Sam had a few doctors appointments he had to go to mainly to figure out how he was going to get his diabetes supplies in some not so easy to reach parts of the world. We also had some various things to fix on the boat, nothing to huge and had to do a trip into New York City to prepare for our arrival there. This Island is not made up of very many people, especially during the colder winter months, but every person we met there gave us a very warm welcome and treated us as one of their fellow islanders. It was great! We met some very awesome people who immediately showed support for what we were doing. They fed us, gave us help on the boat, and even a few had some inspiring tales to tell about life on the sea.
We left Fishers Island around 930am on Friday. We were generally headed towards NYC, but we knew that we didn’t want to go through the East River at night because we would need to time ourselves with the tides to make it through. So our plan was to head towards NYC down the Long Island Sound and drop our anchor somewhere near the mouth of the East River, get some quick sleep, and wake up the next morning leaving a full day to navigate the area known as Hell Gate in the East River. (sounds fun, right?)
Tilikum tied up to the wharf at Fishers Island Yacht Club
We had a great passage averaging 6.5 knots with a strong breeze on our starboard forward quarter putting us on a close reach. Sailing was quite easy and Sam and I were having a great day listening to a New York Hispanic reggae channel, breaking into mini dance offs once every so often. There were a few other ships, but for the most part, we were all alone out there. We were cooking along all day and well into the evening.
Tilikum pounding her way through the swell flying towards NYC.
As the sun went down we began to see what we originally thought were stars, and later found out that they were in fact, moving across the sky and not stars, but planes. There were more planes in the sky than there were stars. It was nuts! You could see the halo of light illuminating NYC as we got closer. The light continued to get brighter and brighter until eventually we could make out individual buildings and saw the entire NYC Skyline. In celebration of this milestone Sam and I celebrated by playing a game of Battleship.
Side note: Before we left, Sam and I had a debate about whether we should bring this game or not. I argued that it took too much space and that if it was dropped that it would explode shooting its little pieces everywhere in the cabin. Many of which would likely never be found again, or would end up in the bilge. Sam argued that it was a great nautically themed game that could provide us with endless hours of entertainment and that if dropped the tiny little plastic clasps that hold the case together would protect us from an explosion. On the way to Fishers Island from Nova Scotia the game exploded, twice.. and we still find peices of it almost everyday.
So in order to justify us bringing the game and picking up all the tiny little pieces, twice, we played the game, which I will admit was a lot of fun in the middle of Long Island Sound at night, even though Sam won.
The first glimpse of the New York City Skyline from the Long Island Sound (Check out a cool black and white rendition on our Team Tilikum Facebook page!)
We arrived at a harbor called Glen Cove and could see from the charts that there was a breakwater that would give us a great anchorage, sheltering us from the strong North winds that were slaming against the shore. We tucked Tilikum in behind the breakwater and dropped the hook around 1230am on Saturday morning. We went below, made a little late night snack and then passed out very quickly.
We woke up the next morning at 530am to the coldest morning yet! It was that kind of cold where you lay in your sleeping bag watching your own breath waiting for the sun to come up to warm things up (a little), wishing that you could stay in your sleeping bag all day. It reminded me of two years ago while backpacking on the Appaliachian Trail where I had the bright idea of deciding that it was warm enough that I would mail my sleeping bag home to "save weight". The next few nights I spent attempting to sleep with every item of clothing I was carrying on, with my feet stuffed in my backpack acting as a makeshift sleeping bag. I would lay awake most of the night just waiting for there to be a glimmer of light outside.
However, on this day the excitement of going to NYC overruled the desire to stay warm, so we got up, bundled ourselves up like Ralphie’s little brother from The Christmas Story, started the engine, pulled up the anchor and headed straight towards the East River. IT WAS COLD!
Sam layered up as we sail out of Glen Cove having never even saw our surroundings in daylight.
Sam Quote: "The nice thing about 6 layers, is that you can't tell that I haven't showered in a week."
The East River is known for its swift currents. There is one section on this river that is known as Hell Gate which is marked by the Hell Gate Bridge. This one section can have currents reaching and sometimes exceeding 6 knots! Just an FYI for people who might not know, this is fast. Tilikum can only go 6.3 knots with her engine on and with no wind pushing against her. So you need to time your passage through this channel carefully and if you hit it right, you can actually speed through it with ease. We hit it on and reached Speed over Ground (SOG) speeds of 11 knots. We felt like we were F1 racers watching the land fly by so quickly. At one point we were sailing alongside the FDR when we noticed that we were actually going faster than the traffic that was right next to us.
Comforting sights to see considering the recent events in Paris
NYC Skyline and the FDR Parkway as we raced the adjacent traffic down river.
We eventually reached the heart of NYC near the Freedom Tower and where the Statue of Liberty, Ellis Island, and Governors Island are. There was a flurry of activity, numerous helicopters flying overhead, ferries zig zagging across the channel and police boats everywhere. It was quite overwhelming at the time!
Comforting sight to see considering the recent events is Paris.
The Freedom Tower
We turned around the Southern end of Manhattan and up into the Hudson headed for 79th Street Boat Basin. On the way there we hailed them to alert them of our arrival and to see which mooring to tie up to. They replied that they were hauling up their moorings today and that there was dock space available but that it was around $100 a night. We had heard such great things about the Boat Basin but this was triple what we had expected to pay so we decided to see what our options were. We pulled into Liberty Landing Wharf on the NY side but were quickly told that we needed to leave because they were closed for the season. So after some phone calls we decided to head up river towards New Jersey to where Sam's cousin kept his boat. On our way there we saw a few floating docks with plenty of open room on the NY side right next to Chelsea Pier driving range. So, we decided to give it a shot. As we pulled up to the wharf a French man came up to us. I said to him “Hey, we’re looking for a place to stay tonight, you know what the rate is here.”
He replied, “This place is closed but you should try Liberty Landing.”
I responded, “We tried that and they kicked us out.”
The French guy then said the magic words we had been hoping for… “Free.” He said “well that sucks, I guess you guys can tie up here then, I don’t care. Just remember though, if anyone asks, you never saw me.”
… Jackpot!
We quickly tied up the lines and began to pack up some things to take into the city.
Next stop NYC! We want to thank Mary and Brad Burnham for letting us stay in their awesome place for the past two weeks, and Heather and Dave Burnham for helping us with everything and making sure we didn't go hungry! Also want to thank everybody else on Fishers Island that helped us and made us feel so welcome while we were there! Thank you all!!
Had the pleasure of meeting up with Christopher, the Director of PR for JDRF in NYC last night. We discussed how to help each other out along the journey of Team Tilikum, where we will be promoting JDRF by telling our story to people we meet and through social media! We also personally gave him a check for $1000 as our first donation of many towards Type 1 Research! Every port we go into we will be flying a JDRF logo flag and rocking some "T1D Looks Like Me" shirts, courtesy of Christopher and his team at JDRF. It was great to meet you Christopher and we look forward to working with you along the way trying to turn Type 1 to Type None!
We woke up after spending our second night in quarantine and received a call from our customs agent who would be meeting us at the dock. He sounded very nice on the phone, asking us various questions like what our plans were and registration information. He told us the customs check-in fee was $19.99 and that's when we realized we had no cash on board. So, he let us go ashore and find an ATM. We walked down a long stretch of road in our full foul weather gear and deck boots which may have been an interesting sight to see for the outside world. Basically, we had the equivalent of snow pants and winter coats on. We finally came upon a gas station, got some cash and walked back to the boat to meet up with the agent. He arrived shortly after we got back and I must say, he was one of the nicest, most friendly customs agents I have ever dealt with. For those of you who've ever dealt with customs, it can usually be quite the ordeal. But this guy was great! He told us all kinds of stories and traded tips about adventures he had been on and was clearly jealous of our future sailing plans to come. All in all, customs took about 15 minutes, but still it was late in the morning by the time we were ready to cast off. We immediately started the engine after the agent left and hit the sea at around 11:30. We motored out through the hurricane gate and hoisted the sails. We hugged the coast for as long as we could, trying to get as high on the wind and as West as possible. Cruising at about 5.5 knots we made good headway towards the Long Island Sound and once again, the weather was B-E-A-utiful. Bright and sunny and a good 15 knot breeze. The wind direction wasn't quite in our favor though, so we knew we would have to tack a couple of times to reach Fishers Island at a half decent hour.
The weather held for us most of the day until late afternoon when the wind died off a bit. We didn't want to do the approach to Fisher's Island too late with all of the rocks, shoals and uncharted buoys around so we kicked the engine on and began to motor-sail towards Block Island hoping to get a few lifts in the wind so we could save some time.
Then this is where things got interesting.
Will and I are skilled in many aspects of sailing and cruising life. One aspect where we fall a little short, is diesel engines. Throughout our entire trip and even in the build up before we left, we talked about how we really, REALLY hoped that nothing would go wrong with our Yanmar 2GM diesel engine. One thing that we figured would be especially brutal, was that if we ran out of fuel and air got into the fuel lines. If this were to happen we would have to bleed the lines to re-prime the fuel pumps. We had heard from our friend Pat South that this was a particularly not fun thing to have to do, ESPECIALLY if you're out at sea. So neither of us knowing how to even do that, we went on about our journey just with the hopes that it would never happen to us. How could it right? Well folks, like the good ol' Murphy's Law we all learned about in high school, anything that's bound to happen, will happen.
Sure enough, right as the sun ducked under the horizon, right off of Block Island, right in the middle of the New York shipping lane, the engine sputtered...
We heard a funky noise and the whole engine started to shake loudly, knocking us out of our relaxing daze as we cruised along. We immediately reacted and shut down the engine. We looked at the fuel gauge and saw that the fuel level was still at half a tank. No way could we have run out of diesel! Unless the fuel gauge busted on us while we were cruising down here? No way! Not us! Not Tilikum! We continued sailing for a bit, in the dark, in the shipping lane and finally got up the courage to restart the engine. It started just fine! Will said to let the engine idle for a bit before kicking it into gear so we did, and then it happened again. The engine sputtered, shook violently making the whole boat tremble, and then shut off on us. It had happened. The one thing we had hoped never would, did. We tried putting more diesel in the tank but why would it be that easy, right? There's a big difference between gas and diesel engines. When gas engine's run out of gas, you just put more gas in. When diesel's run out of gas, its a whole other story. You have to do something called "bleed the lines" which of course, we had no idea how to do. Basically, you have to get all of the air out of the fuel lines before it will start again. Bleeding the lines isn't an easy thing to do, and in a tight engine bay with rolling swell when you've never done it before (and without Google by your side) it's even trickier. I took over the helm from our auto pilot and starting to dip, dive, and dodge all of the now immanent tugs and barges that were heading right for us. Will hit the books. Though we had hoped it never would happen to us, like any good adventure you always prepare for the worst. Will had luckily printed off a massive Yanmar troubleshooting manual before the trip so he whipped that out as well as this other enormous Yanmar service manual. From the duct-taped spine to the faded covers and various years of coffee stains, this book looked like it had lived many lives. Will had some figuring out to do between these two textbooks. I guess those studying skills paid off in school because in about an hour and half of me driving the boat like mad through swell and tugboats with limited lights (our masthead, spreader and deck lights all shorted out) Will learned how to bleed the lines! The sweet purr of the engine as it fired up and didn't sputter out on us again was music to our ears! After a massive eruption of hoots, hollers, and high-fives we decided to drop the sails and motor straight for Fishers Island.
By the time we approached the island, the wind had died off completely, making the whole Sound glassy calm with not a cloud out in the midnight sky. The phosphorescence peaked up and you could see a solid blue stream coming off our prop behind the boat. We slowly navigated our way through the buoys and into the marked channel at the edge of the basin in Fishers, then motoring our way into the FIYC (Fisher's Island Yacht Club). We tied up the boat, and rowed across the basin to our little island oasis where we would spend next week or so. It was a very calm, beautiful ending to the first leg of Team Tilikum's journey.
So what went wrong?
Turns out you can't motor-sail while you're heeling the boat over 30 degrees for a few hours. We did that. So when we saw that our fuel gauge was at half tank we assumed it was fine. But, apparently when you're heeled over and the tank gets down that low, the fuel sloshes around in the tank which can cause air to get in the lines. SO, all we have to do now is make sure when we're motor-sailing that the fuel tank doesn't drop much below 3/4s full.
First, the good news. We made it to the US of A! This afternoon we cruised through New Bedford's quite substantial hurricane gate, dodging big fishing trawlers and long liners on the way. We had an excellent passage with almost no mishaps and what most would consider pretty good weather for the North Atlantic in November!
Now, the bad news. We are stuck in New Bedford, at the Fairhaven Shipyard wharf; not allowed to step foot off our vessel other than to tie up. Thats, right after 4 days of being at sea we have the pleasure of looking across the bay at all of the wonderful restaurants and bars, but we aren't allowed to step foot off the boat! Quarantined is the word we have added to our cruising dictionary. This basically mean's when you come in to port and aren't able to check in to customs quite yet, you raise a yellow flag and nobody is allowed on or off the boat. Real brutal to be able to smell the food and beer and hear the music blaring. But we are secluded to Tilikum until we check in with customs tomorrow morning. Here's the kicker, we missed them by 7 minutes!!!
Oh well, we plan on making a mean meal, having a boat beer or two, watching some Netflix and getting a well deserved good nights sleep.
Here's what we've been up to since we last posted on the blog.
On Monday night, the night before we left. We finally managed to finish up the installing radar. One thing that Will and I have found is that Will has a tendency to rush through jobs on Tilikum, even jobs that require some extreme patience, like splicing and soldering a radar cable together. So we enticed our friend, Drew Moores over for some beers and thankfully he knew a thing or two about soldering and had way more patience than Will. The three of us managed to make every connection almost perfect and by the end of the night, we had a working radar! Thanks Drew!
The next morning Will and I woke up and got to work finishing the "last" project on Tilikum, the solar array. We had custom designed our own panel mount and had the stainless steel parts fabricated in Lunenburg. We installed two 100Watt panels in the rain that morning. We mounted them to the top of our bimini and so far they've been fantastic! They have been able to keep our fridge running (vital to keep Sam's insulin cold) and even run the house power for our things like our autopilot (AKA Jeeves), lights, satellite beacon, chart plotter, and all of our other gizmos. Nothing like some last minute boat work! We then spent the rest of the morning running around town completing last minute tasks and then left the Bridgewater Marina around 3 PM on Tuesday.
We motored down the Lahave river and stopped in the LaHave bakery to say goodbye to some family and friends (Thanks everyone for showing up!) and then set a course for Cape Cod. The first night was great! Glassy calm and right out of the river we saw a pilot whale! With the breeze so calm, we motored for most of the night waiting for it to pick back up. Then around 1 AM on Wednesday morning the wind filled in from the northwest and we put up the full main and blade jib. As the sun rose and we rounded Brazil Rock near Cape Sable Island, we managed to see another pilot whale and a school of Tuna feeding on a school of smaller fish. They were jumping into the air doing some crazy aerial maneuvers for us too! It was a great sendoff from the last we would see of Nova Scotia for a while! The wind then died off again so we motor-sailed for most of the day and maintained a speed of about 5-5.5 knots.
On Thursday we got a great wind shift onto our beam and the wind also picked up to about 15-20 knots. In the morning, we had one of the great experiences that every sailor sees as a sign of luck. We saw two porpoises swimming along the mighty Tilikum, just off our bow! They hung out with us for a bit while we sailed where we actually managed to grab a few shots of them. Will and I tried to speak porpoise to them making Flipper noises but I don't think they understood... because all of a sudden they took off in a different direction. It was a great day though! We were under full sail, ripping along averaging around 7 knots and maxing out at 8.5 knots. It was awesome sailing and we were flying! Later in the day the wind picked up to about 20-25 knots and we put in a single reef in the main which balanced the boat nicely.
Early Friday morning around 1 AM, the winds picked up again from 20-25 to about 25-30 (windy!), so in the middle of the night Will went forward and put in another reef and furled up our jib about a quarter of the way. Then things got interesting. We had moment that got both Will and I's adrenaline pumping! At about 3:30 in the morning I woke Will up asking him very nonchalantly "Hey Will, is there supposed to be that much water in the boat?" At his feet there was about a half a foot of water covering the floorboards. Talk about a rude awakening!! He rose up out of his bunk faster than I have ever seen him move and started the emergency bilge pump without even saying a word to me. He told me later, "I scanned my mind thinking of what could have caused this: busted thru-hull?, deck leak?, plumbing failure? When I finally arrived on, "did I flick the switch back on the head after I used it last?". It turns out I didn't, I flicked the switch, pumped the water out and everything was back to normal." Turns out that that job of installing an anti-siphon on the head that we never got around to just made its way back to the top of our priority list. We closed off the entire thru-hull to prevent future incidents, and wont re-open it until the anti-siphon is installed. If that wasn't enough, around the same time we were running the engine to charge up our batteries and all of a sudden the low oil pressure alarm went off! Thank God it was an easy fix! We added oil and continued on sailing due West until we reached about 12 miles North of Race Point on the Cape.
At this point we decided we weren't going to be able to make it to the Canal by night-fall and even if we did, we weren't sure if there was a safe anchorage or berth. To add to it, there was a small craft advisory for the area so we needed to make sure to find a good anchorage for the night. We decided to head for Provincetown. We called US Customs to alert them to our change of plans and they told us that it was fine just don't get off the boat and to raise our yellow quarantine flag. I grabbed a yellow Island Sol t-shirt and tied it to the side-stay, "That should so it".
We had an unfavorable wind direction heading to P-town so we decided to drop the sails and motor directly into the wind and swell at a slow and sluggish 2.5 knots. We beat through waves, bucking up and down for around 5 hours dodging fishing buoys the whole way until we finally reached Race Point. As we were about to round the marker buoy into Provincetown Harbor we noticed a couple hundred Gannets dive bombing the water spread out by about a quarter second. It was an amazing "Planet Earth esk" moment. As we got a little closer we noticed about 20 dolphins swimming along the surface where the Gannets had been fishing! What we surmise was happening based on our degrees in Planet Earthology, was that the dolphins had rounded up a school of fish and were picking them off one by one and as the Gannets plunged into the sea to pick off the others. What happened next was nothing but amazing and quite hard to put to words. Just as we noticed the dolphins, they noticed us and they immediately diverted their course to directly at us. Before we knew it there we 30-50 dolphins heading straight at us at mach 10! They swam as if they were going to ram the boat but then at the last second, they dove underneath us and began to swim along side. They followed us all the way in to the harbor and were so close that you could reach out and touch them!!
We finally arrived in Provincetown Harbor and hailed the harbormaster. They said that we were good to anchor wherever we would like as everyone else had hauled their boats for the winter. We set our anchor, made dinner, watched a movie, and got the first decent nights sleep in 4 days.
Will and I have both learnt something about the ocean on our first real bluewater passage. Mother nature is awesome, yet unpredictable. The sea will beat you and test you, but only to make sure that you've got the right stuff to be out there. If you can take the beating and withstand the blow, she'll reward you with her beauty in the end!
We woke up the next morning at 5 AM and motor-sailed across the bay headed for the canal. We motored through the canal waving to people on the shore, and then motor-sailed the rest of the way to New Bedford. When we eventually arrived in New Bedford, we weren't able to hail a single marina or yacht club, so we just decided to motor up to the closest available wharf and waited for US Customs.
Just after Will and I discussed our plans to take a bus into New Bedford to check things out, get a decent meal, a shower, and maybe a beer or two, we got a call from the customs agent saying that we missed him by 7 minutes and that we were not allowed to step foot off the boat other than to tie up and that we must wait for him until tomorrow morning to check in.
So here we are, sitting on our boat, at a mystery wharf that we can't go up to the building to see if its ok to stay here, eating some mystery meats out of the fridge and drinking the last of our Canadian beer, and watching some Netflix. Actually, there are worse ways to spend a night than that I guess.
