On Sunday, we decided to head out (just the two of us) and see where the wind took us. The wind was coming from the southeast and that set us up for a nice beam reach heading towards the far end of Staten Island.
This path took us out across the main shipping channel on Raritan Bay, so we had to carefully look both ways and let the tanker pass first. There are all sorts of "rules of the road" for water traffic... we as a sail vessel (unless we're running our engine) have the right (and responsibility) to hold our course when interacting with a power vessel, but a ship like this one, can't really move out of the channel, so they get the right of way...
Well, let's be honest... they also get the right of way because their anchor weighs several times more than our boat. I remember watching this video...
So I "decided" to change my course for one or two ship's lengths behind him. You don't want to sail right behind these things either as they kick up huge waves.
After crossing the channel, I realized we were only a mile or two away from the Old Orchard Shoal Lighthouse ruins. This used to be a beautiful "sparkplug lighthouse" that sat out in the bay until Superstorm Sandy hit a couple of years ago. The ruins are the destination for the navigator class (slow boats and newbies) races that KYC holds from time to time. Then we turned around, headed back and cleaned the boat until sunset.
On Monday, my son called and said his girlfriend, Gabby, had time to finally come and see Seas The Day, so I took them out for a quick sail in the evening. I also used them for photography practice (how to balance flash and back-light on the smaller Fuji camera). Vicky was commuting back from NYC so she missed the sail, but met us at KYC with food delivered from Nemo Asian Fusion.
No comments:
Post a Comment