After buying the boat, I went back to Montreal to sublet my apartment and settle my affairs for the winter.
Dolphins swimming in front of my sailboat on Banana River.
As soon as I got to Montreal, hurricane Sandy veered toward the coast. It was called the Frankenstorm and became a mediatic sensation since it was predicted to hit New York. The coverage did nothing to suit my nerves. Fortunately, the dock master convinced me that my boat was still floating.
I had good reasons to fear for the boat. I had left a bit precipitously and to tell you the truth, I had not known how to prepare a docked boat for a long absence. It was only afterwards, when I was 2000 miles from my boat, that I figured out the most obvious things I should have checked, prepared, wrapped, secured and plugged. Every night, I thought about a new thing I hadn’t done. I had a recurring dream of the boat sinking because the bilge pump ceased working. I also worried about the wind tearing the furled sail still on the forestay or the bimini that I never even considered taking down.
On November 14, I had done most of things I had set out to do in Montreal and I drove back to Florida. Boat anxieties accompanied me all the way to Melbourne. The 28 hour drive destroyed my mind. When I finally took the Melbourne exit off highway 95, I really started to appreciate how sad I would be if I found my boat sunk or full of water. I had scenarios. If the boat had sunk I’d dive to take my stuff and leave the boat behind. If the water was up to the diesel, I’d take the motor out and install an outboard. If the diesel was spared, I’d simply empty the bilge and go to bed.
When I pulled in the marina’s driveway, I was delirious with fatigue. I walked to my boat. When I set foot on it, I found that it was tipsy, was the hull might be full of water? I fumbled with my keys and finally opened the hatch. I couldn’t see anything in the dark but when I shone the flashlight I found my boat dry as a bone.
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- Dolphins swimming in front of my sailboat on Banana River.
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- Virginia Key bassin, not my boat. This picture was taken from the Columbia 27 I did not buy.
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- Marine Stadium in Virginia Key. It’s a very large abandoned public work from the 70s. Now skater and all sorts of social deviants hang out there. It’s a nice structure but it really makes Virginia Key dodgy.
I bought a sailboat even though all the sailing stories I’ve ever read had fear, loneliness and hardship has main themes, and the only sailor’s proverb I can remember goes: “He that would go to sea for pleasure, would go to hell for a pastime”.
My own experience on a sailing kayak had not included a lot of comfortable moments or security, yet when I got home I knew that sailing from Miami to Montreal remained the most meaningful experience of my life.
The trip brought me closer to what I wanted to be when I grew up, at least a closer approximation of what I thought I should be. Unfortunately, it made me even more quirky and unlikely to adapt to the comfortable suburban lifestyle that seems to be the norm across the continent. I think I’d be happier in a wealthy agricultural commune, with a lot of pretty and favorably minded girls with a soft spot for blue eyed sailors, and a pub.
This new trip is not specifically meant to be an ordeal. “This time will be different” I told my friends. I have no objective apart from relaxing and fishing around the most accessible island paradise I can find. Moreover, I bought a spacious coastal cruiser, a 1985 Newport 27, instead of a pool-side play toy. The Newport is beamy and I can walk in the cabin without touching the ceiling. It’s rigged for solo sailing. I have all the electronics at the helm, self furling jib, a working diesel and autopilot.
I have a few modifications to make before I can take it into moderate seas. I have to install a second automatic bilge pump, repair the hand pump, block two speaker holes, and set a second battery and a solar panel. The boat came with a furling genoas and a main sail with two reefs. I’ll try to get some storm sails so I can cope in a sudden weather change.
I also have a few things to learn. I’m not that worried about open ocean passages as much as port entries, negotiating inlets and boat maintenance. The diesel engine and the electrical systems are quite intimidating. The boat has so many systems that can go wrong, from the toilet to the bilge pumps, and I can only count on myself to fix everything. Top side, I have to deal with the complicated riggings of a cruising sailboat. Everything is in working order but I can see that I should upgrade some lines and learn what they are supposed to do. I also need to learn how to go up that mast so I can access the mast hardware if something goes wrong.
I’ve sailed the boat before heading back to Montreal. I got it in and out of the docks without incident and I sailed the boat for a few hours. The reassuring thing about a cruiser is how slow everything goes in comparison with a sailing dinghy. On a small sailboat, you’ll capsize if you merely look the wrong way. On a cruising sailboat, you can walk upfront and get back to the helm without the boat changing direction, and that’s without the autopilot. The challenge with the cruiser is that everything is under greater pressures. You need winches and complicated pulleys to control anything.
June 18, Home
The Richelieu River leads to a canal then to the Seaway. I had planned to stop in Chambly about 7 miles from Montreal because of the high water on the Seaway. So this was going to be my last day since Chambly was less than 20 miles away.
I packed my stuff one last time. I stuffed my wet tent without ceremony. I did not engage in any sort of serious effort to tie everything securely.
I was quite giddy at the idea of going home. I knew that I was now better acclimated to sailing then to life on Plateau Mont-Royal and wondered about how my return to normal urban life would go.
I got to the canal in St-Jean before noon. I tied to the docks next to the canal and walked to the dock master’s house to ask him how the canal worked. I knew that I had to pay a fee.
When I found the dock master, he looked at me and told me that there would be no payment problem since the locks were closed due to the water level. Everything was still flooded.
I was in the suburbs of Montreal and it immediately it dawned on me that my trip was over.
June 17, Canada
The wind was blowing from the south, the conditions were perfect. The waves were reasonable but I was still anxious to test my belief that the lake was nothing more than a small harmless mountain puddle.
My goal was a campsite about 15 miles from the border. It was 34 miles away; a reasonable distance for a day of traveling. As I moved into the largest part of Lake Champlain the waves reached about a foot and a half and the wind blew 10 miles per hour gusting to about 15. I did not even get sprayed. The perilous Lake Champlain spared me.
Since the wind was coming from the south east, I moved to the protection of the eastern islands in front of Plattsburg. The largest of those islands is called La Motte. There the water was almost perfectly flat and helped me gain some speed. It was also the most direct route.
As I got to Plattsburg the wind slowed down quite a bit but I had enough wind to move and besides I was getting pushed forward by the current since the wind driven water transfer phenomenon was now working for me.
It was about 3 when I got in front of my intended campsite. I could not bear spending a night so close to the border. I still had 25 miles to go if I wanted to get to my first stop after the border but I chose to go for it even if it meant travelling at night.
I slowly got to the border. It was about 8 when I passed it. There was no border house. Everything had been flooded. I was soon well into Canada pushed by the current of the Richelieu River and I had no opportunity to register my entry. Turning around and reentering the US without registering my entry in the US in order to register my entry into Canada would have potentially put me into a world of trouble. I knew that I had found myself in an administrative impossibility that I would have to resolve from dry land.
I stopped at a campground that had just recently reopened. The flooding damage was rather manifest, some trailers sporting the high water mark. 
I had traveled 100 km in one day. I was now in Canada. I could barely believe it. The sun set after I touched ground.
June 16, Essex; in front of Burlington on Lake Champlain
Reluctantly, I sailed away from Chapman’s Point at 6 am. The wind was as advertised; it blew steadily from the south east at 10 miles per hour. Since we were expecting two days of southerly winds before a cold front from Quebec would turn the wind northward, I had to cover as much territory as I could in the following two days.
I managed to travel the first 22 miles before the wind died. An unending rock cliff was on my west side. Huge rock formations were plunging into the water almost vertically. It ended with a small rock island that marked the widening of Lake Champlain. My objective was Essex. I thought that there would be a campground there since a marina was boasting about it.
People were warning me about Lake Champlain as if it was a large and dangerous body of water. I had a lot of trouble at taking Lake Champlain seriously since all through my trip people had been warning me about the next big danger ahead, always presenting it like the “end all” peril. A careful look at the map soon put any anxiety to rest. The Lake is only 8 miles wide at its very widest and only for a few short miles. The Lake is long if you look at it from a north to south perspective and waves do have time to form and go unrestrained on that plane. As long as the wind comes from the south or the north, the lake can produce nice size waves. I was told to expect one foot per 5 miles per hour of wind. Obviously, the lake would be dangerous during hard northern or southern winds but that would be expected anywhere.
My first experience of the wide section of the lake was rather uneventful. As I pedaled the last miles to Essex, there was not enough wind to keep my sail opened and the lake was, to use a metaphoric platitude, like a mirror. Only the ferry, one kayak and a lone 16 foot sailboat were on the water with me.
The marinas at Essex were all underwater or piled on shore because of the flooding. I slowly wandered along the shore to find some place to stop. I finally stopped at a restaurant with one dock. The owner did not mind me tying up for the night.
The town of Essex is one of those lovely New England towns where every building looks like a well preserved historical monument. None of the buildings showed any trace of any sort of cheap modern materials. I stumble upon a guesthouse on Main Street and dealt a room. Donna, the owner, simply accepted my first low figure monetary offer out of kindness. It was no doubt the best accommodation I’ve found on this trip and she was probably asking for four times the amount I paid. Donna had restored the place and it now stood as what we all envision when we thinks of the perfect New England Bed and Breakfast and yes, there were lots of quilts.
June 15, Pat’s Marina at Chapmans Point (16 miles from Whitehall)
In the morning, I had to make a choice between spending another day in Whitehall, on account of the north wind that was forecasted, or try moving forward. Since the early morning wind was from the south, my decision was to leave in the hopes that I would travel a meaningful distance before the wind turned.
Along the Lake, the banks were totally inundated; the water spilled well into the woods on each side of the lake. In the first miles, the lake is a narrow canal with a lot of turns, so the little southern wind I got was able to enter the canopy but there was a half a mile of current going my way.
Just as the river widened the wind turned. The wind was pushing the water towards the south so I had a current running against me now. It may sound odd that a lake would have current but it’s not unusual for an elongated lake. The Lake is not affected by a tidal phenomenon, rather is the wind that drives the water to either end of the lake. Since the lake a 100 miles long and very narrow, the large scale water displacements create a significant current; a similar phenomenon was observable in the inner banks when I was crossing the very long channel leading to Alligator River. All this to say that since the wind was coming from the north my speed was dramatically reduced by the cumulative effects of the current and the wind: I was barely reaching 1.5 miles per hour.
Fighting the wind and current is twice the work for half the rewards, so when I got to my first camping coordinate, I called it a day. It was very fortuitous that I stopped at Chapmans’ Point Marina. Pat, the owner of the marina charged me a pittance to set my tent and lent me her Scion to go to the restaurant some 10 miles away. The marina is really pretty with two buildings from the early 19 century standing on the water’s edge. The docks start right at the door of each of those buildings and it’s quite a sight. I would have stayed there a few days if the winds had not been so darn favorable for the next two days.
June 13, Whitehall
During the night at lock 7, I was woken up by the stench of feces. The stench of human waste was so severe and inescapable, it almost made me sick. Maybe this warning is unnecessary but I do recommend avoiding swimming in the Hudson.
Contrary to all the pomp about the Hudson getting cleaner, I fear that present day’s abuses still compete with the worse industrial pollution of days gone by. While the Hudson water may be a little cleaner than the juice found at the bottom of a busy restaurant’s dumpster or Bangkok’s waterway, it isn’t clean. Once in a while you’d almost be fooled. For instance, the pleasant sight of numerous snapping turtles swimming in circle seemed as bucolic as some kitsch velour painting scene until I noticed that they were frolicking at the mouth of a steaming stream that came from a nearby factory. I was later told that everything was in controlled since the factories pay to pollute. I guess that if you cannot beat it, tax it. You’d just wish the local government would have this nonchalant attitude with issues like drugs or jaywalking instead of pollution.
industrial waste
Lock 7 was not the highest point of the lock system but it still marked the end of the current. I still did not have any wind to help me along but at least I knew I would now hold a steady 3 miles per hour if no wind or current helped me. Lock 12, the end of the canal system, was 22 miles away.
I pedaled and pedaled going from lock to lock. The longest distance between locks was 9 miles. The air was motionless all day except for the end of the day. This north wind was in the forecast for the following two days.
crumbling barn wasting away on the edge of the canal
Lock 12 is in Whitehall. Whitehall is a ghost town. There are numerous stores, bars, restaurants and marinas but they’re mostly closed. Only one bar was open on Monday night. I had to walk to the outskirts of town to a China Wok chain restaurant to get something to eat. A lot of the buildings appeared to be crumbling from neglect. Many for sale signs were visible. It would be tempting to get a canal front house if the town’s taxes were not so high.
Fortunately, the town has great welcome center with showers. Boater can dock along the walls all across town for free. It’s really a wonder how a place with so much potential can be so dead.
June 14, Whitehall
I stayed in Whitehall as the north wind blew. I spent the day walking around amongst the boarded up buildings. The only action was along route 22, where three chain restaurants, a CVS and Dollars stores (two of them) battled for the business from passing traffic.
It’s difficult not to marvel at the old marketing efforts from some better period.
I met Jason, a guy from Montreal. He’s 22 year old and owns a Beneteau 47 that’s less than 10 years old. He charters it in the Bahamas in the winter and on Lake Champlain in the summer. He said his experience taking it around the Caribbean and Open Ocean was a difficult one since he was single handed. He found the solitude of the open water a bit too boring. I simply marvel at the fact that he can maneuver that behemoth by himself!
June 6, 7, 8 The road to Coxsaksie
I left Beacon from the municipal pier after eating breakfast. I had to wait for the water to start flooding. The 32 miles to Norrie State Park were done with the wind directly in my face. It took me more time than expected and I got there a little after the beginning of the ebb; meaning with the current against me.
Unlike the paddle trail suggests, there is no stop dedicated to paddlers at Norrie State Park. It was also the first time that the rangers had ever heard of such a trail. They let me pitch my tent anyway.
The area is really nice. A monastery is straight in front of the Park.
In the morning of June 7, I left the Park a little too early. I was aiming for a campsite only 12 miles away. When I got there, a woman was already occupying the spot. Since the wind appeared favorable, I decided against better judgment to go another 20 miles to Coxsakie. I had 4 hours of favorable current ahead of me. I would be ok as long as I maintained a 5 mile per hour average I reasoned. Unfortunately, the wind died a mere one hour after heading for Coxsakie, it turned in my face, then the wind slowed to nothing. I pedaled like a mad man for three hours and made it before the current turned.
July 8 Coxsakie
I woke on my unchartered beach only a few hundred yards from the real campsites. The coordinates from the Hudson Paddling Trail website were all wrong. They led to a cliff; at least they pointed to the correct island.
I expected the current to be slack when I woke up but it was still going upstream pretty fast, so I packed my stuff in a hurry and got on the water. I wanted to reach a comfortable marina or some town dock so I could wait out the ebb tide.
I did not need to go very far. Only two miles away I encountered the Coxsakie municipal docks. The town has a very inviting park with gazebos, brand new docks and a ramp. Everything is well kept and clean.
The town itself is spotless even though it seems to have been hit by the habitual economic shift that left a lot of small towns with empty business spaces. In this case the entire waterfront historic buildings were unused.
Library
The jewels of the town are its library, the Spaboro Deli and the pub called Blue Water. All life seems to gravitate around those points of socialisation. In the morning the Deli is full of locals, then the same locals move to the pub. Extraordinarily, both have excellent food. The Grilled cheese and cheese burgers from the Deli are worth making the detour from Highway 95 if you ever are close to the Junction. The Pub has real beer. I had double IPA with the owner and we talked about beloved beers from all over.
I was planning to leave the town in the evening as soon as the flood tide started but I learned that the tide would only flood by 6 pm and that the locks, some 25 miles away, closed at 9:30. I chose spend the day and the evening in town and to go to a campsite 3 miles away. The morning tide would easily bring me to Troy and I would not have to worry about night time navigation hazards.
The day was unusually hot. The heat brought electrical storms that foiled my camping plans. I was stuck at the Pub until 11 pm and finally camped right in the town’s park. Since I was leaving really early no one would bother me.
July 9, Troy
I rolled my tent in Coxsakie and headed to Albany. The current did not help me at all. I got to Albany and pushed on to Troy. Before I got to the lock an electrical storm forced me to stop at Troy’s the municipal dock.
I had some food at the waterfront restaurant next to my boat and got a room at the Best Western. It was only 3 pm but I really needed to clean myself, my clothing and my general state of tiredness was too crazy to not take advantages of the convenient setting I was offered in Troy.
June 10, Waterford
I got to the lock in about twenty minutes but I was not goint to get very far as my Mirage Drive broke while I was still in the lock. Without the Mirage Drive I was powerless against the north wind. The parts for the drive are very hard to come by and I was expecting to be stuck in Troy for a few days.
I inched myself to the dock next to the lock. It turned out to be the Army Corp of Engineers’ dock. The guys immediately offered to help; perhaps fix the mechanical parts, but the specialized parts that broke: a stainless bit of bicycle chain welded to a cable and a threaded rod, was not going to be reproducible locally. Fortunately, Blair, the owner of Hybrid Marine and my sponsor, found a store that had the part only 30 minutes away. The odds of having such a store so close were very small.
An engineer named Brian took me to the store and saved me a whole lot of trouble. I was suddenly very appreciative of the Corp of Engineers!
Back in the water, I was facing a sustained north wind and a contrary current. I was getting nowhere, so when I saw the lovely waterford settings I could not resist stopping there. The town has a lovely deli and the municipal dock is entirely populated by transients going up either the Erie Canal or the Champlain Canal. It’s a lovely place to stop. Too bad there are not more such places on the intracoastal.
June 12, Lake Champlain Lock 5
I left the Waterford dock with regret. I knew the first lock was close and I thought I would have the wind with me. It was raining hard so traveling appeared to be an intelligent alternative to brooding in a café while waiting for the weather to change.
To my surprise, the wind did not hold at all. As soon as I got about a quarter mile, the wind died and then changed from the east south east to a north west wind; exactly the opposite of what had been predicted.
I had expected the current on the way to the first State Lock. When I got out of that lock, to my surprise, the current was even stronger. I was barely going forward. My speed was reduced to something under 2 miles per hour. This situation continued from lock to lock.
When I got to lock 4, I was tired because of the current and the lack of wind that could have helped me. I had been pedaling full speed in order to inch myself from lock to lock. The challenge was that between lock 4 and 5 there were 14,3 miles! All the other locks had been separated by less than 4 miles. Since Waterford, I had only covered 9 miles and it was already 3:30. I had done 9 miles in 5 hours.
I decided to go for lock 5 anyway; knowing full well that I’d make it past 9:30 at the earliest and that I would suffer quite a bit.
I took my chore in stride. I gave myself short term objectives, listened to music, and generally went nuts under the rain.
When I did get to lock 5, it was night time but I got there 15 minutes before the lock would close for the night. I put my tent up in the pouring rain. My tent was already drenched from the night before. Thank God for the isolating qualities of artificial fabrics.
June 13, Lock 7 Schuylerville.
I woke up to the sound of a generator and the voices of the triathlon organizers. It was 5 am and the regional triathlon was starting from the exact spot where my boat was tied up. My tent was in the middle of the event’s different tents and by the time I got out of the tent I felt like I had landed in the middle of a county fair except everyone was wearing spandex and seemed strangely healthy.
I left the area after taking a few pictures. I strode into town to find the local breakfast hangout. I was not let down. The town had the Schuylerville version of the diner in Coxsakie. Well, the Coxsakie version was miles ahead in terms of food and ambiance but it was still very good.
My body was still aching from the 24 miles of torture from the day before. I gave myself for sole objective to get to lock 7. After lock 7 I would not have any current . It was only 10 miles away. No swet I thought.
Lock 6 was only 1.8 miles from lock 5. The current was ok and I made it in about an hour. Not fast but not discouraging. Unfortunately, between lock 6 and 7 there were 7.3 miles of disheartening current. At one point, I was doing 0.5 miles per hour even though I was going full on. It’s with swet in my eyes that I passed many of the narrow passages that sped up the current. It took me 4 hours to do the 7.3 miles. When I got to lock 7, I called it a day.
The lock people invited me to take a shower. I then went to town. Fort Edward happens to be another very significant town in the history of the war of independence. It also has a local diner where I got the 5$ daily special.
June 2, Carriage House Marina.
I went for breakfast at a local hangout. I came back to the marina at around 10. Lance and his guys told me I could not leave since the wind was from the north west. Any wind from the north turned the bay into a death trap for small boats and the wind was already steady at 25 miles per hour with steep gusts.
In the afternoon, the wind got a lot worse and it became apparent that I would really have gotten in trouble. My problem was that the wind would come from the north until the tides would make it difficult to make it in a single day. The ebb would be too late and I’d be forced to go through the harbor, the New York Harbor at night. This was too much for me. I simply could not stand being stuck there for an undetermined amount of time.
I decided to continue my trip from Jersey City. I’d keep this crossing for later in the summer. I simply did not have the resources to delay that long and I was not going to risk my life at this point. I don’t mind taking some risks but this would have been irresponsible.
It’s perhaps a little childish since I don’t have to do any of this but I am still extremely peeved by this turn of events. I was looking forward to a proper passage but those five miles will have to wait.
June 4, Croton Island NY
At 5 am I rose from deep sleep. I could feel the gravel under my tent. I was in the Liberty Harbor Marina Campground. The campground is a huge parking lot. In a funny reminder of the original purpose of the asphalt enclosure, the camping sites are referred to by their original dry storage numbers. It’s a wonder to find a campground at all in Jersey City. It’s right next to the Path train, it overlooks downtown and the Statue of Liberty.
My challenge that morning was to get the kayak back into the water. The water was a good ten feet from the ledge of the basin. I used the gas dock staircase to lower everything. Fortunately no one pumps gas so early in the morning.
The low tide was at 5 am. I left the dock at 6: 20. It was already obvious that the water had risen. It was theoretically flooding. Truth is, I still had a stiff current against me. I was moving less than a mile per hour. My level of disgust was so elevated that I had thoughts of calling it quits and taking a plane. At 9 am, I was at Pier 73, less than 2 miles from my starting point. My campground was another 30 miles away.
I stopped at a marina next to pier 73, and talked to some guys there. The first one was a pissy Italian citizen wearing a night robe. He was standing with his radio at hand on the stairs of his small sailboat. He gave me quite a bit of shit for stopping at the marina without proper authorizations. He called me all sorts of things including irresponsible for not having my radio at hand. The marina was a tiny one with maybe 30 boats no larger than 40 feet so I had not felt it necessary to follow such protocol. Fortunately the dock master did not care one bit about the tantrum and felt pretty much the same way I did. He encouraged me to continue and predicted that the current would change as I approached the George Washington Bridge.
I followed the docks until I got a National Security Announcement that said they’d shoot me and would track down and bury my friends and family alive if I did not move away. They added that the Coast Guard was notified and that they would no doubt me on a rake or water board me or some other unpleasant thing. It was quite fitting to be hear that sort of nonsense in front of the Statue of Liberty.
The current slowed down close to the bridge and soon it started going my way. It felt so good to go forward. The wind was in my face and weak but I was now going 4 miles per hour. I covered the distance to the Tapanzee Bridge in a few hours. The Tapanzee has long marked my way home as I was going over it. It felt the same way going under. I felt like the bulk of my trip was over.
Groton Island is not an island; more like a presqu’ile. The campground is on the other side of it. The paddling trail does not provide the correct point of entry but I managed to find the office.
I never would have thought it possible to reach Groton Island before 7. The wind picked up something fierce after the Tapanzee. This made it possible for me to go against the current. Hopefully I’ll be this lucky every day.
June 5, Beacon
I used the Hudson current to do 22 miles in 5 hours on a windless day. It’s pretty nice to use the flow. The Hudson is now very beautiful. I passed in front of the West Point Military College. A lot of chemical type factories are also on the shores. It made me wonder how healthy the 50 pound sturgeon that jumped five feet in front of my boat must have been.
I camped on a paddle trail designated site. It was a dump. A huge barrel of trash was overflowing all the way to the water.
Some nice people, Kim and Nate, invited me to take a shower at their place. It was nice of them since I think I may have touched poison ivy. One of them, John, took me on his bicycle taxi. Now that’s service.
Beacon is truly a nice city. I really enjoyed its coffee shops and restaurants. I will stop here in the future.
June 1, Sea Bright, Carriage House Marina
I left the inlet knowing that the winds would reach 25 miles per hour in the afternoon. It was 8 and I had time to reach my exit point just before Sandy Hook. I chose to go over land to avoid going around Sandy Hook since the campground was on the west side quite close to the bottom. I had identified three different exit points leading to the inner waters. The first was the least favorable since it entailed going half a mile over land to reach a finger of water that would lead to the larger waterway. I was the closest and I put the coordinates in my GPS in case things got hairy on the ocean. The second exit was two miles further. That exit required a passage over the sea wall on a staircase: sure to be private. The last exit, my real objective, was another two miles away. I led to a parking lot with an opening on the sea wall. The parking lot was in front of another one that had a ramp on that led to the main waterway.
As I got to the ocean, the swell was quite noticeable. Bluefish jumped all over the place and there were quite a few fishermen. I had a moderate wind on my back. By 10, the swell and the waves were reaching 2 to 4 feet. At 11, the waves were 3 to 4 feet with the occasional set of waves of 4 to 6 feet. Since the current was going against the wind, these waves were quite steep and made my life miserable. I was being propelled forward and I was losing control from time to time. At around 11:30, the wind had reached 20 miles per hour with frequent gusts close to 30. I reefed a bit but it was the waves that were troublesome.
The waves were now breaking over my boat from the back every few minutes. I had to steer looking behind me to avoid capsizing. At 12 it was quite clear that I was now aiming for the first exit. It was only a mile away but not close enough. I made my way close to shore the waves got even steeper. I had stowed everything inside the boat and double wrapped the rest of my gear. I was ready for a trip in the drink. I rolled all of my sail and prepared to demast. I made a sea anchor with my seat. I was seeing people on the beach. I was at the seawall opening and I could see the electric polls indicating the street I was looking for.
I never made it to the breakers. The wave that capsized me never broke. My boat got propelled forward, the tip of the boat dug deep. I jumped in the water to use my body as a counter weight and a sea anchor. I was bear hugging the back of the boat. I flew in the air like a rag doll. Soon the mast went in. I landed on the bottom of the boat. The mast touched the bottom and the two outrigger pins broke at the same time. Even with the tramps, the outriggers were pulled back. One of the tramps plastic snaps broke under the pressure.
It was not difficult at all the put the boat back up. I grabbed the rope with my three dry bags and put them in the boat while a smaller set was now breaking on me. I tugged at the boat and soon touched the ground. I somehow got out of the beach breaks without further spectacle but I swear I had to deploy the strength of a line backer to do it and it was ugly. Had I not been able to pull out before the next large set I think the boat would have sustained a lot of damage. Fortunately for me, since the wind was from the south east, the waves were coming at an angle.
From shore, I studied the waves coming in and the breakers and concluded that the only way I could have made it would have been by rushing in and being very, very lucky. The correct way would have been to use the mast and outrigger all tied together in a big bundle, swim in and tug the whole mess with a rope, perhaps with the help of the people on the beach.
Since the boat was sure to dig in and flip before even getting to the beach break, I could not see any pretty alternatives other than using a huge sea anchor to make it right side up to the breakers. Once there it would have been a very unfortunate moment for the boat since it could not have escaped the beach break fast enough to avoid getting pounded to nothingness.
Once on the beach I got offered a bagel and water. Had I had a hat I could have made a bit of change for the spectacle I had just offered. A bunch of guys spending a few hours on the beach while waiting for a Fish concert helped me take my boat off the beach.
My ordeal was not over. The sun baked me good. I had to haul my gear on the sidewalk for half a mile. I was covered in sweat. I moved one pile of gear, then another, then pulled the boat, over and over again. I got to the “water”. It stank pretty bad since it was right next to a water treatment plant. It looked like a puddle and I had to cross 20 yards of tall and dense vegetation to get to it. I sure could have used a machete. Once I got the hull to the water I noticed that I was standing in deep black goo. Surely this was what was left of human wastes. It stank like a neglected porter potty. I was covered in cuts from the brush. I noticed poison ivy. Hoped I did not get any of its sap on me. By the time I put the boat together and repaired to two outrigger pins I was quite presentable and the boat was covered in black mud and everything was squeaky from all the sand that had made its way in every part of the boat. The rudder would not move without a bit of help from my paddle. I loosened it enough to put it in the water.
I was worried that there would not be enough water to get away from the water treatment plant. I imagined myself stuck in the much a few yards away; looking like quite the fool. Providence got pity and there was enough water for me to make it to the waterway. I stopped at the first docks I encountered and hose myself and the boat.
I saw a Carriage House Marina a little further. I was still aiming for the campground at the base of Sandy Hook but I wanted to ask about the region and consult with local on strategies and timing to cross the bay.
I met Lance, the owner, and he told me that I would not make it against the incoming tide that evening. He said it was no problem if I stayed at his marina and offered a boat to stay in since there were thunderstorms in the forecast; as if the crazy wind was not enough.
He explained that at around 11 the tides would be going out, that I could ride it to the tip of Sandy Hook. I would have to stay away from the very tip to avoid getting taken out to sea. I would then be able to buck the remainder of the ebb current to make it close to the Verazano Bridge in time to the flood. Piece of cake he explained.
I stuffed myself with pizza and went to bed.
miami2montreal 