We pulled in to Rowayton and this time around, our mooring went much smoother than last time, now knowing how to use the system. John and Joan were returning home on Sunday, but had graciously given us access to their house to do laundry and to borrow their car for running errands. I drove the dingy solo on Friday afternoon while David was finishing up work meetings to pick up packages that we’d had delivered and to get started on a load of laundry.
Many of these included items for what are hopefully our last few boat-projects in a while. This included some cables for hardwiring our laptop chargers into the 12v system and the remaining solar panels for the roof.
The next day was our planned errand day, where we went to Costco, Total Wine and Stew Leonards, a grocery store that David has fond nostalgia for from growing up in this area (it has animatronic creatures singing throughout). It turns out that the owners, however, are not great people. This is something I myself have been struggling with over the past month or so as I am having a very hard time reconciling the increasingly obvious ugliness of JK Rowling’s views with, as anyone who knows me would attest, the incredibly special role Harry Potter has played in my life.
That evening, I mentally prepared to assist David in a boat project that involved me crawling behind our toilet into the cavity in the swimstep and wriggling my way all the way across the entire beam of the boat and behind the watermaker to unscrew the rear thruster relay for replacement, since it appears to have died. The space is smaller than a coffin and very dirty, and involved holding tools at awkward angles above my head. I have great appreciation for all the other jobs on the boat that David does involving similar discomforts; this particular task fell to me since this particular space was not big enough to fit him!
After about 45 minutes, I had clipped several dozen zipties that were attached in places even more inconvenient than the relay, and we had everything free. David opened the relay and discovered a load of salt-corrosion, so we hoped that a replacement would be all that was needed to get the stern thruster working again. This experience actually turned out to be good practice for my MRI on Monday!
On Sunday evening, we gathered at John and Joan’s, and Paul, Nancy, Mike, Jen and Dan joined us for a socially distant outdoor family dinner (that’s David’s other aunt, uncle, and cousins). Jen and Dan live near Lake Champlain and we had been planning to visit them as we made our way North on the Loop. Coincidentally, they happened to be in Connecticut while we were passing through, so the timing worked great, and hopefully we’ll be able to visit them again next year when we actually Loop!
On Monday, the time had finally come for me to have my MRI. This happened fairly uneventfully (discounting the somewhat traumatic experience of not really being looked at, placed on the bed, and immidiately transported backwards into the tube while one of the attendants said “about 30-35 minutes, don’t move” and then I was left alone).
We’d been keeping an eye on the weather as our 100+ mile New Jersey open water leg was upcoming and requires a good weather window. I also really wanted to try to swing at least one night in NY/Brooklyn so that I could meet, for the first time in-person, the founders of my company. The weather seemed to be lining up for a weekend run down the coast, so we headed out of Rowayton on Wednesday with plans to spend one night in Brooklyn.
I know I already wrote about the surreal and wonderful experience of driving through New York on our own boat, and this second time, now traveling south down the East River was no different. The city has such a distinctive skyline and the novelty of knowing that we are doing this literally in our own home had not yet worn off.
We had organized to stay at a marina just south of the Brooklyn Bridge and were treated with an amazing view of the skyline visible right from the back of our boat. We hosted dinner with Nick, Steve and Lauren on the aft deck of the boat, with the windows open and had a lovely evening.
We decided not to stay longer than one night as the marina was incredibly expensive (the most expensive marina we have stayed at to date) and most everything in the city is still closed. I hope that when we next pass through, we will be able to do more.
The weather window seemed to still be holding for the weekend, so we headed towards Sandy Hook to fill up with diesel and drop anchor for a couple of days. The wind was blowing pretty strongly, so we had a couple of extremely rocky/wavy nights, but when we woke up this morning, the sun was out and the winds had died down.
We’re now cruising down the Joisey coast line, and unlike our trip north where we were in 6ft rollers all day, the water is smooth and it’s a beautiful day. Today’s leg will put us at over 3,000 nautical miles on our journey so far!
Those are some Amazing photos!! It has been fun to follow along with your adventures! Take good care!