The Kindness of Strangers

This was the view in the Atlantic.

We awoke in darkness with a north wind today. As usual, it was windier than we expected or wanted. We ate breakfast, cleaned up, and checked our oil and coolant.  Then we waited for the wind to lessen and for dawn to arrive.  We left Beach Haven at 6:20 am with a little help from our neighbor.

We have had the kindness of strangers so many times on this trip.  Three people stand out in New Jersey.  Jim, the dockhand at Beach Haven, was there when we came in on Wednesday.  In a loud and strong wind, he tied us up securely.  We had six lines on Aunt Aggie.  The next day he offered us the use of his car for a trip to the grocery.   "It's parked right out front.  The keys are in it." So we went to a brand new Acme Market and bought yummy food.

This morning we were in a predicament with one of our lines.  Jim had tied it up high on a piling to keep us from banging on the dock.  When he tied it, he climbed onto the neighbor's larger boat and used the neighbor's boat hook.  Now we were unable to untie it.  No one was awake on the dock at 6:00 am.  I had just decided that we would just untie the line from our boat and leave it when a guy came back from walking two spaniels.  He was the neighbor.  They had arrived last night. I asked him for help, and he got out the pole and lifted the line off, handing it to George.  Yahoo!  We never even got his name.

After a ten hour trip through Barnegat Bay (45 miles) and north on the Atlantic (40 miles), we arrived at Great Kills Yacht Club on Staten Island.  We were met by John Calascibetta, a gold looper and yacht club member.  He welcomed us, grabbed our lines, and tied us up.  He said we'll just pay when we leave.  John is famous in looper circles for his hospitality.  He went home after helping us and plans to come back at 7:00 pm to greet another looper.  What a guy!

Happy Captain George on the ocean.

We are so happy to be here!  Many New Jersey folks were generous to us.  However, traveling through the ICW there was scary and hard.  The water was shallow.  Even today we showed just 3.5 feet on our depth finder at some points.  The wind was high for the whole week.  We had to pay attention at all times.  We left Manasquan Inlet at noon and celebrated our move into the ocean.  It was lovely and quiet.  There was no wind.  Gentle swells moved us north at 10 - 11 mph.  Woohoo! The NYC skyline came into view when we were still 25 miles out.

We think we are finished with shallow water on this trip.  Lakes and rivers and bays await!  Happy Friday!

The NYC skyline as we moved through the bay to Staten Island