Goodbye Lady Liberty, Hello rain!!!!

Today would have been a better day to just curl up on the couch and read a book, then going for a boat ride up the Hudson River. All night long I could hear the foghorns of the ships anchored in the harbor, and wonder just how bad the morning was going to be.

We woke up to moderate rain with 1-2 miles of visability. While it was not the best weather to boat it, it was not that bad. We decided to pull anchor and head to our next stop.

Since it was raining I drew the short straw and went out on the deck, while Angel had the helm. Pulling the anchor is supposed to be an easy job, hit the button and the anchor comes up. We had 20 feet of line, and 30 feet of chain in the water, as soon as the chain came out of the water, the windlass stopped working. After 30 minutes of trouble shooting, I decided there was no way to find the problem while rocking in the bay. Back to the old fashion way and manually pulled the chain and anchor up.

Finally we got under way and headed up river. Unfortunately the rain got worse and ruined our view of the city. For all of the stories we heard about how bad the ferry trafiic is, I did not think it was that bad. One good thing about our boat is we can get up and go, to get out of the way. Most loopers have trawlers, with a top speed of 8 knots. We normally cruise at 16 knots, and can get up to 20 if needed. Since we are not in a hurry, and we want to save on fuel, our plan is to start running much slower. Today we ran at 8 knots, tunring what would normally be a 2 hour trip into a 4 hour trip.

When we reached the George Washington Bridge the rain stopped giving a beautiful view of the Hudson River shrouded in fog.

As we pulled into Half Moon Bay Marina, there were fellow loopers on the dock, to help and greet us. We ended the day doing docktails aboard Free Spirit with Kathy & John and several other loopers. One of my biggest chalanges is going to be remembering names. That is Angels job.

We are going to spend the next three days here hoping to explore some local museums and picking our next stop.