Askari Sailing: New York, New York

Planning to take Askari down the East River through New York and directly onto the Chesapeake required some serious planning, we needed:

- A weather window; ideally we wanted it to be fairly calm so we could enjoy the sights and take some nice pictures, but also with the hurricanes out there we needed a safe spot to go. Hurricane Jose had potential to stall and head back to the coast and Hurricane Maria had just turned north.

- Favourable current - we had tidal gates at Hell Gate in NYC, at the entrance to the Delaware River and also at the C&D canal. We definitely needed slack water at Hell Gate followed by the ebb (pushing us down the East River into New York). Ideally we wanted a flood tide into the Delaware although were conscious that wind over tide at the entrance could also be quite nasty. Then finally we really wanted slack water then ebbing tide as we transit the C&D Canal.

- Approval to pass the UN. This week 193 UN representatives were meeting in New York and the East River was subject to closures and restrictions. Andrew called the Coast Guard and was told we would need to arrange for the Roosevelt Island Bridge to be opened if we went through Saturday. the Bridge operator confirmed this was possible.

Andrew worked it all through and I checked his timing (yeah like I needed to) and Saturday looked great, with lights winds and most importantly low swell (Hurricane generated) for our overnight passage. We needed to be at Port Washington by 11am, Hell Gate at 1pm, Statute of Liberty by 2pm, Sandy Hook Fairway by 4pm, Cape May at 7am Sunday and the entrance to the C&D canal by 1pm. We needed to achieve just over 7 knots to do this and had a number of bail out options if the weather forecast for Maria changed. We were on!

This is the route we took and as we were entering the East River we heard on the radio that the Coast Guard was letting boats pass the UN as long as they kept their distance - one less thing to worry about.

More detail on our map page....

It all worked perfectly and we had a blast, we did 10 knots at one point and got an armed escort from the USCG passing the UN. It was over so quickly as we sailed under the Verrazano Bridge leaving the Harbour I wanted to go around again!! However, we check the weather (all fine) and headed out into the Atlantic for our first overnight passage since we arrived in the USA. It was a perfectly boring trip - just what we ordered other than a lot of shipping and a few other yachts; one deciding to do a crazing turn right in front of us at 5am on my shift - they nearly got an ear bashing on the radio but A was sleeping!

We arrived on Sunday at 1700 having motored the entire 240 miles in 32 hours. Boring and perfect.