TOM-KAT Completes America's Great Loop!

At 9:15am on July 7, 2008 TOM-KAT completed America's Great Loop at the Statue of Liberty in New York Harbor. We traveled 6,051 statue miles in 378 days. It has been an awesome journey!

Our journey today started at 7:05am in the fog as we left Great Kills Yacht Club. 6499 and the harbor mooring field. The fog continued up to the Ambrose Channel, which is the main shipping channel into New York Harbor. Thanks to AIS, GPS and Radar, we were able to easily spot freighters and tows in the channel long before we could see them visually.

By 8:30am, we were cruising under the Verrazano Narrows Bridge into New York Harbor. This bridge was opened in 1964 and is a double decked bridge connecting Brooklyn and Staten Island. It is the longest suspension bridge in the United States and 8^th in the world. Due to weather related expansion and contractions of the structure, the bridge is 12’ lower in the summer months than the winter months!

In the far distance in the next picture you might be able to make out the shape on the USS Intrepid aircraft carrier docked on Staten Island. The ship is normally docked in NYC as a museum ship at Chelsea Pier. In the summer of 2007 it was moved to Bayonne, NJ for repairs and then to Staten Island for renovations and temporary docking. It is due back at Chelsea Pier in November of 2008.

We worked our way along the Brooklyn side of the harbor trying to avoid the ferries, tows, freighters and water taxis! We crossed over to the Statue of Liberty and passed on her south side to drop the hook behind Liberty Island. From the anchorage we can see the top of the Statue and the torch through the tree tops….it’s a pretty amazing sight!!

Our Best to Everyone and Thanks for Sharing This Journey With Us!

Touring New York City

The first picture shows the clubhouse at Great Kills Yacht Club (GKYC) on Staten Island, NY. The club members have all been very friendly and helpful. John, our host, even offered us his car, if we needed. We spotted this pretty jellyfish under the stern of a boat on our dock.

On Thursday, July 3, we walked to the Staten Island RR station at Great Kills (@ 1.5 miles from the boat) and rode up to St. George on the tip of Staten Island. Here we picked up the Staten Island Ferry for a ride over to Battery Park in the financial district of Manhattan.

Passing another Ferry

Lower Manhattan

Battery Park

Glad we don’t have to dock this behemoth!

Brooklyn Bridge over the East River with Waterfalls underneath

Another waterfall on the Brooklyn Heights Promenade

These manmade waterfalls are a public art project by artist, Olafur Elliasson. The artist constructed 4 of these waterfalls in the New York Harbor area. The third one is on Lower Manhattan at Pier 35 and the last one is on the northern shore of Governor’s Island. The structures are 90-125 feet high and will be on display until October 13. For more information on the waterfalls check www.nycwaterfalls.org.

The Staten Island Ferry ride is free and the train cost us $2/person each way, so a whole day of sightseeing around NY Harbor cost us $8.00. That is a true bargain for the City!

Friday, July 4 turned out to be a rainy day, so we relaxed on the boat and plotted our course on our paper charts up the East River and out into Long Island Sound. We also consulted our Waterway Guides and Skipper Bob books. Friday night we watched the Macy’s fireworks over the East River on TV, along with real time fireworks visible around Great Kills Harbor.

Saturday, July 5, we headed for a bus stop on Hylan Blvd., not far from GKYC. We boarded the x1 express bus at 10:20am and rode across the Verrazano Bridge to Brooklyn and then entered the toll booths at the Brooklyn/Battery Tunnel to Manhattan, where we immediately stopped, the bus driver left the bus and a police car pulled up beside the bus! A policeman came aboard and questioned the passenger in the first seat. The passenger had been videotaping the bridge and tunnel— ABSOLUTE “NO-NO’s” in New York City! With the help of another passenger who spoke Russian, the policeman told the passenger that he had to erase the video that he had taken or tape over the video. It was great to see how quickly this whole episode was handled!

We rode the bus all the way uptown to 57^th Street and looked for a lunch stop, mainly to get out of the rain. We found a small café on 6^th Avenue and dried out.

St Patrick’s Cathedral

Rockefeller Plaza

The Ice Rink at Rockefeller Plaza

Trump Tower

Tiffany & Company, where we shopped a little over 40 years ago for our wedding rings. 40^th anniversary coming up in August!!

Bob walking in the rain in Central Park

Beautiful Planter in Bryant Park

Here’s Bob at Fox News, his favorite network!!!

Here’s Sue in Times Square

A Quiet Zone in front of the NYC Public Library

The race of the Taxis on Fifth Avenue

Other forms of transportation

Damaged Globe in Battery Park that use to stand near the World Trade Center

We returned back to Hylan Blvd. about 5pm and stopped at a Papa John’s Pizza near the bus stop and bought take-out pizza for dinner. I wore my pedometer and we had walked almost 18,000 steps today (approx. 6 miles). Doctors say we should be walking 10,000 steps daily, so we earned this pizza!!

This PileMate contraption is on the piling at our dock. It floats up and down with the 6’ tide and protects the boat’s surface from nicks and scratches if they hit the pilings, which is easy to do if there’s any wind. The owner of the sailboat next to us installed the PileMate to protect his boat called “Silent Woman”. Don’t you just love that name!! TOM-KAT makes good use of the pile protector too.

The last picture was taken this morning aboard “Silent Woman”. The fellows offered advice on our upcoming cruise on Long Island Sound up to Boston Harbor. It’s been a delightful, relaxing time at GKYC and we thank John and all the members of the club for their hospitality and all their helpful information regarding the city, the buses and trains and tips on our trip further north. Thanks everyone!

We hope y’all had a Happy Fourth of July Weekend!

Beach Haven, NJ to Staten Island, NY

It was probably for the best, that I didn’t know that we were going out into the Atlantic Ocean today: less time to worry about the ride!!

We departed Beach Haven, NJ at 7:10am and traveled for several hours across Barnegat Bay.

We passed these bridges from Tom’s River, NJ to Island Beach, another barrier island.

We saw this interesting cloud formation above the Jersey shoreline.

The Point Pleasant Canal connects Barnegat Bay to the Manasquan River. The fast moving current in the canal is due to the Manasquan River tide of 4’ versus the Barnegat Bay tide of only 1’. TOM-KAT, luckily, was going with the two knot current. This picture shows some of the turbulence in the canal.

Notice anything strange about the sportfishing boats out of the water?

After reviewing the weather forecast for tomorrow, we decided that we’d best head straight for Staten Island today. We were going to stay at the Brielle Yacht Club for the night, but the winds were picking up to 10 to 20 knots and the seas would be 2-4 feet tomorrow. Better to arrive a day early, than to miss the whole weekend in NYC.

Pulling out of Manasquan Inlet into the Atlantic Ocean. More turbulence and high waves in the Inlet.

This is the Atlantic Ocean. You are looking toward the Mediterranean Sea. We had 2-3’ swells and only 5 to 10 knots of wind today. The ride wasn’t too bad and we were glad we’d made the decision to travel with the good weather.

This picture is of Sandy Hook, NJ. Many boaters coming up from Manasquan will tuck behind Sandy Hook in an anchorage called Horseshoe Cove.

Most of the Jersey shoreline is beaches until you reach the Atlantic Highlands. The large green mound is a terrific landmark for boaters out on the Atlantic.

We were headed for Great Kills Yacht Club on Staten Island, NY. One of the yacht club members had completed the Loop in 2003-2004 and wanted to extend the invitation to all Loopers to visit their club for a very reasonable rate for this area.

We pulled into our slip at 5pm after a long 10 hour day and were met by John, our fellow Looper and yacht club member. He told us about all the facilities of the club and also where the grocery store, hardware store and restaurants were located, plus how to get into the CITY.

We’ll spend the July 4^th weekend here and we’ll only post a blog if we visit any interesting sights.

Happy July 4^th to Everyone!

Bridges, Flies and More on the NJICW

Today was a “3 bridge an hour” day for us. We encountered our first bridge very early. Bob was still cleaning the mud off the anchor and chain, when we came around a bend and the bridge was right in front of us. Sue was at the helm and we only had to wait about 5 minutes and were through by 7:10am. The first picture shows the Dorset Ave Bridge after we’d passed through it. Vacation homes line the ICW in this section.

The second bridge opened for us quickly and we were through another bridge by 7:30am. Our last bridge of the day was a railroad bridge and a train was approaching, so we had a 20 minute wait and then were given an opening at 8am.

Coming around Atlantic City, we caught sight of this wind farm. What a terrific way to generate power. We’ve never understood people’s objections to having to live near them. They’re beautiful, clean and after the initial investment, free!

The skyline of Atlantic City after passing the Absecon Inlet

We’ve had trouble with horse flies the last several days, but today was the worst. They covered the windows, the sliding door and underneath our stair cover. Several were able to sneak in the salon area and believe me, they’re good biters!

Today was a fairly short day for us: only 23nm and a 4.6 hour day. We pulled into Beach Haven, NJ and fueled up again., We really didn’t need fuel, but the price was right and we’d heard that closer to NYC, prices are over $5/gallon. We managed to squeeze 25 gallons in the tanks at $4.309/gallon, plus the marina has free pump-outs.

TOM-KAT is docked at the end of this pier. We walk down through the fishing boats and all their rigging to our slip. The view from TOM-KAT’s cockpit of Little Egg Harbor. This is a fairly large body of water especially after the little channels we’ve been negotiatating the past two days.

We had lunch and then went into town for a few groceries at Murphy’s, before starting some boat chores. I took off for the marina laundry and Bob did some detective work on our Flo-Scan meter that is giving erratic readings. (Flo-Scan measures our fuel consumption)

Beach Haven is on a narrow barrier island called Long Beach Island and is only 6 blocks wide, so before dinner we took a stroll down to see the beach and the ocean. The wind had picked up this afternoon and it looks like it has kicked up some waves on the Atlantic.

The staff at the marina had recommended Tuckers for dinner, so we stopped on our way back to the boat. It was a popular place with lots of extended families celebrating birthdays and vacations together.

The Crystal Queen paddlewheel boat cruises past the marina.

Once back at the boat, we emptied containers from the bilge, so Bob could have a closer look at the Flo-Scan transducer. He cleaned some connections and found one wire that was loose, plus stopped a leak in a fitting. Tomorrow we’ll have to watch the meter again and see if any of these fixes has helped.

Thanks for Visiting With Us!