Captain's Log: We Sure Did Misadventure

Manhattan off the bow….

Adventuring on the water can present its challenges, and we’ve had our share in recent days. I’ll get into that shortly, sparing some of the most-gruesome of the gruesome detail, but suffice it to say we are fine and enjoying our place in the world at the moment. Where would that place be? Well, as I’m typing these words, we are anchored on the Hudson River, just north of Croton Point on the eastern side of the river. We tucked in here yesterday evening to get out of the chop from the south wind, while still being able to enjoy its cooling influence. Our intention was to anchor across the river in a place familiar to us, Haverstraw Cove, but yesterday’s heat made me seek out the breeze, which the cove likely would have largely lacked.

Winding back the clock to the end of the last entry to this blog, we had just finished the Norway cruise, and we were preparing for my concert in Alexandria, VA on June 29 (which went very well), and also preparing to cast off with a rough destination of Lake Champlain. We did select a marina on the lake where we would leave our car and ultimately dock Stinkpot when I’m on tour in Maine in early August.

Within 48 hours of returning from the cruise last month, we both developed a bad “summer” cold that failed several tests, as we tried to confirm whether or not it was a COVID-19 variant. We can only surmise that it was not, but it was a miserable few days. For me, it was the gift that kept on giving as it turned into bronchitis that I’m only now starting to shake some three weeks later. I somehow managed to drug the cough away long enough to perform on the 29th, but other than that short, pharmaceutically-driven reprieve, I have been coughing like a tuberculosis patient since mid June.

During our final weeks in North East, we visited with as many friends as we could and completed most of our provisioning for our voyage. The morning of the 30th, we got in the car and drove first to the airport in Plattsburgh, NY—about seven hours—where we picked up a rental car we had reserved, and with the two cars, we made our way to Mooney Bay Marina where we parked our own steed until we arrive there July 31 aboard Stinkpot. We then turned around and drove back to North East, MD in the rental. July 1, I made a few last-minute store runs to pick up final provisions and then returned the rental car to the Avis location in Aberdeen, MD. My good friend, and the owner of Argo, Jeff, picked me up and returned me to Stinkpot.

I assessed the currents for the next day and determined that a 10:30 departure would allow us fair tidal current most of the way to our intended anchorage, and I let Jeff know since he intended to “stowaway” for the first couple days of our journey. The morning of July 2 arrived, and we were underway at 10:41 and enjoyed a following current from Turkey Point all the way to our usual anchorage on the Conhansey River. Delaware Bay is a two-day affair for us, and the Cohansey is one of the few decent anchorages along its length and gives us wonderful views, and a perfect midpoint at which to stop for the evening. It’s also prone to be filled with accursed greenhead flies. They bite.

During our southeast run down the bay, the chop did build on the nose, and the seat on the flybridge that Jeff was occupying decided to decouple itself from the deck. While at anchor on the Cohansey, I reset and bedded the seat, and it appears to be like new at this point—though the greenheads did try to carry me off while I was doing the work. We enjoyed a lovely meal of burgers and pasta salad, aboard, and a restful night’s sleep—at least until the fisherman started waking us (dual meaning) at about 5AM. We enjoyed some leisure time before weighing anchor to have coffee and breakfast while we waited for the ebb to carry us to Cape May. We had the anchor up and were underway just after 8AM.

Our run down the bay was absolutely beautiful with none of the typical Delaware Bay chop. Jeff wanted to see what the ICW in New Jersey was all about, so instead of running outside on the open ocean to Atlantic City, as was my original plan, we girded ourselves and tucked onto the ICW at Cape May. New Jersey’s ICW is passable for Stinkpot, but barely. The US Army Corps of Engineers has not dredged the waterway in decades, and it is well-shoaled through much of its length. As we started along this route, it was time to start planning our evening stopping point. Normally, we would have anchored, but because Jeff’s wife, Jean, was joining us to take him home, we decided that taking a dock made the most sense. I started calling around to marinas, and none had a slip for us anywhere in our targeted area. I began calling closer to us, and finally found a spot. The Yacht Club at Stone Harbor offered us a place to tie up via reciprocity with our membership in the MTOA (Marine Trawler Owners Association) for $2.50 per foot—a deal! About 30 minutes later, we pulled up and docked. Within and hour or two, Jean did join us, and we all enjoyed our time in Stone Harbor—including a walk on the beach and dinner “in the club.” We even decided to stay together there for an extra night instead of being underway on July 4. The morning of the 4th, the club did ask us to relocate to their other face dock out of the way of the morning boat parade, which we did. That put us out of reach of shore power, but we stayed our second night in that spot anyhow. That second night, Jean and Jeff treated us to pizza from Nemo’s, nearby, which was decent but not amazing.

The morning of the 5th, we all parted company early, and Stinkpot was off the dock and underway just after 7AM. We had a lovely cruise up the NJ ICW until just before Atlantic City, where we were told that the Thorofare (that’s apparently how they spell it in NJ) Railroad Bridge was inoperable and in the “closed position.” This is the same bridge that stopped us for five days during our passage through in 2020, and we feared a repeat was brewing. I had heard the USCG security calls from Sector Delaware Bay relating a stuck bridge, but the woman’s accent in the repeating, recorded call rendered the name of the bridge unrecognizable. The next time I heard it play, I was able to pick out the words. Great….

We turned around and made our way back through the Dorset Avenue Bridge and anchored in the Ventnor City Basin, where we passed those five days in 2020. We continued to monitor the bridge’s situation and Stacey watched a looper on Nebo (an app many boaters use to share their location) make it through the bridge. I called the bridge and asked for an update and was told the bridge was operational. We immediately weighed anchor and ran back through the Dorset Avenue and Albany Avenue bridges, and when I made the call for the railroad bridge I was told it was inoperable. Again. No ETA on the repair. Not wanting to backtrack to Ventnor Basin, we anchored us just off the waterway in the Great Thorofare to wait the bridge out. We were prepared to spend the night there, if needed. We spent three hours there, and then the VHF crackled to life with someone calling the bridge to ask its status and being told it was OPEN. I called the bridge myself to make sure I heard right. I told them I was anchored nearby waiting on them. They promised every-15-minute updates on VHF 13 to all nearby boaters waiting for the bridge. None of that happened. I was miffed, but elated.

We weighed anchor and got through before it broke again. We made an evening run all the way to an anchorage on the Mullica River. The anchor seemed to set well, and, exhausted from a long day, we crashed. We were awakened by our anchor-drag alarm at 5 am. We were dragging, and rapidly. We sprang into action (after I managed to find my glasses), got the anchor up and then reset it to wait for the rising tide to carry us across Great Bay (which is shallow at low tide). We got underway again at 8:40AM and made the run from there to an anchorage on Metedeconk River, pausing briefly in the afternoon to anchor in Applegate Cove in the lee of the wind and waves while a big thunderstorm system moved through. The entire day was a barrage of holiday-weekend boaters—the “amateur fleet” was running at full speed and repeatedly encircling us like vultures around a soon-to-be corpse.

Once at anchor for the evening, we were treated to the ear-warping sounds of a 90s cover band at a mansion on shore. While they weren’t awful, the lady lead singer had a tendency to sing “not quite in tune,” and we were both relieved when their four-hour gig was over. At 7:30AM we weighed anchor to transit Point Pleasant Canal at slack, which we (and the NOAA current forecast) missed by probably a half hour. Fortunately, the current was not strong enough yet to make it untenable, and we made it through to the Manasquan River. I had been watching conditions for our outside run from Manasquan to NYC, and on the 6th (Saturday) it looked like we’d have to pause in Manasquan until Monday, but here we were on Sunday morning and the models had changed overnight leading me to believe that a run that very day would be perfectly workable. We made our way to Captain Bill’s Landing, where we fueled at $3.79/gallon, and we made our way out the inlet and onto the Atlantic Ocean.

On the open ocean, the captain is not feeling his best today.

For the last few days, my cough from the bronchitis had been unrelenting. To make matters worse, I had been thinking that the cough had exacerbated my previously mild hiatal hernia. I was not feeling well. We decided to look at how I could be seen and assessed by a professional clinician. Stacey reached out to our friend, Vincent, who is a member the board of governors for a boating club in Huntington, NY, on Long Island, and he secured us a place to dock at the club while I did the medical rounds. We just had to get there. Our crossing to NY was largely uneventful and we anchored in Gravesend Bay for the afternoon, where we enjoyed the cooling of the south wind, and we moved into Coney Creek for the evening, beside the famed “Yellow Submarine.”

At 6AM Monday, July 8, we weighed anchor and made for Huntington on the favoring current, docking around noon at Vinnie’s club. He was kind enough to drive us to the clinic where I was referred to a nearby gastroenterologist for an appointment on Wednesday, and one of my prescriptions for the cough was refilled for pickup at a nearby Walgreens. We walked to a nearby market and picked up some fresh fruit and vegetables to replace what we had consumed since leaving Maryland, and Vinnie retrieved us and returned us to Stinkpot.

I began making phone calls to Florida Blue (BCBS, our insurer) to make sure that I would be covered at these New York-based BCBS-owned facilities. Then the bomb dropped. The answer was “no.” If I wanted care (and all I really wanted was reassurance that it was merely the cough aggravating a pre-existing, innocuous condition), I would have to return to Florida to get it. My Florida doc could not refer me to a specialist in NY because that would be “practicing medicine across state lines.” The referral from the urgent care clinic (covered) would not be honored by my insurance without a referral from my primary care physician (in Florida). My PCP played the only card we had. She referred me to a gastroenterologist in Florida, hoping against hope that they would do a phone consult. Nope. First visit needs to be in office. And they couldn’t do a phone visit with me because that would be—say it with me—practicing medicine across state lines. My gut feeling (which is the location in the body where all this bullcrap is going wrong) is that I am ultimately fine. The cough has been improving over the last few days, and the symptoms have been improving as well. A wait-and-see approach is the order of the day.

Huntington Harbor Swans

Tuesday morning, Vinnie took us to the pharmacy to pick up my prescription, a bunch of OTC medicines to help mitigate the cough and the hiatal hernia further, and some batteries for our windlass remotes (12 volt, A23 cells). At 11:30AM, we dropped lines and made our way on a favoring current back to the East River, up the Harlem River (a very cool ride), and onto the Hudson River where we turned north toward Lake Champlain.

As noted before we, decided to anchor just above Croton Point. As we were making our approach, I noted an inflatable dinghy adrift off the point. Both Stacey and I scrutinized it through binoculars, and neither of us could see anybody in the boat. The sea state at that point was a bit rough due to the south wind and the long fetch up the river. I feared the occupant of the boat had been thrown free of it. I called the Coast Guard and reported it, and then we anchored for the night. We watched as emergency personnel, mostly from the local fire company descended upon the area. In no time we heard the call on the radio that the boat and its occupant were found together and fine. We surmise he may have been napping low in the boat. Suffice it to say, we are glad we were wrong, and no life nor limb was at stake. I bet the guy was surprised when that boat with flashing lights pulled up alongside and, presumably, woke him from his nap on the waves.

​So here we still sit, having just finished morning coffee. We’ll be getting underway shortly, though we’re in no rush as we’ll be fighting 1.5 knots of current for a while up river, slacking sometime around noon. I suspect we’ll delay our departure to shorten the time against the tide. It is lovely here and the breeze is keeping things just right….

The sun setting by our neighbor, at anchor by Croton Point.