September 15, 2003
Sandy Hook

All is better now. We had a trouble getting the anchor out of the water this morning but after we did we got some really nice wind and off we were sailing past Statue of Liberty out towards the Narrows Bridge and out of the NYC Harbour area.

Sailing just turns my crank. I am always 100% better when wind fills the sails and I hear this whoosh of the water beneath. I am all happy and life can do no wrong today. Sailing can get expensive as we will soon find out in Sandy Hook where we would have to wait out the storm. But lets not get ahead of ourselves here. As I was saying sailing cost money but it's invaluable for your soul or your mental health depends how you look at it.

So we are out of the NYC Harbour, by passing Narrows bridge we are insured again and looking forward to next stage in our journey. The Atlantic Ocean. Because we draw 5ft of water I am unable to take Afterblue through the New Jersey Intracostal. That means going through some open waters for few days.

We were very much aware of weather building up. Isabel was paying a visit. Why all the cataclysms in my life have to bear such a nice female names? Anywho. We barely tasted the open waters, not quite, not really and we went off to the Sandy Hook Bay to wait out the looming storm. We have couple of days of fair weather but it's amazing how much sensibility ownership of the sailboat can instill in someone. So we hung around. We actually got a hit on our fishing line but we weren't able to reel the thing in. We drop the hook and got rock to sleep.

(M)