New York City - May 26 to June 3.

What I remember most about our week touring Manhattan is my hurting feet. We walked and walked and walked. We saw many of the sites, it would take months to see everything, and had several fine meals. Those of you who know me know one thing that I really enjoy is a fine meal.

OneWorld Center. 

The 911 Memorial

Lois with map in hand dressed like a tourist. 

The Empie State Building.

Radio City Music Hall.

Flatiron Building built in 1902.

Katz's Deli.

Always crowded. 

Pizza from a coal fired pizza oven. The best!

New York City! May 26, 2015

At 9:00 AM we left Great Kills Yacht Club and traveled across the Lower Bay with Staten Island on our port and Brooklyn on our starboard as we entered the Hudson River. Our destination was Liberty Landing Marina just across the river from Lower Manhattan. We'll spend a week here taking the ferry over to Manhattan to see the sites.

Entering the Hudson River with New York City ahead of us.

 Staten Island ferry in front of us.

INA passes the Statute of Liberty. We're a long way from Zippy.

Atlantic City to Manasquan River to Staten Island, May 23 - 25.

After spending two nights at Atlantic City the weather looked like it was improving for a couple of days, long enough to make it to Staten Island. The trip to Manasquan River was about 8 hours on the outside (in the ocean). The first three hours were a little rough but then the sea laid down for a comfortable ride for the remainder of the day. The weather the next day was looking like it was picking up again with winds 10 to 15 and worse the next day. So after talking to R Island we decided to give it a run and get to Staten Island. From Staten Island we would be in the Hudson River and weather would not be so critical. As it turned out, the trip to Staten Island was smooth with a beautiful sunny day. We spent a few days at Great Kills Marina on Staten Island doing a little maintenance on the boat before heading up the Hudson to New York City.

The last half of the day to the Manasquan River was good.

The Adi cat loves to travel. 

Great Kills Marina is a nice place with great people. 

Atlantic City, May 21 - 23

We stayed a few extra days in Cape May because of the weather. On May 21 we pulled out of South Jersey Marina with our friends from R Island behind us headed to Atlantic City. The trip was mostly smooth and we easily got into a nice slip at the Golden Nugget Casino. Gambling didn't go well the first night but lucky for us the weather acted up again and we stayed a second night and we were up $350 which paid for the slip and meals for our stay.

Atlantic City coming into sight.

View from the Golden Nugget Casino.

The Atlantic City Boardwalk.

Cape May, May 15-21.

Cape May is on the Atlantic coast at the mouth of Delaware Bay in New Jersey. It is a old town with a rich history. There are well over 100 Victorian homes in the well preserved downtown area. We enjoyed riding our bikes around town looking at homes and going to the beach. As always, there were some good restaurants there too with lots of fresh fish.

Downtown Cape May. 

Lots of beautifully restored homes. 

The fishing fleet.

INA.

Trip down Delaware Bay to Cape May - Friday, May 15, 2015

We left Delaware City for the 62 mile trip to Cape May at 7:00 AM. The trip was mostly smooth but the last five miles before entering the Cape May Canal got  little bumpy. See the video.

Delaware City/Philadelphia

Yes I know, we just started cruising again and I'm already behind on the blog!

Delaware City is a small town on the Delaware River out in the country. It was nice to have our car there, we had taken it there a couple of weeks earlier from AYB. Our first day, we took a ferry boat to Pea Patch Island to visit Fort Delaware. The island is in the middle of the Delaware River. The Fort was finished in 1859 and during the Civil War it housed as many as 13,000 Confederate prisoners. The next day we drove down to Cape May, our next stop in the boat, to check out the marinas and see what was there. We found a nice marina and made a reservation for the following week. Cape May is a nice old town with many many old victorian houses. But more about that in my next post. The next two days we spent in Philadelphia seeing the sights. The first day we drove the car; traffic and $26 to park the car made us decide to take the train into Philly the next day. Fifteen dollars round trip with the old persons discount on the train was a better deal. We headed back south on the train at the end of the day out of the Amtrak station. Ironically, at the very same time our train was leaving the station, the Amtrak train that derailed north of Philadelphia was leaving the same station. When we got back to the boat we saw the train wreck on the TV and we all felt uneasy about our train trip. The rest of our week at Delaware City was spent working on the boat and finding a place to store the car for a month. We will retrieve it once we are in New York on the Hudson. On Friday, May 15 we left Delaware City headed down Delaware Bay in open water to Cape May.

Fort Delaware. 

Rifle demonstration.

Philly Cheesesteak.

Liberty Bell.

Independence Hall.

Amtrak Station.

Philadelphia City Hall.

Headed North

At 11:00 AM on Saturday May 2, 2015 we left Atlantic Yacht Basin (AYB) in Chesapeake, VA headed north up Chesapeake Bay. AYB had kept INA dry and safe for the winter but now it was time to start moving again. Our general itinerary for 2015 is as follows: We will head up Chesapeake Bay stopping at Delaware City, Cape May, Atlantic City and getting to New York City the last part of May. We are planning to spend two to three weeks in NYC and then maybe a week or more on Long Island Sound before heading up the Hudson River. Towards the end of June we will be up the Hudson and will enter the Erie Canal at Waterford, NY. We will travel the length of the Erie Canal, about 395 miles, to Buffalo, NY. We will leave the boat in Brewerton, NY at the end of September for the winter.

Our first travel day was a short one arriving at Hampton, VA in the afternoon.  We had a quick dinner at the marina restaurant with our friends from R Island who are cruising with us. We got to bed early. The next morning we left just after sunrise for the 51 mile trip to Deltaville. We layed up there a couple of days because of weather. On Wednesday, May 6th we left Deltaville about 6:15AM headed to Solomon's Island, MD and had great dinner at the CD Cafe a restaurant we had eaten at last summer. With the weather looking good the next day we headed out with calm seas to Annapolis, MD. Annapolis is a great little town and we enjoyed a last walk around the downtown streets and a chocolate coconut ice cream cone from the Annapolis Ice Cream Company.  The weather still looking good and a favorable tide we left Annapolis traveling 79 miles up the bay and across the Chesapeake and Delaware Canal to Delaware City, DE. 79 miles is a long day for us! We plan to stay here a week going several days to Philadelphia to see the sites. So far we have traveled 276 miles from Atlantic Yacht Basin up Chesapeake Bay across the canal to the Delaware River.

Leaving AYB. Moving again!

Our first night at Hampton. 

 On the bay. 

Dinner with fellow loopers. 

Leaving Annapolis. 

The Bay Bridge.

Chesapeake and Delaware Canal. 

It's back to Inch-n-Along for cruising 2015

After a long cold winter in Memphis, Spring finally came. Bulbs, plants and trees bloomed with beautiful color and then everything was covered with green pollen for two weeks an annual event that we and our allergys hate. Just as the green pollen event ended and the trees filled with leaves we packed up the car and headed back to Inch-n-Along for summer cruising 2015.

We had an uneventful trip back to Virginia. About an hour out of Memphis the Adi cat figured out she wasn't going to the vet and settled in for the ride. The first night we stayed in Asheville with friends Jeff and Grace. It was good to see them again and they are great hosts. We left the next morning headed to Chesapeake, VA and our boat at Atlantic Yacht Basin. It rained all the way there and was pouring when we got to the boat. So, we got a quick dinner and stayed in a hotel for the night which Adi loved. We moved back on to the boat the next day with the sun shinning and green pollen everywhere. Lucky us we got a double dose of pollen this year. We've spent the last week getting the boat ready to leave on May 1. We're hoping the weather agrees with our schedule.

November 14, 2014 We are home in Memphis.

We spent the last of October going through every cabinet and drawer on the boat boxing up stuff we had not used or didn't think we needed on the boat to take home. We rented a car to drive home and when we went to pick it up they didn't have the size that we had reserved so they gave us a mini van. Lucky for us that we got the van, we had a big load of stuff to take home.

So on October 27th we winterized the boat, pumping pink antifreeze through the engine, generator, HVAC, and fresh water system. Inch-n-Along will sleep until April, staying in the water under a roof in a big barn, protected from the weather.

We stayed in a hotel the 27th and 28th as the boat had no heat or toilet because those systems were now shut down for the winter. The Adi cat had been a little uneasy as she didn't know what was going on. The boat had been in an upheaval for a week with the sorting and packing; Adi cat does not like things on the boat to be out of place. However when we took her to the hotel she calmed down and seemed to be thinking she was on a new adventure and was excited to get going. Adi loves hotel rooms provided she has her food and potty box.

We left Chesapeake, VA on the morning of October 29 for a leisurely trip home to Memphis. First stop was Blacksburg, VA. Our daughter Megan's first friend when we moved to Memphis, Natalie, lives in Blacksburg with her husband and new baby, Eva Cathren. Eva is three months old and so .sweet. We had dinner with them and then off to another hotel, to the excitement of the Adi cat.

Next day we headed to Asheville NC to visit Grace and Jeff. The trees were turning and the color was beautiful. We had started our loop adventure with them, leaving from our home port of Grand Harbor in October 2013. Grace and Jeff at that point were half way around their loop. They have a beautiful log home in the country outside of Asheville. Grace fixed a wonderful dinner and we talked about our loop adventures.

Nashville was our next stop. We had an early dinner and got a good nights sleep, Adi included, and got up early for the final leg of our trip home to Memphis. We arrived home in the afternoon greeted by our daughter Megan. Megan prepared a delicious dinner and we settled back in to our house until April. Amazingly the Adi cat traveled home those several days almost a thousand miles perfectly. She is a great all around traveler and boat cat!

We will return to the boat in early April 2015 to continue our adventure. Our plan is to quickly run up Chesapeake Bay to the C&D Canal to Delaware Bay and up the Delaware River to Philadelphia. From there we will head to Cape Fear, NJ and then on the outside to New York Harbor. We'll spend time in NYC and then go up the Hudson River to the Erie Canal where we will spend the summer leaving the boat in Brewerton, NY for the 2015 winter.

Everyone have a great holiday season and we will and we will see you again in April.

October 18 & 19, 2014 Naval Tour and Art Festival

The local TV news gave us two ideas for something to do over the weekend. On Friday morning we got the Enterprise car rental weekend special, $33.63 total returning the car on Monday morning. On Saturday we traveled to Norfolk Naval Station for an event celebrating the 239th anniversary of the U.S. Navy. There were ship tours. We were able to go on board the carrier Theodore Roosevelt the ship that passed us on 10/17 on Chesapeake Bay. There was also aircraft displayed, various navy equipment, an antique car show, and a chili cook off. In the afternoon we attended a Navy Band concert on the Roosvelt. It was a fun day.

On Sunday, we spent the afternoon in downtown Norfolk at the Stockley Gardens Arts Festival. This event was held at the Stockley Gardens park in the middle of a beautiful neighborhood of old restored homes. The art show is an annual event with about 150 artists displaying their work. We enjoyed the afternoon and the artwork.

October 13-17, 2014

We spent the week at Atlantic Yacht Basin, doing maintenance on the boat and planning our trip back to Memphis. While we are away for the winter AYB is going to do some needed work on the boat for us:  New cushions in the salon and pilothouse, a roof vent in the pilothouse (it can get hot in the pilothouse and we can't have the doors open for fear of an escaping Adi cat), wax on the outside of the boat, and in the Spring new bottom paint. All this and the maintenance that I'll do on the engine, generator and other systems will send us off in the Spring ready for another six months of cruising before laying the boat up again for the winter in Brewerton, NY. As we sit at AYB on the outside dock we see every hour, when the Great Bridge Bridge opens, boats of all sizes headed south down the Albermarle and Chesapeake Canal to warmer waters.

Headed to the Bahamas?

Lots of commercial traffic on the canal.

October 13, 2014 Atlantic Yacht Basin

This morning we headed south through Norfolk, the Virginia Cut and Great Bridge Lock into the Albemarle and Chesapeake Canal. Atlantic Yacht Basin (AYB) is about a mile from the lock on the canal. We'll leave the boat at AYB for the winter at the end of October and Lois, Adi cat and I will drive home to Memphis.

Norfolk Naval Shipyard. 

Great Bridge Lock.