Newly Updated
October 8th, 2005
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Our
Adventure Began on September 12th, 2005 as we left Georgian Bay heading South
for
the Caribbean!
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October 9th, 2005
Water, Water, Everywhere...
He Said:
We finally cleared the Erie Canal system at dusk on Friday night. We literally came out of the last lock, the sun was down and every slip as far as the eye could see was full… Now What?? The forecast was calling for rain… 5 days of it and anywhere from 3-5 inches in the next 24 hours! Every marina within 50 miles that was accepting boats was full… the rest were trying to get rid of the boats that were there due to the flood warnings that had been issued for New York and about 4 other states all under the same weather system. The entire state had come to a standstill and we were left floating somewhere in the middle of it wondering where to go next.
We had come down the last 6 locks with another sailboat called ‘Sea Beagle’. They came out ahead of us and were lucky enough to catch the last spot available… for a 40 footer. We had no sooner past them at the dock and they came on the radio and offered to let us tie up with them. We were a little long considering they were almost touching the boats ahead and behind them, but rafted to them we fit just fine. Safe!! Finally we could rest and enjoy the fact that we were now done the locks and could settle in for the night. And then the emergency sirens started wailing in town… We never did find out what they meant officially, but we assumed it was something to do with the emergency broadcast system in relation to the impending floods.
It started raining overnight, the wind picked up and turned out of the North, and it became very cold by morning. We were up at 7:30 Saturday morning after we found out there was one more lock in Troy that was 3 miles away, and if the flood warnings continued, they’d shut down the whole system and we could be stuck there for days. We followed along with ‘Sahara Too’ and ‘Sea Beagle’ at about 8am and made it into the lock by 9am. They let us down the last 15 feet to sea level, and we were now officially in the Hudson River on our way to New York City. The only task left at hand now was stepping our mast. ‘Sea Beagle’ had phoned ahead to the marinas in the Catskill River to find out if we could dock there to put up our masts, but were told by the person on the phone “don’t come here!! We’re trying to get rid of the boats that are here now!” They were right in the middle of the flood warnings, and the last thing they wanted was to be responsible for more boats. ‘Sea Beagle’ was just telling us on the radio about the Castleton Boat Club on the river when Castleton came on the radio and informed us that they had room for us and the mast crane was available for us and no problem to handle our size of mast… that was a welcome transmission!! We pulled into Castleton, they had deck hands on the dock ready to help us with our lines and had us tied up in no time. They announced over the VHF radio that lunch was ready to be served… Beef Burgundy with Caesar salad, Apple crisp for desert, and drink… all for $6… can you say… Honey, I’m home!! Lol
Needless to say, we tied up in Castleton and settled in for the night. We didn’t bother challenging the mast on Saturday, it was just too nasty and cold, and we weren’t in that much of a hurry, so we decided to wait and see what Sunday’s weather brought. It was a nice day actually, the weather was terrible, but it was the first day we had just taken to do nothing… we had been going steady for weeks so a day off was very welcome. Ok, ok… so we really didn’t take a full day off… turns out, the boat club had wireless high-speed internet! Can you say website upgrades!! We spent the better part of the night going through all our thousands of pictures taken on the trip so far and setting up some new slideshows for our log entries online. So, to answer all the people that have been asking when we’d be updating the website and posting some pictures… the answer would be NOW! You can now log into our main page at www.WindInMySails.com and follow the link to our new ‘Ships Log’ page which we updated as well to more closely resemble the rest of our website. You may have to hit ‘refresh’ to see the changes if you’ve already been there recently.
We posted all the pictures from our Great Lakes Cruise, as well as our last few charters we had in Georgian Bay and Lake Ontario before we left on our grand adventure. Have a look through all the new pages and you’ll be sure to find lots of new stuff. Also, we’ve added a lot of new names to our mailing list lately at the request of friends, so if you’re receiving our emails for the first time and want to catch up, again, just visit the website and look for the link to the ‘Ships Log’ and you’ll find all our previous log entries up to now.
We finally got the mast up today (Sunday), the wind died off, the rain stopped, it was still cool but was a much better day for the task at hand… even Brian said “I’m glad we waited till today!” It is about 4pm now, and since 1pm we’ve been pleasantly strolling down the Hudson River at about 10 miles per hour as we are picking up quite a lift from the current of all the fallen water running down the river towards the ocean. Not sure if the water is salty yet… it’s so muddy that no one wants to do a taste test! I’m so glad Brian was able to make it down for this part of the cruise, if it had been anyone else I don’t think I would have been comfortable putting our mast up by ourselves, but Brian and I go way back in sailing, and really seem to know how to read each other. The stepping went flawlessly, even with the wakes being thrown at us by passing powerboats… Brian would get on the radio and yell, “hey you, slow down, can’t you see we’re working over here!” lol
This part of the cruise has given us a bit of a test in our ability to fix things… they always say that you’re ability to go cruising will be limited by your ability to fix things, unless you have an unlimited expense account… which we of course do not! The new fridge stopped working the other day… the freezer was working perfectly, but it seems a leak had developed in the fridge system and the pressure was reduced to zero. Luckily, I had all my gauges, leak detectors, vacuum pump, and refrigerant tank onboard… within a few hours I had found several leaks, fixed them, vacuumed out the system to get rid of the moisture that had seeped in, and refilled it with new refrigerant… after a couple pressure adjustments it’s working perfectly again! Then the propane system failed… we had no stove, no oven, and most importantly… no furnace! On the coldest day so far we had no way of generating heat while underway. Luckily, I had Brian to man the helm while Terri helped me take the system apart, piece by piece, until we found one of the lines plugged and managed to clear it by blowing through it. We put the system back together and pressure checked it, then fired up the furnace and everything worked perfectly again! I’m sure these two repairs alone would have cost us well over $600, let alone the downtime waiting for a repairman and the time and money spent trying to track one down in our ‘back alley’ locations, lol.
We’re well underway again… the floods seem to have abated (although they never really affected us), and we are making tracks fast towards New York City. We could be there as soon as tomorrow night… but then again… what’s the rush! We don’t want to get too far South before the hurricane season blows out, and we still have some friends that want to come and visit before we head offshore. We’re going to head down the Hudson until dusk, then find a place to anchor close to anchor near the shore. Tomorrow morning we’ll get up early and continue on our journey South!
Hope everyone is doing well… still hoping my Grandmother in Newfoundland gets better soon, the last update wasn’t good, but I’ve got all fingers crossed for her… we’re all praying for you Gram! Take care everyone… looking forward to hearing more from you all!
PS… apparently we have lots of people in our mailing list who have done the trip before… thanks so much for all the tips everyone, they’ve been very useful! If anyone knows of a good place to get sail repairs done once we get to New York, we need to get a minor repair done on our mainsail (the tack has become detached by an overzealous winch grinder on the outhaul), and the jib needs to have the leech line re-sewn where a couple of feet have let loose. Thanks everyone!
Cheers,
Rick
She Said:
We are now in the Hudson River. We almost made it through the Erie locks with no rain! Almost. The last 4 or 5 locks we had rain. Luckily we were well used to the lock routine and I think the three of us could have actually done them blindfolded if we had to. The locks weren’t quite as picturesque in the cold rain but we had our rain gear and hats and we managed to keep fairly warm. The part that gets the coldest is your hands-holding onto the boat hooks or the ropes in the locks. All I can say is thanks to who ever told us to get another boat hook. With out the second one things in the locks would probably not have run nearly so smoothly. In between locks we seemed to have to dodge a lot of floating logs and debris- we all kept a keen eye out and only had a few small thumps on the hull. It got a little trickier to dodge the logs floating in the middle of some of the locks but we did it.
Ashley refused to remain in the warm dry cockpit and accompanied Brian and I out at each lock – she feels she is vital to every operation on the boat. And she is! She is on my knee keeping me warm as I write this.
We raced our way through the last 5 locks – they are all connected like waterfalls and very close together. Because it was after 5pm they only had one guy working the locks so after he closed the gates, let us down and opened the gates, he had to jump in his car and screech to the next lock below us to let us in and do it all again! It was most interesting to see him race by in his car on shore as we motored to the next lock. We slowed down once we realized the situation!
As we went through these last locks we met up with a 40ft motor sailboat called “Sea Beagle” – it’s such a small world because they are the boat that was in trouble on Lake Ontario when we crossed over. I listened to their rescue by the Coast Guard as I searched for tankers in the night. I was really glad to see they were all ok and none the worse for wear after their adventure. We traveled down the last locks together and came out at the bottom of the last one in Waterford just as it was getting dark. The lock master told us that it was all full below and we could tie up on the opposite side but would have to move in the middle of the night if any commercial boats came through. None of us relished that idea to much – who wants to get up in the middle of the night, in the cold and pouring rain to try and maneuver our huge boat in unknown waters – not us!! He was right – Waterford was packed with boats all along the wall as far as we could see. That sucks as we are all tired, wet and want to just stop for the night. And Waterford is really cute – such a quaint little old fashioned downtown village on the water. We haven’t seen this many boats our whole way down!!
As we soon learned there have been loads of flood warnings for this whole area, it’s supposed to rain for 4 days and drop 3-5inches which could raise the rivers by 3 feet! Yikes! Everyone is tied up here to sit out the storms and flooding – a lot of places along the river were evacuating people out of their Marinas and rivers. We slowly motored down the long line of boats and debated what to do. It was fast becoming dark and we really had no idea where to go and didn’t want to travel down the unknown river ahead blindly in the night. Luckily we got 3 offers to raft onto other boats (tie up against their boat for the night). Boaters are so nice! “Sea Beagle offered and we tied up to them. They had a part beagle doggie on board that made me think of Tinker- he started to bay at one point and I chuckled thinking of Tinker and his famous bark.
We hunkered down for the night finally able to get dry and warm in our salon. It was great to snuggle under warm blankets and watch a movie while it poured outside. I had anticipated phoning family and friends along the way but it has been difficult to not only find actual pay phones but when you finally do, they don’t work! That kind of sucks and makes me feel somewhat isolated but hopefully it will get better as we go.
We got up early and hurried to get through the last lock – a federal lock. We had heard rumors that they would likely shut all the locks soon because of the flooding and then we would be trapped for days!! Oh oh – not good. Three of us took off in a race against time to get to the lock – as we pulled into site we saw he had closed his gates. We frantically all got on the radio and said we were close and could he open back up for us. He said yes but be quick- we were! It was pouring rain and very windy as we pulled up to the lock, the large power boat ahead of us started to have major trouble in the lock. They ended up sideways and out of control and we couldn’t stop as we were already into the lock – we frantically used the boat hooks to grab at the smooth, high cement wall in an effort to keep ourselves from ploughing into the back of the boat. It was a little scary and stressful as we barely clung to the wall while they tried to get control. “Sea Beagle” was coming in fast behind us and the doors were closing. We still had no lines and once we started to go down the boat hooks would not hold us. The people in front of us still had no control of their boat and we needed to somehow back up to get a rope around a pipe. We managed to crab our way slowly back and grab a line. As we are barely managing to do this the lock master comes along and wants some kind of registration number – we are barely hanging onto the lock wall by our finger nails and he wants a number!!!!! We finally got all safely stopped and tied off and made our way out of the lock.
We ended up staying in Castleton with ‘Sea Beagle’ because flooding had caused the marinas in the Catskills to close. It was a nasty afternoon of driving rain, wind and cold as we thankfully tied up. They had a warm, charming clubhouse bar with yummy cheap food and a big screen TV. We ate a nice hot meal and listened to the colorful locals gab at the bar. We then all had a lazy afternoon warm and dry in our boat – we even all had a nap! Life is good. We decided it was too darn nasty to put the mast up.
When we got up this morning it was cold but not raining – yahhhhhh! I know we were all glad we didn’t struggle in the pouring rain yesterday. I thought putting up our mast would be much trickier but Brian and Rick knew exactly what they were doing and I manned the winch handle. We got the mast up in no time and have been happily motoring our way down the Hudson. Its much wider then the Erie Canal and there are many very impressive huge estates nestled in the woods along the shore. We are traveling through the Catskills. There are very big hills that are almost mountains with clouds surrounding their peaks. Very beautiful. Some of the homes are enormous with giant columns and manicured lawns that go for miles. It’s a dull grey day but it’s not raining and its warm in our cockpit. I am enjoying the scenery but kind of wish we had some time to stop in these towns and site see a little. Its kind of like walking through a candy store and peering at all the goodies behind the glass! I may have to consider mutiny if we don’t get some land time soon. There is too much cool stuff to see that I’m missing!!
Yesterday I was feeling a little lonely and sad – maybe it was the rain. I think it’s because it’s a long holiday weekend and I’m missing all the family gatherings and turkey dinners and warm holiday feelings. I have informed the boys that we have to stop and shop so I can buy some Cornish hens (turkey would take an eternity in our little oven!), turnips, potatoes and pumpkin pie. I am going to make our own Thanksgiving feast for us 3 on Monday – we can’t miss it just cause we are on a boat. It should be interesting to see how it flies in our galley. I can’t wait to smell the dressing and warm pie!! I can almost taste it now. Yummy.
We are trying to figure out where to anchor along the river tonight. We have seen other boats along the way. We just have to find a spot that seems safe and out of the way before it gets too dark. And we have to figure out what to make for dinner. Hmmmmmm
Cheers,
Terri
October 13th, 2005
Liiiive, From New York City!!
Location:
40* 41.40’N
74* 02.97’W
New York
City
Cumulative Miles from
Penetanguishene dock: 1339.3 Nautical Miles
1540 Statute Miles
He Said:
So when we last wrote, we were still in the Hudson River. We anchored out in the middle of the Hudson on Sunday night and had a nice, quiet, peaceful night. We were up at dawn and underway again by 7:30am and eating up miles pretty quickly with the current under us. We planned on stopping somewhere along the way and doing some shopping and exploring during slack tide, but we never seemed to find the right place so we just kept on going. Never thought we would have made it all the way to New York on Monday, but we kept plugging away and with the current once again in our favor, we managed to reach the upper harbor by 7:30pm. After weaving our way around the harbor, dodging all the ferry boats that run rampant in the harbor, we made our approach to the Statue of Liberty and made our way through the markers in the dark to find the anchorage out behind Miss Liberty. It was pretty cool, the New York Skyline is quite impressive at night, and to see the Statue of Liberty for the first time from the deck of our own sailboat nestled quietly in an anchorage below her was very inspiring!
We were all pretty tired as you can well imagine, but arriving successfully at the end of Leg 2 of our journey was certainly call for celebration! Terri brought out one of our special bottles that we keep for just such times and we all shared a toast under the light of Miss Liberty’s torch. This is my first time in New York City actually, and arriving here the way we did leaves one with a very fulfilling sense of accomplishment! This ones for you Gramm, and say hi to Pop for me!
We said good-bye to Brian yesterday, he had a flight booked at one of the airports so we made our way to a marina before lunchtime and a cab came and whisked him away. Brian was with us for just over a week, and it was great… Brian and I have always connected and it was great to have him around for this part of our journey, he is always such a great help, and just a great person to have around. Sorry you couldn’t make it Janice, but we’ll look forward to seeing you both again sometime soon! Thanks again for everything Brian!
It seems that a big storm brewing offshore was waiting for us to arrive in New York… as soon as we got here it clouded over and started raining, and they started calling for 3-4 days of gale warnings. We made sure our anchor was securely set and got ourselves all settled in to ride it out. We dropped our dinghy yesterday for the first time since Georgian Bay. After sitting around for a couple days, it was time to get mobile! We met up with Marco and Peter, friends from another Canadian sailboat ‘Elixir of Life’ that is heading South to the same place we are to join the Caribbean 1500 Rally. I’ve known of Marco for several years from the CS Owners Association, an online group of owners of CS sailboats like the boat we owned previous to ‘Sophisticated Lady’. It was great to meet up with them, they had just come down the Hudson the day after we did. We got together on Tuesday and went on a dinghy excursion into Lower Manhattan. We docked the dinghy’s in North Cove Marina after a blistering 3 mile run from our anchorage… the harbor gets quite stirred up by all the ferries running all day, compounded by the 20knots of wind that had been blowing… one time we hit a wave so big it launched us into the air… from the back seat of the dinghy, Terri looked like she was 10 feet in the air! Lol I heard about that one though, and after that was told to slow down, so it took us a while to catch up to Marco, lol.
Walking into town from the marina, the first thing we happened upon was Ground Zero. I remember this site from live TV the day of 9/11 and visiting it first hand was very surreal and left me feeling very disappointed with the way fellow men inflict damage on one another. Part of me wanted to take a picture, but another part didn’t as it’s not something you could ever forget anyway. This night I had my first subway ride so that was kind of cool. We all piled in and headed off to Times Square to do the ‘downtown’ tour. We all had a hotdog from one of the street vendors, then continued our walk around the area before hitting the subway again and heading over to Soho, one of Terri’s favorite villages from a past visit. When asked about a place to have a beer, a local New Yorker pointed us in the direction of a bar called ‘Nancy Whiskey’s’ that was supposed to have quite a colorful crowd which he described as being similar to a scene from ‘Star Wars’… that sounded like a good enough reason to stay away for me, but now Terri had to check it out! Lol He was right, they were very ‘colorful’, but we met some really cool people and had a real good night just hangin out and playing shuffleboard. We didn’t get back to the boat until 1am which for us was really late since we are normally in bed by 9pm these days. It was quite a challenge navigating the dinghy back across New York Harbor in the dark, but the traffic had subsided so all we were left with was the wind and the rain to contend with.
Wednesday we had a very casual day, just taking it easy for a change, and waiting out the weather. Marco is waiting on the weather to shift as well, then we’ll probably head South together towards Virginia down the coast. We had them over for dinner and a movie tonight (Wednesday) so that was a nice evening. The wind is still howling outside, but it is nice and warm inside. New York has been fun, but we’re looking forward to moving on down the coast and visiting some small towns in the Chesapeake area. We may head down to Virginia first, then head North into the Chesapeake for a week or so before the check-in time for the Rally. Everything is kind of ‘on-the-fly’ at this point, but we’ll keep you posted as we go! Take care everyone!
Cheers,
Rick
PS… Happy Birthday Justin!! Dad will talk to you soon!
She Said:
Right now we are anchored on the Hudson River at the bottom of the Statue of Liberty- how cool is that!!! It really is amazing to look out our windows at back of the Lady of New York. She really is impressive as we bob underneath her. Our trip down the Hudson was beautiful. It was wider then the Erie and the landscape was more immense and majestic in a sense. The homes tucked into the mountain sides – or maybe they are just really big hills, are huge and very stately. Makes you wonder what they are worth!! LOL. We actually were able to see the second half of the Hudson as it stopped misting and raining and we could see the views out our window. As we cruised along very nicely with the flowing tides and currents we enjoyed the lush landscapes. We had our constant companion along side of us the whole way – the train tracks seem to follow the rivers and endless streams of trains traveled along beside us. They are quite comforting somehow. And I love the sound of their horns. They often honked them as we they passed by and we waved. Makes you feel like a giant kid again and brings a grin to your face.
The Catskills were especially lovely to see and I couldn’t help thinking of the movie ‘Dirty Dancing’ because I think they filmed it up in some giant resort in the Catskills! Made me imagine wealthy people up the hills luxuriating in beautiful lodges surrounded by mountains and forests. LOL When we came into one area just past the Catskills near, I think it was West Point or some military place. The mountains were very high and the tops of them were hidden in the clouds and a thin mist. It was so incredible to see. We were in some kind of valley and there was even one little island with a castle on it looming out of the mist. It really felt like were in some little river hamlet in Europe. I must have taken 100 pictures as we glided past the rocky cliffs and thick forests. I sat outside on the bow with Ashley in our rain gear as a misty rain was blowing on us. We gazed around and couldn’t believe how truly gorgeous our surroundings were. With the mist and the clouds all around us it felt very surreal and mystical.
We ended up simply dropping our anchor along the banks of the Hudson at some point near dusk. We never did find a town that had docks or what looked like a shopping area. So I never got to buy our Thanksgiving feast. I was bummed about that but the scenery kind of made up for it. I did want to stop and explore the towns we slid by but the tide always seemed to be in our favour and we just kept going. Our night on the hook was calm and we fell asleep quickly as usual. Next morning we left early and continued our journey. It was another picturesque day with lots of photo taking on my part! I also manned the helm and read my book in the dull spots!
We decided to go for broke and just push right onto NY City as we could be there just at night fall. As we crossed under the George Washington Bridge and the city scape came into view I was very excited and couldn’t seem to sit still. It was so crazy cool to be pulling into New York City Harbour in our boat! It didn’t seem real. The lights of the city led us in and the Statue of Liberty was a giant beaming presence we were drawn to. The Harbour was very busy with endless ferries going in every direction, big yellow checkered water taxis, giant tankers and huge cruise ships. It really was a teaming metropolis on the water. The water got noticeably rougher with wakes and waves going in every direction. I was frantically trying to take pictures of the Statue of Liberty but it was so rough and wavy that they all kept coming out blurry – it was so frustrating not to be able to capture how breathtaking she was to behold from the water. We cautiously made our way around the Lady between ferries and taxis. None of us had ever been to this anchorage behind the stature before and we thought there would be lots of other boats anchored there to show us the way. Well there were absolutely no other boats anywhere around her and we just followed the markers to the back and threw in the anchor just out of the channel. We were really hoping this was the right place! We had such a fabulous view of the back of the Statue and New York City glowing and looming beside us. It really is wild you can just drop your anchor and float beside the Statue of Liberty in New York City and no one tells you to leave.
Brian, our faithful and amazing crew and friend had a flight to catch back to Toronto on Tuesday afternoon. One small problem, we had no idea how to get him ashore. We had no other cruisers around us to ask how to catch a water taxi or where to take our dingy if we tried to go to Manhattan. We pondered our dilemma and decided to try and find a marina in Manhattan and spend the night at a dock. Off we went, it seemed like a simple plan but New York is not a simple city and we spent some time bobbing along the shores of Manhattan searching for a dock or a marina in vain. We found one ‘mega yacht club’ at the bottom of the financial district but no one answered our hails. We decided to head across the river to the New Jersey side as there seemed to be a bunch of masts and a possible Marina! We finally found our way into the Marina and Brian hopped in a taxi and was off! We will miss you much, Brian it has been so great having you aboard. Your calm and easy going presence is wonderful to be around and all your help priceless. Thanks for being part of our journey. After Brian’s departure we got diesel and water and ate an expensive lunch in a little divey diner aboard an old barge at the marina. We found out there were two Marinas in Manhattan and we thought we would stay at one till we asked how much - $200 dollars US to dock for one night – 4 times what it normally costs!! Needless to say we decided to return to our bumpy anchorage below the Statue.
Our friend Marco pulled up near us on his boat “Elixir of Life’ and we all decided to head into the big apple. Marco knew where we could tie up our dinghies and his friend Peter had never been to NY City before and wanted to site see. It was getting dark so we all put on our wet gear and hopped in our trusty dinghy’s. What a freaking wild ride that was!! The waves were huge and we were going very fast to keep up to Marco and miss all the ferries and water taxis. I swear we were air born a lot of the time. I was holding on for dear life as we pounded our way into Manhattan. It was an exciting ride into the looming city that seemed to take forever! As we got close to shore I noticed all the New Yorkers staring out as us crazy people in the tiny tossing rubber boats wondering what we were dong and where the blazes we came from!! It was pretty funny. We finally pulled into the lower basin where the little marina with huge expensive boats is and tied up. We all staggered out of our dinghies and it felt like we had been on a ride at wonderland. We walked up the street and found ourselves at ‘Ground Zero’. It was quite humbling to see and made you just stop in silence and remember the shock of 911.
We had a great night on the town, checking out the lights and insanity of Times Square, eating awful NY hot dogs, riding the maze of subways and seeing the ever wonderful Soho district. We asked a local and found our way to a hidden bar that was supposed to be like the bar scene in ‘Star Wars’ – it was very cool! Lots of crazy, interesting locals and characters galore. They welcomed us with open arms and we were soon playing wickedly competitive shuffleboard games!! Frank the Wednesday bartender was a real character, well worth the trouble finding Nancy Whiskies! We headed back to the dinghies in the pouring rain and braced ourselves for the ride back across the river. Luckily it was not as rough and we fell into bed exhausted but happy.
Tonight we had a great stir fry dinner with Marco and Peter and we all lounged around and watched ‘Pirates of the Caribbean’ as we pitched and rolled in the waves! It made us feel like we were in the movie. We woke up at 3am to our anchor alarm going off and heavy winds and lashing rain. We had dragged our anchor and were now floating in the channel but we seemed stable at the moment. It was very very stormy outside and the dinghy had to be lashed on tighter to protect it. The storms and gale winds were definitely upon us. We through on our rain gear and stumbled out to the cockpit and tried to make sure we weren’t getting blown into the statue. Rick let out more chain and we stayed up listening to the bleak weather reports and ongoing flood watches. It was scary, and I felt very small and insignificant in our tiny boat against the elements. Even Ashley was scared and wanted to sit on my knee. Rick calmed me down and we snuggled back into bed and finally went to sleep and all was well. It seems like we’re trapped here until Saturday, the weather is just too terrible to even think about attempting an escape from New York. I guess we’ll have to hunker down in our warm clothes, watch movies, and ride out the storm.
Cheers,
Terri