Thursday, August 26, 1993 - Ellis Island

Another mystery solved! Roy found my long-lost sandals in the engine compartment. Apparently, they fell in when he raised the floor to get the big anchor out when he was attaching the Jofian to the wall in Wilmington, but he had too much on his mind to notice. The sandals are still in good condition; they didn't even get dirty or greasy. It's sure good to have them back now that it's turned hot again.
Roy dived and unplugged the paddlewheel for the log (speedometer). Now we'll know how far we've gone again. Then he paddled ashore, took a shower, and returned the key.
What a neat trip we had to Long Island Sound! We went under the Verrazano Narrows Bridge, one of the longest single-span suspension bridges in the world. We went by the Statue of Liberty and Ellis Island, bringing back lots of memories to Roy, who returned to New York Harbor by troop ship at the end of World War II. We had a terrific view of lower Manhattan. Went under the Brooklyn Bridge and several other bridges. We had carefully timed our passage through Hell Gate so the current would be with us; it can run as high as five knots, so we zoomed along at ten knots through the Gate.
By the time we went under Throg Point Bridge and entered Long Island Sound, it was nearly five o'clock. We had planned on going to a marina at Davenport Point, but it was so late, we figured the marina offices would close before we got there, so we decided to go to a marina at nearby City Island. The first one we called on the VHF wanted $1.50 a foot. I can't understand why the rates on the East Coast are so much higher than on the West Coast, and most of the marinas aren't nearly as nice. We went to the next marina, but no one was there. Roy wanted to tie to a big barge out front, but it looked too much like the wall in Wilmington to me. We went around to the other side of the island, but two guys in a motorboat warned us there were a lot of submerged rocks, so we turned around and headed back into deep water. Then we decided to head for the Municipal Marina in Echo Bay, since Municipal Marinas are usually less than private ones.
I was at the wheel as we headed into Echo Bay, but Roy was checking the chart and buoy numbers, too. It was a very narrow channel, so I was proceeding slowly and carefully--in the wrong direction. The problem was, there were two sets of channel markers with the same numbers, so even though the numbers were right, the buoys were wrong. We rounded a point expecting to see a cove and the Municipal Marina. Instead we saw a vast body of water. Nothing we saw with our eyeballs resembled what was on the chart. The next buoy we came to was number 6; we were expecting 10. So we stopped the boat and charted our GPS position. We were a long way from Echo Bay! It was getting dark, so we dropped anchor where we were, next to Hart Island. There's a prison on Hart Island, so we couldn't go ashore. We had wanted to phone Bert, but it will have to wait until morning.