Triangle Loop – Week 22 (Past NYC & Offshore Around NJ)

Sep 21st to Sep 27th, 2025

Day 147 – Sunday, September 21st, 2025 – In: Newburgh, NY

Yesterday, when we were in Beacon, we heard that there was a large Farmers Market and Flea Market on Sunday in downtown. We took an Uber back across the bridge to Beacon. We started at the old-style diner, The Yankee Clipper, for breakfast, then walked through the flea market. It was large, with lots of interesting things to look at, but we were not in the market for fleas. Next, we visited the Farmers Market, which was also reasonably sized, not as large as Troy, NY, but still very well attended. Many of the fruit and vegetable vendors had lines of people waiting! We picked up some baked goods for breakfast, then walked back down Main Street, where we could catch an Uber back to Newburgh. We hung out on the boat for a while, and then when it started getting a bit rocky due to waves from a south wind, we walked to the Newburgh Brewing Company for dinner.

The Newburgh Brewing Company is in a large old manufacturing building, and it has a lot of character! After dinner, we walked back to the marina, stopping at the park on the waterfront to grab a Geocache (#543). When we went to the boat, it was bouncing quite heavily. We had 2-3 foot waves being driven by the wind, and on our side of the dock, there was no protection. We decided to go to Billy Joe’s Ribworks at the end of the dock and wait it out for a while to see if the wind settled down. At 7:00, it was getting worse, not better. We had gusts over 25 mph, and the boat was really pulling at its lines. We checked the weather forecast and saw that the wind was not predicted to slow down until early morning.

The call was made. “Abandon ship!” We carefully walked down the undulating dock, adjusted the lines on the boat so that it wouldn’t tear the cleats out of the dock, and added a couple of extra fenders. Brenda threw some clothes and our toiletries bags into a suitcase, and we rushed back to solid ground.

I checked Hotels.com and found a Ramada Inn, just across town near the Interstate that looked clean and had a reasonable rate. I booked it and called for an Uber to take us there. The hotel was okay, typical old hotel, probably once a Holiday Inn, but now primarily caters to truckers and construction workers. Our room was clean but with very banged-up furnishings, and a mattress that was probably new when the hotel was built in the 1970s! For $90 a night, we weren’t expecting much.

At 1:00 AM, I woke up and checked the wind gauge and video camera on the boat. The boat was still bouncing around quite a bit, and the wind was 18 mph with gusts to 25! We wouldn’t have gotten much sleep had we stayed on the boat. Sometimes Abandoning Ship is the right choice!

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Day 148 – Monday, September 22nd, 2025 – To: Ossining, NY
Shattemuc Yacht Club

When I woke up at 5:30 am in the hotel, the first thing I did was to check the winds at the boat and the video feed to make sure that the boat was still floating. The winds were down to 2-3 mph, and the boat was still floating! Woo Hoo!

We went next door to Denny’s for breakfast, then Ubered back to the marina. Everything was fine. Some debris had been washed up onto the swim platform, but that was all. Our next stop was Ossining, NY, at the Shattemuc Yacht Club, right next door to Sing Sing Prison! It was a 29-mile run, and we took our time. We passed Bannerman Castle, West Point Military Academy, Haverstraw, and then turned into Ossining. Just as we were approaching the marina entrance, we saw a large catamaran heading our way, but we got to the marina before it. We called the dockmaster, and he said, “I’m getting my lunch. I’m confident that you can dock yourself. Just pick an empty slip. The only rule is not to hit the same thing twice.” Okay… We entered the marina, selected a slip, backed in, and tied off. Just as we were finishing, the large catamaran came in. We had at least 12 feet between us and the next finger pier; they had about 2 feet! We went out and grabbed lines to help them in. Neither of us hit anything even once!

We had just finished tying up the catamaran when the dockmaster pulled up on his bicycle. “What did you hit?” he asked (jokingly, we hoped). He helped us hook up power and gave us the rundown of the yacht club.

Once we were settled in, we walked to the train station, up and over the tracks to the town of Ossining. It’s really not much. The train station, a bunch of parking lots for commuters, and a couple of coffee shops and delis. There are a few large high-rise buildings along the shore and up on the bluffs, home to people who commute into the city each day.

We stopped at one of the delis and shared a sandwich, then walked back to the marina past the ferry landing and along the riverfront walkway. I worked on the blog for a while. The wind steadily increased and was up over 15 mph by 4:00. The marina has wave attenuator docks that take most of the roll out, so it wasn’t anywhere near as bad as Newburgh. At 5:00, we went next door to The Boathouse restaurant for dinner. It’s a bit of a dive, but during the summer, especially on weekends, it’s a hopping place! We had a good dinner and chatted with the staff. Being a Monday, it was a bit slow, so they had lots of time to talk.

When dinner was over, we walked back to the boat, taking in a nice sunset. It had been overcast all day, so this was the first sunshine we’d seen. We had just settled in when what seemed like a tsunami hit the docks and the boat. The folks on the catamaran next door ran out, as did we. The ferry had just left for Havestraw and it waked us very badly. We thought that the finger pier was going to tear off! There wasn’t much we could do, so we just rode it out, then adjusted our lines in case the ferry waked us again. We looked, and the last run is at 9:30, so we should have a calm night after that.

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Day 149 – Tuesday, September 22nd, 2025 – To: Atlantic Highlands, NJ
Atlantic Highlands Harbor

We kept getting waked by the ferry every 20 minutes until just before 10:00 last night, then at 6:00 am, it started again! The marina is very nice, and the attenuator docks do a lot to take the edge off, but still, we got rocked pretty hard. We got the boat ready for departure and waited until the ferry docked in Ossining. Then, we dropped the lines and took off before it left, and it started rocking us again!

Today’s trip would take us down the Hudson to New York City, then out of the Hudson River into Sandy Hook Bay in New Jersey, where we will spend the night. The distance for today is 54 miles. We escaped from Sing Sing Prison without being caught, then went under the Mario Cuomo Bridge, formerly known as the Tappan-Zee Bridge.

On the New York side of the river, the farther south you go, the more built up it becomes until you reach Manhattan, which is about as built up as you get! The New Jersey side is lined with cliffs until just before you get to Manhattan, where it starts to become built up. The cliffs are beautiful, and if you look closely, you can see people walking along the top.

As we approached the George Washington Bridge, where New York City truly begins, we began hearing regular announcements from the Coast Guard. Donald Trump was speaking at the United Nations, and the East River in front of the building had been closed to all marine traffic. Lots of people didn’t get the message because every few minutes, another boat would call and ask why the river was closed and when they could get through. Not even the New York Ferries were allowed to operate! Fortunately, we were coming down the Hudson, so we were not affected. We stuck to the New Jersey side, as there is less ferry traffic.

As we passed mid-town Manhattan, we saw a large Virgin cruise ship in port, and right next to it at the Intrepid Aircraft Carrier Museum was the Mexican tall ship that backed into the Brooklyn Bridge back in May. It’s still in New York being repaired.

We cleared the end of Manhattan Island and passed the Statue of Liberty. There was a Coast Guard Cutter anchored just in front, which made for a great photo! We had been traveling at about 10 mph for most of the way due to traffic and the chop from the wind going opposite the tide. Once we were past the statue and into New York Harbor proper, we floored the throttles and ran the last 15 miles at 25 mph.

As we were approaching the Verrazzano Narrows Bridge, we heard the Coast Guard announce a Pan-Pan (vessel in distress). The location they gave was very near where we were heading. We noticed another Coast Guard ship sitting just after the bridge, and I commented that they weren’t heading to help very fast. No sooner had I said that, when Brenda said, “They aren’t, but these guys are!” A Coast Guard fast response boat came up from behind us and passed us like we were standing still! They must have been doing close to 40 mph, with five or six people hanging on to the boat on the open back!

Another boat near the boat in distress went to their aid. It seems that it wasn’t really an emergency, just an engine that wouldn’t start. When they cancelled the alert, you could hear the annoyance in the Coast Guard radio operator’s voice.

At 1:45, we pulled into Atlantic Highlands Harbor. Before we went to our slip, we stopped at the fuel dock to fill our tank and pump out. This is the first fuel since Burlington, Vermont. We got good mileage going slow through the canals. Once we filled up and emptied our tanks, which took about an hour, we moved to our slip and got settled in. We needed to make a supply run, so we went to a local supermarket for water, eggs, milk, and a few other essentials. At 5:00, we walked up to the restaurant next to the marina for dinner.

We have reserved two nights here in Atlantic Highlands, as we mentioned, our next leg is outside in the ocean. We’ve been monitoring multiple weather sources, and none of them seem to agree on what the conditions will be like tomorrow. It is clear that if we don’t make the run tomorrow, we won’t have another opportunity until Saturday. So, we have four plans.

1. If the conditions are bad when we wake up, we stay put.
2. If it looks okay, we’ll take off early, around 7:00 am, and stick our nose out. If it’s bad, we’ll turn around and come back until Saturday.
3. If we start and conditions deteriorate, we will take one of two bailout ports, either Barnegat Bay or Atlantic City.
4. If conditions are good, we will run fast and try to make it the 120 miles to Cape May, NJ.

Check tomorrow’s blog entry to see where we are!

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Day 150 – Wednesday, September 24th, 2025 – To: Cape May, NJ
South Jersey Marina

And the winner is….. Option #4! We made it to Cape May, New Jersey, in one shot. Overall, it wasn’t a bad day. We had 3-4 foot gentle rollers, one every 6-9 seconds. Waves come in series, with every 6th or 7th wave being larger than the other. Those were 5-6 feet, but we hardly noticed them. Just as when we were headed north, we hit a fog bank between Barnegat and Atlantic City. We did get a bit of wind once we cleared the fog bank, but it was right on the nose, so again, we hardly noticed it.

All during our trip, we were listening to a conversation between a fishing boat offshore and the Coast Guard. From our location, we could only hear the Coast Guard, not the fishing boat. The report was that a person on board was in cardiac arrest. From what we could gather, they were more than 50 miles offshore. The Coast Guard continued to request updates and positions. Then they made a call, “Do you see the helicopter above you?” A few minutes later, we heard that the person with the cardiac arrest refused to be airlifted off the boat, and that they were continuing into Barnegat Harbor, and that the Coast Guard was making arrangements for paramedics to meet them at the dock.

We were in the fog for about two hours. Cruising in fog is stressful, especially when trying to maintain speed. Fortunately, more and more boats are equipped with AIS, which makes them easy to spot. For the rest, especially smaller fishing boats, we rely on radar and keeping a close watch out of the windows. One of my tricks is to run my radar on clear days, where I can compare what I see on the radar to what I see out in the water. This lets me get a feel for what a blip is, whether it’s land, a boat, a buoy, or just a blip! Additionally, since it was toward the end of the season and a weekday, there was very little small boat traffic, allowing us to maintain speeds of between 15 and 18 mph.

Just before Atlantic City, we broke out of the low fog. There was still a lot of mist and fog above the water. We could see Atlantic City about 1.5 miles away, but the tops of the casinos were in the clouds. From Atlantic City to Cape May is 40 miles. Aside from a bit of chop from the wind, the swells seemed slightly smaller. After an almost 8-hour day and 135 miles, we pulled into South Jersey Marina (one of our favorite stops). When we arrived, we called on the radio and they gave us our slip assignment. We went straight to the dock, where they usually put us, but a dockhand called out to Brenda that we were on the back side of the big yachts this time.

By the time we were settled in, it was almost 4:00, so we walked across the bridge to the C-View Inn for a docking beer and dinner.

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Day 151 – Thursday, September 25th, 2025 – In: Cape May, NJ

Thursday was a lazy day for us. In the morning, Brenda did a couple of loads of laundry, and I started by rinsing the boat to remove the salt spray. This is our first saltwater since July 1st! I went for a haircut, my first since June 18th! (It was really starting to bug me, although I was thinking about a pirate ponytail!)

In the early afternoon, we took the shuttle service to downtown Cape May and walked around a bit. We were there for about 30 minutes, and started to feel a few raindrops, so we went into a restaurant for a drink and a snack. We had just sat down when the skies opened up It was the first really hard rain we’ve had in weeks! The rain lasted about 20 minutes, which was about how long it took us to have our snack!

When it stopped, we walked the rest of downtown, just window shopping. We were here for a few days in June, so we had seen most of what there was to see. When we finished our loop of downtown, we stopped back at a bakery to pick up some breakfast treats, then called the shuttle to go back to the marina.

When we got back, I took a nap until dinner time. We walked across the street to a pizza joint and had a salad and pizza. As we were walking back, we felt a couple of raindrops and heard thunder in the distance. The sun was setting, peeking under the clouds, and we were treated to a great rainbow over the marina!

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Day 152 – Friday, September 26th, 2025 – In: Cape May, NJ

Friday was another relaxing day. We have reservations for Philadelphia on Monday, the 29th. We had to make the reservation in advance to make sure that we could get in. We built in a couple of extra days because we didn’t know how the weather was going to be along the coast of New Jersey or in the Delaware Bay. This means we have an extra day here in Cape May and an extra day in Delaware City, about halfway to Philadelphia.

Today is another of our flex days. We spent the morning doing admin stuff. Accounting, blogs, route planning, and supply planning. I did my engine checks for tomorrow’s run to Delaware City. I also placed yet another order with Walmart to try to get my engine oil delivered. When I ordered it for delivery in Newburgh, it was yet another Walmart fiasco. They said they could deliver same day, and it finally arrived 5 days later, after we had left. This time we will try for Philadelphia. They claim that they are delivering from a store this time rather than through FedEx. Time will tell!

In the afternoon, we walked over to the Utsch’s Marina down the street to greet Beach Breeze as they came in for fuel. We first saw their boat in Burlington, Vermont, and have been leapfrogging with them all the way to Atlantic Highlands. In Atlantic Highlands, they had anchored their boat, and we just missed meeting them while we were at the grocery store. We passed them during our run down the coast, chatting with them on the radio. They stopped in Atlantic City, and this morning, Brenda noticed that they were on the move. We had been watching their progress, and when they got close, we walked over to meet them. We finally got to introduce ourselves to Lisa and Greg, and arranged for them to dinghy over this evening to go out for dinner.

At 6:00, they arrived in their dinghy, and we went across the street to Mayer’s Tavern. We had a great chat and went well past their “get back to the boat by dark” deadline!

Day 153 – Saturday, September 27th, 2025 – To: Delaware City, DE
Delaware City Marina

We usually avoid traveling on the weekends. However, today we are going up Delaware Bay, which is wide, so aside from a short run on the Cape May Canal in the morning, we didn’t have to deal with many weekend boaters.

We pulled away from the dock at 8:10 and went past the Cape May Fishing Fleet, made almost a U-Turn down the canal, past the ferry terminal, and out into Delaware Bay. As soon as we cleared the canal, we sped up to 19 mph and headed up the bay. Our new friends on Beach Breeze had left about an hour before us, and we caught up to them just as we reached the main shipping channel and Miah Maull Shoal Light. The winds were between 8 and 12 mph, but aside from some chop, the water was pretty calm.

Next was the Ship John Shoal Lighthouse, and shortly after that, we saw a large ship heading our way at 18 mph. We pulled out of the shipping channel to avoid most of the wake, but we still had a couple of good bounces! I saw a boat gaining on us from behind, traveling at 35 mph, and recognized it as our next-door neighbor, Liquidity, the big sport fish, zipping along.

Our next landmark was the Salem Nuclear Power Station, just before the junction of the C&D Canal, where we had joined Delaware Bay on our way north in June. Our destination today was Delaware City Marina, just past the canal and down the old access channel to the C&D. We stayed here on our second Loop trip. It’s a popular Looper stop, especially in the spring. We pulled in and topped off our fuel tanks. We were back down to half tanks, having burned over 200 gallons on our fast runs along the Atlantic coast down to Cape May and up Delaware Bay. The fuel price at Delaware City Marina is already competitive to start with. Then, they offer a 10-cent-per-gallon discount for being a Looper, and another 10 cents if you buy over 100 gallons, and yet another 10 cents if you buy over 200 gallons! So 30 cents off a gallon!

After topping off, we moved to our slip. The boat behind us, “Adventure”, had a Looper flag, and it looked familiar. We introduced ourselves to Curtis, and in our conversation, he mentioned that the boat used to be called Pura Vida III. This is the boat we traveled down the rivers with on our First Loop. We are still friends with Chris, Angela, and their son Sebastian. What a small world!

After checking in at the office, we walked into town to visit the local bakery, pick up some supplies (beer), and stop at Dolly Spanker’s for a snack. There was a geocache at the park, just across the street from Dolly’s, that we were able to find before returning to the boat for the evening.

Around 4:00, another boat pulled up in front of us, Errante, who we had also met on our First Loop, and was in front of us at the Chambly Locks a few weeks ago. We chatted with Robert for a few minutes as he was headed up to the office to check in. A few minutes later, we had a knock on the side of the boat, and Robert had Foster Shucker, the local Harbor Host, whom we met on our first loop and at a few of the Looper events. We caught up and bit, and Foster gave us some hints on places to visit in Philadelphia.

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Recap of the week

We traveled 280 miles this week, bringing our total to 2,903 miles so far. We finished off the Hudson River, passed through New York City, and made our run out in the Atlantic down the coast of New Jersey. We are now heading up Delaware Bay and the Delaware River to Philadelphia for a week of sightseeing, and to ride out whatever storm Imelda brings up this way.

Next week, on Monday, we will travel up to Philadelphia to Penns Landing for the week.