We were up and ready to leave at 6am but the fog kept us at the dock. We waited for it to warm up and dissipate it it wasn’t happening very fast. By 7:15am it had cleared enough that we decided to leave. We tossed the lines and off we went toward New York. As we came out of the inlet and turned toward our destination the fog seemed to get a little thicker. I couldn’t see very far ahead of us and I could hear other boats on the radio talking about the lack of visibility. I followed protocol and was doing a fog horn- a prolonged blast of the horn at least every two minutes. I could see other boats on the GPS if they have AIS which identifies them to me and their speed and direction, but not all boats have this. We have a receiver but not a transponder so we can see them but they can’t see us, thus the horn. It is a bit erie not being able to see far in front of you and even more so when a boat appears out of nowhere, but everyone was going slow enough to be safe. Eventually the fog started to lift and visibility was no longer an issue. We had a backup plan if the weather was too bad to travel the whole distance but it wasn’t needed as the ride was somewhat pleasant. After about five hours we were crossing under Verazzano Narrows Bridge which puts us out of the Atlantic Ocean and in to Upper New York Bay. As we approached we could see the buildings on Staten Island, Coney Island and Brooklyn. Soon we could see Lady Liberty too! There wasn’t a whole lot of traffic as the tour boats weren’t running yet still due to COVID. We have heard how the bay can be like ‘a washing machine’ with so many boats and their wakes, but it wasn’t terrible. As we approached we took tons of pictures of everything around. We had wanted to get here with a buddy boat so we could take each other pictures in front of the Statue of Liberty, but that didn’t work out. We were circling around getting pictures from every angle when I noticed two guys on jet skis taking pictures too. I pulled up a little closer to them and called out of one of them would take our picture and send it to us? One guy was quite agreeable and I circled around with the boat as he snapped away. We pulled up close and I offered a beer to him in thanks which he declined. We exchanged phone numbers/ texts and they took off. Awesome! He made our day by taking those pictures! Now we had to figure out where to anchor. There are a couple of places listed and one is right behind Liberty Island, but it isn’t very protected. We saw another option a little behind the island by a state park so we checked that out. We made our way back and liked the spot so we’d dropped anchor and relaxed. We are finally here.
The park was quite busy and people were everywhere. We stayed on the boat and away from the crowd. We eventually took Frank to shore so he could stretch his legs and do his business, then retreated back to get away from everyone. We could just make out the top of the Statue of Liberty and were happy with our arrangement. The wind picked up a little but we felt good where we were at. At this point Lauren is excited about Long Island Sound. There seems to be a lot of anchorages up and down the coast and with Mick’s advice and advice from others it looks like it will be a fun ‘side trip’. Our first stop will be Port Washington.