May | 2015 | Two Bikes and a Boat

Delivery route

For Ontarians, buying a boat in the US often means hiring a trucking company to bring the boat home. Good boat shippers make this process easy but the costs are significant. Before the buying Kinship our plan was to take Penny for a 3 week holiday on Lake Ontario. So, spend a fortune bringing the boat home on a truck, or take a couple of weeks off to bring Kinship home on her keel?

So, on May 16th we set sail for Annapolis on our way back to Kingston. We will sail up the Chesapeake bay, through the Chesapeake and Delaware Canal to Delaware Bay. Out into the Atlantic for an overnight coastal passage to New York City. A day in New York to rest and relax, then off up the Hudson to Catskill to lower the mast. Up to Troy to the Eire Canal to Oswego, up goes the mast, then a day sail across Lake Ontario to Kingston.

There is a little bit of everything on this trip. A little bit of sailing the Chesapeake, a little bit of Atlantic coastal sailing and a week of docking practice on the canal system. We have 2 couples, all NSC members joining us until New York so we have experienced crew for the overnight passage. They have all sailed a Saga 43 so we have a great team for the trip.

Planning the trip has been quite an exercise, in theory, I am a qualified tidal day skipper, but this qualification was taken in the late 70s as a teenager. We did some tidal sailing in New Zealand a couple of years ago, but it hardly counts. The currents and tides in Delaware Bay are significant and need planning to ensure we have access to the planned moorings and to ensure we don’t end up in a shipping lane bucking the tide.

The passage to New York needs a backup route in case New Jersey turns into a lee shore. There are few safe ports on the NJ coast in a strong wind with a easterly component, you have to commit to New York, or wait for a better day.

Skipper Bob has a great guide for the New York Canal System, we used this to plan the timing of our route from Troy to Oswego.

The Shards did an episode on sailing from Oswego to New York, this was handy as it shows how to get through the locks and showed a lot of the lovely scenery.

The plan is now a detailed float plan and we are almost ready to slip the lines and leave. Next up, is the boat ready?

While we dream of adventures on Kinship we also have Penny to prepare for the sailing season and to prepare her for sale. We did a lot of systems work over the last 2 years so this spring we only had cosmetic issues to look after, the most important was replacing slides for the companionway hatch. The teak rails had spilt and were not repairable. Peter at Holland Marine made some new rails for us and we installed and varnished them, along with revarnishing the other brightwork on the boat. The winter in Ottawa was long and very cold and spring was slow and steady. We ended up having to wait for the week before launch to get the varnish done as we needed 3 days with no rain and warmish daytime temperatures. Cleaning, polishing and bottom paint done she was ready to go in the water.