You have all heard and read about the devastation the Hurricane Irma has caused. Places such as Barbuda, St Martin and Virgin Island have been totally shredded, no working infrastructure, no electricity or water, on top of that many families without roof over their heads. Looting has occurred in many places adding to the very uncomfortable situation thousands of families have to coop with.

Fortunately we have not had any impact of Irma, even though some forecasts, threatening with sustainable winds of 45 knots and gusts up to 70 knots, so we took the precaution to move south to Long Island sound to wait out eventual strong winds.

First stop was Block Island, which has a very secured almost land locked anchorage were we stayed for 4-5 days as the wind was rather strong and with shifting directions. The anchorage is known for poor holding and during a few windy nights we were lucky not being hit by dragging boats. Why do not boat owners learn? Get a good anchor and at least a scoop of 5 times the depth taking free board and tide into account.

The American Tow Boat a “organization” that you could subscribe to, to have free towing if somethings happened, and things do happens frequently, they were on standby in the anchorage at Block Island during these windy nights.

It was not only windy it was rainy and cold to. For the first time for long we needed socks on our feet aboard Kerpa.

But we had a few good days as well, above the Atlantic side of Block Island with beaches and a small nice town

Usually most buildings are grand or magnificent so nice to see this very modest hut on Block Island but not a very modest sized anchor

At an overnight stop in Port Jefferson we saw

this Maxi 108, which we have a very warm hart for as we owned one for 13 years, in which we sailed with our kids most weekends and holidays, an old but fantastic competent sailboat both for family sailing and offshore cruising.

New York Again

Port Washington is a good place to wait out bad weather, they have low cost mooring buoys and the bay is relatively sheltered. Port Washington has good train connections to Manhattan, so there are worse places to wait out remains from a hurricane such as Irma who threatened to send some bad weather towards us. We feared that we have to stay for over a week, but fortunately for us, probably not for others she took another way so we did not notice anything from Irma.

But we got a few days in NYC.

Brooklyn street view is very different from Manhattan, we liked it a lot

To our surprise it is a Smorgasbord every Saturday during season in Brooklyn. Smorgasbord is Swedish, this was a very free interpretation of the Swedish concept, but it was very nice and much appreciated by many and rather crowded.

The smorgasbord in Brooklyn consist of around 100 different stalls that served food from all over the world, too much to choose from one almost get confuse by all the options, finally we decided for Peking duck Sandwich

Not very colorful bread but it tasted good and the whole menu was very nice.

There are at least one similarity between Americans and Swedes we have very good queue discipline

Kerstin enjoying the day together with many others this very marvelous day.

Time for a selfi this magnificent day

And of course a walk over the Brooklyn Bridge

The Brooklyn Bridge is a real tourist attraction and sometimes it gets jammed with pedestrians and cyclist, but no hard feelings from locals who have to pass and just not walk the bridge for fun.

A few days later we passed under the bridge and south of the Governor Island seen in the picture.

But before that we also wanted to see Manhattan again

Time square is a really busy place at least late afternoon and evenings

All kinds of way to attract tourists for a dollar or two, thought being more or less nude would not be appropriate for the prudish Americans but it obviously was as long as you paint over the most vital parts of your body.

Similar attraction maybe for both women and men.

Strand probably the largest book store in the world, my brother Thomas urged me to go there but this was as close as I got, close enough Thomas?

Central Park is always full of activities, but Christmas feels a little bit too early. Where is the snow?

The contrast between the park and the giant city is very visible in Central Park.

Going south

No strong wind was to be expected on the contrary hardly any wind at all, and we wanted to go south so after four days in Port Washington we decided to leave.

This time approaching New York from the north

Again we passed this very large prison vessel, someone said the whole island is a prison camp.

On the top of the vessel with the exercise area, a “splendid view” of New York

Approaching East River

UN building

Empire State Building in the back ground

Going south on East River one see the Statue of Liberty in distance

Brooklyn with the place for the Smorgasbord we visited a few days before

Lower Manhattan

Lower Manhattan with Governor Island in the fore ground

It has been very cold some days, and the night when we sailed towards Cape May was really cold

We had arctic style underwear, wind breaker and cap on, but it was still very cold so we had to wrap ourselves in fleece blankets to keep warm during the night. Not very much wind as can be seen

Passing Cape May after motoring all the way from Port Washington

The original idea was to anchor in Cape May, but as we arrived very early and the tide was with us for the passage up The Delaware Bay, we decided to continue and soon we was rewarded with  a fresh wind just forward of the beam that gave us good speed

A nice sail, often exceeding 8 kn with the help of the current, lasted about three hours, then the wind came on the nose and dropped down so the engine had to work again.

A lot of goods are transported by barges, this barge is one of the largest we have seen, but on AIS it is often only the tug itself that have AIS.

Rather big fenders!

The transom has a “garage” for the tug that pushes the barge towards its destination.

At very long distance away we saw smoke or steam, several hours later we could see this massive cooling tower. It is a nuclear power station. You see a lot of things when cruising Nuclear power stations are probably not prime targets for any cruisers to see

A lot of birds looking for food opportunities when big fishes hunting small fishes to the surface, life are tough escaping the big fish just to be eaten by the bird.