Uncooperative Weather

Hudson River

42 07.42 N 073 55.02 W

The good news is that the mast is back up.   The rest of the news has to do with weather.

I thought we had a good plan.  We would put the mast up Tuesday morning in Catskill, move on to Kingston overnight, pick up Jenny's friend Nick  from Vermont Wednesday morning, sail to Storm King Mountain Wednesday, then to the statue of Liberty on Thursday, and drop off Nick when we get there.

The plan started unraveling as soon as we got to Catskill.   The marinas don't put masts up and down in the rain, and it was raining heavily.   It rained the day before too, so there were two big boats ahead of me.   It could have been a  24 or 48 hour delay.  It wasn't that bad.  The rain held off, and by 1600 Tuesday we had our mast up.   

Should we depart for Kingston right away?   I turned on the VHF weather radio -- tornado warnings for our area.  No thank you.  We tied up at a slip at the marina overnight.

Today, Wednesday is beautiful.   We set out at 0630 to meet Nick.   However, checking the weather, Thursday looks very very bad.  There is a storm, almost a tropical depression, working up the coast.   We'll have to find an anchorage secure for SE winds and sit it out Thursday.   

I just got a call from Nick.   He too saw the weather forecast and he called to cancel.   Too bad for Nick, perhaps another year.

My next plan was to depart NYC on Friday bound for Norfolk.  The wind forecast looks favorable.  However, we'll have to put that back a day too to allow the seas to settle down after the storm has passed.  Perhaps midnight Friday or early Saturday we can depart.

What am I complaining about?  It's a lovely fall day today and we should have a spectacular ride past West Point.

By the way, I really screwed up handing the mast down/up this time.  I'll tell that story another day.