I had allowed two weeks to make the trip so having a good weather window that stayed open for nearly a week,and long enough to make the trip in style, was a great opportunity. \u00a0Thanks to Chris Parker, the weather router that we use, for helping make the trip so great.<\/span><\/span><\/p>\n Speaking of weather, it was plenty bumpy, as you would expect in the ocean, or \u201cblue water\u201d as it is often called. \u00a0Brenda, like so many others, suffers from sea sickness and in spite of years on the water, she still feels queasy, or worse, when the going gets rough. I was fascinated to watch Ian, the youngest of the crew, who\u00a0<\/span>didn’t\u00a0feel well at all for the first few days, seemed to miraculously get over it after several days and, toward the end of the trip, was able to easily read a book while the boat was pitching all over the place. I have heard that most everyone is \u201ccured\u201d after a few days, but I had never seen it first hand. The body adjusts, it seems. \u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n Really interesting and good because being sea sick\u00a0<\/span>isn’t\u00a0fun at all. \u00a0That’s the good news. \u00a0The bad news is that the \u201ccure\u201d is only good for that particular voyage and you have to go through the adjustment anew each time you head out. Bummer about that. <\/span><\/p>\n While I have sailed thousands of miles over the years, this was certainly my longest voyage as most of the time long, to me, means a few hundred miles and mostly day runs from place to place . From Marsh Harbor, I covered nearly 1,000 miles, with all but about 100 in the open ocean. The last major run that I took was many years ago when I helped bring a boat back after the Bermuda race. That run was about 2\/3 the length of this run and as crew, I had much less responsibility. Of course, now, with my own boat, it was a bigger deal as keeping things under control, the boat floating along and making sure that the crew was well fed and happy. \u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n It\u2019s easy to make the statement that we \u201clive in a connected world\u201d but that was particularly the case for me yesterday when we were a few miles out from Sandy Hook and I heard someone hailing me on the VHF radio. As a rule, vessels have to monitor channel 16 while underway. In any event, here comes the hail, \u201cPandora, Pandora this is Kalunamo\u201d. It seems that Bill had seen my “spot” message on this site, which he follows periodically, and saw that we were coming into NYC and were probably within VHF range. While we\u00a0<\/span>weren’t\u00a0able to hear each other well on the radio, I pulled out his boat card and called him on the cell phone, \u201ccan you hear me now?\u201d. \u00a0 Indeed, he could. It was so great to talk with him and catch up. <\/span><\/p>\n Bill and Maureen live aboard Kalunamoo full tome and we had spent the better part of a month \u201cbuddy boating\u201d with them in the Bahamas. We hope to see them this summer, perhaps in Essex. They are great fun to spend time with and Maureen, in particular, took Brenda under her wing to help her get the most out of our first winter in the Bahamas. It was fitting to be greeted by Bill as I approached home waters. <\/span><\/p>\n I won\u2019t bore you with the details of our last day or so out at sea except to say that as we came up overnight past the Delaware River and the mouth of the\u00a0<\/span>Chesapeake,\u00a0ship traffic increased a lot. \u00a0At one point, in the dark I might add, we had some five ships in the 950ft range on our plotter and it seemed that all of them were pointing right at us. Welcome back to\u00a0<\/span>civilization\u00a0Pandora. <\/span><\/p>\n This shot I took of the plotter screen when we were going through NY shows just how many ships there are in the harbor. It\u2019s a busy place. Each of the black triangles are the coordinates for particular ships as they show up on AIS a location monitor system for ships, like the air traffic control system is for commercial aircraft. That\u2019s a lot of shipping vying for space in a busy area of water.\u00a0![\"\"](\"http:\/\/www.sailpandora.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2013\/05\/5-25-13a-022.jpg\" "\\"OLYMPUS")
<\/a><\/span>Speaking of massive chunks of steel that can go bump in the night, or day for that matter , none can rival an aircraft carrier for shear bulk. For two days this ship was conducting live fire expercises in the area where we were traveling. To see something this big come out of the haze was a spectacle to behold.<\/a><\/span>It was also interesting, and a bit intimidating, to have a navy helicopter fly overhead, and they did perhaps a half dozen time in two days, to keep an eye on us. They would fly toward us, circle around close overhead and then fly back to the carrier. They were near enough for us to see the faces of the crew. I guess that the wanted us to know, without a shadow of a doubt, that \u201cwe see you\u201d. \u00a0Actually, I hope that they took an\u00a0<\/span>aerial\u00a0photo of Pandora under sail. \u00a0 Perhaps they did. \u00a0I wonder who I should call to get a copy sent to me. \u00a0 The Pentagon? \u00a0<\/span><\/a><\/span>I have sailed the waters of the New York area for many years and it was nice to enter Ambrose Channel and head up into NY Harbor. No, this\u00a0<\/span>isn’t<\/span>\u00a0the very first bouy in the channel, but it was one of the first markers, of any sort, that I had seen after months of sailing in the Bahamas. Even when there are\u00a0<\/span>buoys<\/span>\u00a0shown on the charts, they\u00a0<\/span>aren’t<\/span>\u00a0actually there. To see so many leading us up the harbor I felt like saying “Nice bouy, bouy.” Oh, I guess that means there is a rock nearby. \u00a0 \u00a0Perhaps we wouldn’t need them here either if the water was clear as in the Bahamas where everything is easy to see. \u00a0Sort of…<\/a><\/span>Wait, the harbor pilot passed us right by. \u00a0What about guiding US home?<\/a>Perhaps he had bigger fish to fry?<\/a>Lady Liberty did give us a wave. \u00a0That was really very nice.<\/a>Over the years I have always told our boys, Rob and Chris, that they have to watch out for what they do in public as it\u2019s very likely someone they know will see them. Yesterday, as we made our way up the east river, against the tide I might add, which runs really fast, I was given a first hand dose of my own medicine. As we were passing up the East River by Roosevelt Island and the UN building, I thought about my friend Margo, who lives nearby, with a view of the river. Just for fun, I called her on the phone to say HI. After months without a cell phone that I could use without running up massive charges, I called. Amazingly, she picked up the phone to say \u201cBob, I was just picking the phone to call YOU as I saw Pandora going by\u201d. It is indeed a small world.<\/span><\/p>\n