Delivering Kinship – Planning

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?

 

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