Sailing To New York City, Planning The Trip

Sailing To New York City

Planning A Voyage To New York City


Click on the picture to display an overall chart for our voyage from Annapolis to New York City. (109 kb) Use your browser's "back" command to return here.

Our overall voyage wound up being from Back Creek in Annapolis, MD, to Liberty Landing Marina in Jersey City, NJ. Depending on your preferences, there are a few ways to make the trip, including variations on a theme:

Which way on Chesapeake Bay? If you're starting out from the Potomac River or points farther south, it might be shorter to head south down the bay, loop around Cape Charles, then head north up the Delmarva coast. It's a long haul up Delmarva, though.
Are you in a hurry? If you have adequate crew and good weather, conceivably you could travel nonstop. The nonstop mileage is about 260 nm (not including tacking), so if you average 5 knots, you can make it in about 52 hours, which is two full days plus four hours. It might be tough to time the trip so all the tidal currents are favorable, something that's easier to arrange if you plan stopovers. In some areas, a foul tidal current can really slow you down.
Care to take a shortcut? If you can fit under a 55-foot bridge and tolerate six-foot depths, you can cut nearly 20 nm off the trip by transiting the Cape May Canal.
Jerome's plan was to work with the tides and weather, stopping when necessary, taking several days overall. We would travel up Chesapeake Bay to the head of the bay, transit the Chesapeake & Delaware Canal, travel down Delaware Bay to the ocean, then up the coast of New Jersey to New York Harbor.

The following table shows our daily runs and where we stopped each night. Distances are from the chart rather than the GPS and are straight-line distances (extra mileage from tacking was ignored).

Day	Date	Mileage	Where We Stopped
1	Sunday, June 17	60 yds	Moored on Back Creek, Annapolis, near Bert Jabin's Yacht Yard
2	Monday, June 18	4.3 nm	Anchored in Whitehall Bay, near Annapolis
3	Tuesday, June 19	40.9 nm	Anchored in the Elk River, at the head of the bay across from Cabin John Creek (which is just south of the Bohemia River)
4	Wednesday, June 20	75.5 nm	Anchored in Breakwater Harbor near Cape Henlopen, Delaware
5	Thursday, June 21	*	Overnight passage, at sea off the New Jersey coast
6	Friday, June 22	128.5 nm**	Anchored in Absecon Inlet by Atlantic City, New Jersey
7	Saturday, June 23	0	Anchored in Absecon Inlet by Atlantic City, New Jersey (layover day)
8	Sunday, June 24	81.7 nm	Anchored off Sandy Hook, New Jersey
9	Monday, June 25	16.3 nm	Transient dockage at Liberty Landing Marina, Jersey City, NJ
Total mileage		347.2 nm	(estimated from chart)

* Mileage included in next day's total.
** This mileage is much greater than the distance from Breakwater Harbor to Atlantic City, because we actually got halfway to New York City before we turned around and went back to Atlantic City.

When you're planning a trip, it helps to have all the relevant charts at hand. Below, I have a link to a list of all applicable charts for this trip, plus a link to download them from the internet, for free. It's also useful to read about the trip in the Coast Pilots; they describe the various waterways, ports, and anchorages. The Coast Pilots also discuss special navigation regulations that might be unfamiliar to you. I have links to the relevant volumes, below.

I'll tell you about each leg of the trip in the following sections.

Internet Links For This Section

NOAA Chart List - list of all applicable charts for this trip (text file from my web site)
Free downloadable charts - available in raster or vector format from NOAA (need free chart viewer, see instructions)
Coast Pilot 2 - Cape Cod, MA to Sandy Hook, NJ (from NOAA web site)
Coast Pilot 3 - Sandy Hook, NJ to Cape Henry, VA (from NOAA web site)

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