10. Port Washington to Atlantic Highlands, June 2025

I leave Port Washington, solo sailing this time.

I ask Steve of London Chart Plotters, the supplier of my AIS (https://www.londonchartplotters.com/) what sort of antenna I need. He was a fantastic find and after much discussion I had ordered a Panasonic Toughbook, AIS transponder, tablet and a Quark which connects it all on a dedicated wifi system. With everything else going on with the refit I had procrastinated and not installed and commissioned it. And of course only then discovered that a key part was missing, the antenna.

Steve, I have found, always responds within a few hours no matter what time zone I am in and I ordered a new AIS antenna to his specifications from Amazon. And rather than wait in Port Washington I set my delivery address for Atlantic Highlands Yacht Club (https://www.ahyc.net/), right up by Sandy Hook on Staten Island.

The sail down the East River is empowering. There is a lot going on, ferries, ships, other sailboats, motorboats and of course I am having to deal with all of it myself. I have a favourable wind and I am able to hoist my sails and have a very nice beam reach down with Manhattan to starboard.

The East River is much broader than I had imagined. There is plenty of room to stay out of the way of fast moving ferries (to be fair, they do most of the staying away) but when you enter New York harbour area it opens right up. Now I am sharing the waters with large ships, some anchored and some moving. I am pleased I am not tacking.

I arrive at Atlantic Highlands and get assigned a mooring buoy over the VHF. I am going to be here for a couple of days while I wait for the amazon delivery of my AIS antenna. It's a totally charming place on Staten Island, well served and connected by ferries. Lots of marine and sailing stuff along the shores of this area.

My mooring buoy is inside a long skinny breakwater and the marina provides a water taxi service to take you to and from your boat, all included in your mooring fee.

The breakwater also creates a popular hangout for local birds.

Plenty to get on with as always, so I prep up the mounting of the two antennas that you need for the system to work. Without going into tedious detail (that I wouldn't understand!), my system uses two antennas (one being a VHF) and basically they communicate in real time with the AIS systems of nearby boats, shore based receivers, as well as satellites (apparently) and maps them onto our chart plotters. One of the issues with these antennas is that they need to be at least 6' apart and as high as possible - the latter because, supposedly, the system is line of sight. Though I have more to say on that later.

On Beyond's rig there are issues with mounting antennas high on the masts because the junk rig parrels and battens wrap 360 degrees around. They could be mounted up at the very top though this was a bit beyond what I could commit to now. Instead, I decided to go for the cabin top under the sprayhood. Not ideal in terms of height (maybe 4' above the water) or separation (5'). But not a lot of options so I went ahead drilling more holes in my boat and sealing the balsa with epoxy and re-drilling, and wiring from the transponder mounted by the chart table and then over the ceiling lining.

I was quite pleased with my installation in terms of neatness. When the missing antenna arrived, it was all pretty much plug and play and it worked splendidly. I see ships up to 100 miles away. How this works with a line of sight system I have no clue - the world is probably flat I am guessing.

I also whipped out my trusty hand-cranked Singer sewing machine and made up some jacklines for the aft deck so I could securely tether myself to the boat when I needed to get out there to mess with the windvane.

Atlantic Highlands had several options for provisioning. In the end I purchased far too much food, a common newbie-to-ocean-crossings mistake I have been told.

And I finally get off, sights set on the Azores, at dawn on June the 11th.