On the Loop again - NYC to Oswego NY

Sunday 10^th June

A quick cab ride to Chelsea Pier, where we embarked aboard Grande Caribe for the cruise to Chicago and the continuation of our Great Loop adventure of 6 years ago. Shortly after embarking, we found Dennis and Kathy (who had boarded yesterday) and, since Grande Caribe is a “Bring your own grog” ship, Dennis and I went off foraging for beer. This we found at a CVS Pharmacy about 15 minute’s walk away – we also tried a guitar shop to see if they had a real cheap guitar I could  use on the cruise and ditch afterwards – but nothing was available, so there went that idea.

The cruise got underway at 4.30pm and stared by going downstream to the statue of liberty, before turning back up the Hudson. We got better views of the landmarks from the boat, as in the city there are just too many tall buildings to see the tall buildings! Even something as large as the Aircraft Carrier “Intrepid” was hard to pick out from amongst them.

This is pier 60 that the cruise started from – the structure behind the superyacht (named “Kisses”) is a golf driving range!

There was a “Welcome aboard” cocktail party with hors d’ouvres  that night and we stopped overnight at a small  park area called Bear Mountain.

Monday 11^th

From Bear mountain, the first stop was a short distance to Westpoint Military Academy, where some passengers were ferried ashore, as the ship was not allowed to dock there – being an operational facility. The river is around 150ft deep at Westpoint so we didn’t anchor and instead stooged around for the 3 hours or so that the passengers were ashore.  While doing so, we got our first sighting of Loopers – in this case they were easy to identify by the lack of mast on the sailboat, and the AGLCA pennant. We have seen a bunch more since, both on the water, at locks, and stopped at marinas on the riverbanks..

Westpoint has a large sporting complex and is renowned for having a good rugby team (rugby is considered a good discipline-building sport for the military) and you can see the emphasis on this quite clearly on one of the buildings

The Hudson is kinda big and therefore big ships are quite common. This one passed us by and looked a lot closer in the flesh than it does in the pic.

The stop for the might was in Kingston (not  the one in Jamaica) and we tied up alongside a cutsie museum, where we had free entry. Lots of model boats that I got plenty of pix of for John two dogs, and other interesting facts…such as where the Chipmunk gets its name. For those of you that don’t know this remarkable fact, it is derived from the Lanape indian word “Chitamun”, which means: “he who comes down a tree headfirst”. So add that to your store of useless information (or pub quiz questions)!

Tuesday 13^th 

We were all woken by the grinding of the bow thruster (yes it IS noisy) at 5.30am as we got off to an early start to get to Troy and our first lock to enter the Erie canal system. In order for the Grande Caribe to use the canal and get under the fixed bridges, it is necessary to clear off the upper deck and lower the pilothouse so the bridge clearance is 18 ½ feet (which is actually LOWER than Loopy Kiwi at 19 ½ feet)

I did ask them to pay me the $300 dockage fee, but they wouldn't  cough up!

This was the lowest bridge we went under at 19ft, and I have video showing just how close we were, and shortly after we went into the lock immediately in front of it, a couple of trains went over and their weight drops the bridge by another 4 -6 inches!

After 11 locks, we stopped for the night alongside lock 11 at Amsterdam, NY (not Holland).

Wednesday 14^th

Another early start and another 11 locks to Sylvan Beach on the edge of Lake Onieda, New York. A lot of the canal to here is man-made alongside the Mohawk river and is straight, narrow, shallow, and pretty boring. We arrived at Sylva beach, a popular summer resort in New York state, at 8.00pm and found it was closed.

Thursday 15^th

Yet another early start across Lake Onieda, through one last lock on the Erie canal, before turning right into the Oswego canal where there are 7 more locks to Lake Ontario. Interestingly, they are numbered 1 through 8, but during the building they found they only needed 7, so they just left out number 4, rather that redo the drawings. The sky had clouded over and the wind had got up, so it was a cool trip to Lake Ontario. WE arrived at 2.00pm and were provided a shuttle service to the local liquor store, laundromat, and WALMART!!! while the crew put the wheelhouse back up and reassembles the rest of the ship.

Wifi on the boat is dodgey at best so I’ll try getting this off today – but who know how well it may work.

The Big Apple

Thursday 8^th June

The  Comfort Inn at Maspeth's airport shuttle also provided a service to the nearby subway station, so we decided to give the famous NY public transport system a go to get to our midtown Manhattan hotel (although the shuttle driver raised his eyebrows when he saw the luggage we had in tow). Anyway, we took the lifts to the platform, got on the # 7 train to Times Square/42^nd St, and in 25 minutes were in the heart of the Big Apple! Getting out of the subway was not so easy as there were no lifts, and people freaked out a bit when we left Carolyn’s bag at the bottom of a set of stairs for me to return to and lift up, although it was within sight the whole time – but people tend to get spooked by “unattended” bags around here. Mind you, it was just as well this happened right there, because at the next entrance down, there were about 10 guys hanging about in full assault gear, and big machine guns, with “NYPD Terrorist Unit” written across their backs. We found the hotel easily enough, but check-in was 3pm and it was only 11.30, so we left our bags and went for a wander back up to Times Square.

There, we mistook this guy for Durry, a friend of ours, but it turned out to be someone else entirely

And had a feed of famous NY pizza and something called a Stromboli – Carolyn liked it but I wasn’t that impressed

By the time we had a beer at one of the squillions of Irish pubs in NY, it was time to go back to the hotel and check in. It is a funny little place, only 4 rooms per floor, but 20 stories  high – we were on the 19^th. The rooms have been/are being done up as it seems to be reimaging and will be known as the Lord & Moris (yes, only 1 “r”) from July 1^st. They are also quite cramped and the edge of the bed has a sharp square corner which bit me on the ankle and made it bleed. I complained to the reception, and they gave me a bandaid, so when it bit me again 2 days later (the other ankle, and even more blood) I dealt to it with the small rasp on the multi-tool I always carry for repairs and maintenance purposes.

We have good view of the city from the hotel, and it is amazing just how crowded the streets are, both night and day

Friday 9^th

The subway costs us seniors $2.75 each for a return ticket, so we took the #1 train down to the Staten Island Ferry for the ½ hour free (yes, FREE) ride across to the island, past the statue of liberty. There we had lunch at a waterfront bar, which had some interesting cocktails on display, like this strawberry margarita for $25.

After the return ferry trip, we stopped off at “Ground Zero” to see the 9/11 memorial, bought the T shirt, and got a pic of some more heavily armed cops (although these ones were not in body armour).

As this had necessitated leaving the subway, we had to invest a further $5.50 to get back to the hotel – the senior fare works as: you buy a regular one way fare and they make it a return. So we had a couple more rides spare for Carolyn to get to the Guggenheim tomorrow. Which makes it all sound like we’re penny-pinching but, believe me, you take all you can get, cause there ain’t nothing else cheap in this town!

We stopped by a 7 eleven across the street from the hotel and came across an exotic dancer, who we had seen performing on our way to the subway this morning. Even the locals appeared astonished at his garb…..only in New York!

Saturday 9^th

I headed for the “Intrepid” (WW2 aircraft carrier) museum, a 1 mile walk, to look at more air and space memorabilia. Carolyn headed for the Guggenheim, a two train subway ride away, armed with maps and clear written instructions on how to get there and back. The streets were not so crowded today, but it was quite warm at 28C (82F), and it was still relatively quiet, (people wise) when I reached the museum at 10.30 (not so later on). I headed back at around 1pm and stopped at another Irish pub just 3 doors down from the hotel for a lunch of bangers and mash. The hoarding outside said that it was a lunch special for $10, but when the bill came, it read $16. It turns out I was having Brunch, because it was Saturday. Lunch is only weekdays – you gotta read the fine print. But still, it was worth it as it was the best meal I have had in the USA. I got back to the hotel at 3pm, Carolyn turned up at 5.30, having gone the wrong direction on the way there, came out of the station on the way back so had to buy another ticket, hadn’t taken the address of the hotel so was directed by a policewoman to another Comfort Inn, got lost on the way back from that and couldn’t get her phone to work to call me. Finally some kind folk in a Deli looked up the hotel and set her in the right direction, but she was about walked out so we went back to the Irish pub and I had the second best meal of the trip so far – Shepards pie that actually had lamb in it (although there was beef as well!)

That’s about it for now. We’re off to the Chelsea Pier  tomorrow to meet up with Dennis and Kathy and board the “Grande Caribe” for our continuation of the Great Loop, up the Hudson and canals to the Great Lakes..

Heading back to the Loop

Sunday 3^rd June 2018.

 Arrived good and early (2.00pm) at Auckland Airport for our 7.30pm departure to Houston to find that they wouldn’t open the check-in until the new security folk (TSA) had arrived at 3.30, as there is now an extra level of security for people travelling to the USA. So we had to go hang round the airport till then, and finally got to check in at 3.45 as the TSA folk had turned up late. The plane was chocker, so no upgrade to business class – but a nice flight all the same.

14 hours later, on arrival in Houston we noticed a change in the temperature from home. 12C when we left and 34C when we arrived. We caught the shuttle to Hertz to pick up our rental, and promptly had my credit card declined. To get sorted, we used Carolyn’s card which meant I had to sign up as a supplementary driver, which cost an extra $27. Arrived at the Hotel and found they had us booked in twice – once for one night, the other for three – but at leats my credit card worked. So far things were not going too well. However it was happy hour in the bar ($3 beers and half price appetisers) so things got a bit better after we fed and watered.

Monday 5th started as badly as the day before. We went to Walmart to top up our US phones that we bought on our last visit. So we purchased  2 top-up cards for $19.99 each, but at the end of the update, the phones said “unregistered SIM”. We showed this to the sales guy, who said we had to buy new SIM cards at $9.99 each – so we did, and we got him to fit them and make them work….which they didn’t!!! So he rang the supplier, Tracfone, and patiently waited 45 minutes to talk to a technician. After 15 minutes of discussion the conclusion was that the 2 year old phones were obsolete and we would have to buy new ones. This Walmart did not have the $19.99 replacement in stock, so we decided to call it quits, get our money back, and go start again at another Walmart. HOWEVER…in his attempts to make everything work, the sales guy had managed to redeem one of the top-up cards onto one of the unusable SIM cards, and Walmart could only give us a credit for one of them, and the 2 SIM cards. So off we went to another Walmart, $19.99 (plus tax) down the tubes and bought 2 new phones, with cards, and got them to make them work before we left, which takes about 15-20 minutes to set up. How come Jason Bourne or James Bond can just walk into a convenience store and buy a phone walk out and use it, then just throw it away, without all this hassle –  but  at least my credit card worked the whole time during all of  these transactions. And, BTW, it reached 39C that day!

That pretty well soaked up the first day and jetlag took up the rest, so we deferred our site seeing/shopping until the following day, Tuesday 6th. This was a trip to Johnson Space Centre, about 1 hour south of our hotel while Carolyn went to the Tanger Outlet Mall about 10 minutes further on. Just 2.9 miles short of the turnoff to the mall we ran into gridlock caused by a prang on the freeway, which took 20 minutes to get past. Then after dropping Carolyn off, I returned to the freeway only to run into another prang 2.9 Miles from Johnson Space Centre!  Anway, finally got there, did the tour and bought the T-shirt. It’s a bit different to how it was last time I visited about 16 years ago. Like most of these things these days, it is targeted towards kids – but I suppose they are the upcoming taxpayers and NASA has to keep them interested enough to continue to get money from them.

Finding Carolyn at the Tanger Mall was no problem because, of course, we had phones to ring each other that worked.

Wednesday 7^th and it was “off to the big apple” and, again, it started badly. First was my own fault for wearing shorts with metal domes on them which ended up with me having to go through the Homeland Security Xray machine. Then we got to check-in at United to find we had no seat assignments, despite having confirmation printouts from Air NZ showing seats 12C and D were assigned to us. Of course they blamed Air NZ and told us to recheck at the gate and, even though the plane was overbooked, they were sure we would get seats! Anyway, it turned out that we got seats – just not the ones we booked – and they gave us priority boarding as a fob-off (which is actually really useful on full flights because there is never enough space for the overhead luggage unless you get on first).

However, it was a pleasant flight, it was much cooler in New York, the Hotel shuttle arrived quickly and took us to a pleasant hotel with excellent staff – even if it is across the road from one of the biggest cemeteries in New York. 

The hotel didn’t have a restaurant, but they had a real good arrangement with local restaurants of all types with delivery service – we opted for Chinese from “Yummy Yummy” which was delivered in  about 10 minutes and was…….(yummy).

We have since moved into the City proper, but more about that in a few days.

And here we go again

After the last visit to USA and Canada, we were pondering on where we should go on the next one, next (now this) year. We had really enjoyed Canada and getting to see the parts of the Great Loop that we missed on Loopy Kiwi had us hungering for more. The cruise was disappointing in a way as, typical of most cruises, it was all about the Ports of call rather than the journey and we didn't see as much as we would have liked (particularly the St Lawrence Seaway) because most of the travel was at night. I was favouring a road trip through the midwest to see many of the states that we had not yet visited and was beginning to "rough out" an itinerary. However, Carolyn noticed an advertisement in the local paper for a cruise on the inland waterways from New York to Montreal in a small purpose built cruise ship:

The problem was, when I looked it up on the Agencies website, the itinerary was pretty much what we had done just the previous month - even though the cruise followed a different route. However, with a bit of Googling around, I soon found the website of the cruise line and found that they did a bunch of cruises on the inland waterways, including one that goes from New York to Chicago, via the Hudson River, Erie, Oswego and Welland Canals, 37 locks, and Lakes Ontario, Erie, Huron and Michigan - in other words a substantial part of the Great Loop and much of it we would have travelled on in Loopy Kiwi.

I won't go on about the cruise line, Blount Small Ship Adventures, because it is all on their website at  https://www.blountsmallshipadventures.com/ so you can look it up. We were looking at the "Great American Waterways" cruise. It so happened that our friends, Dennis and Kathy, had seen the same advert in the paper, so when I told them about the NY - Chicago cruise they decided they would like to join us. Since there was a special discount for bringing a friend (which they got too!), and another for booking before the end of August, we decided to go for it and chose the one leaving NY on June 10th.

It was then a matter of arranging flights to suit and, sure enough a month or so later, Air NZ came out with some specials to the USA. We booked to fly to Houston and spend a couple of days, then on to New York for four days of sightseeing before catching the cruise. I still wanted to do some of the mid-west, so we decided to fly to Denver from Chicago at the end of the cruise, pick up a rental car and drive around Colorado (CO), Wyoming (WY), Montana (MT) and Sth Dakota (SD) looking at the sights, before flying to LA and home.

Here's a close up of the road trip, with the major sights numbered, ie

1. Plains Interpretive Centre, Casper WY (something like the one we visited in Utah a couple of years ago.)

2. Cody WY. Where Buffalo Bill came from. Has a night rodeo that we intend to go to.

3. Yellowstone National Park, WY. That says it all

4. Little Big Horn N.P, MT - where Custer tossed in his chips

5. Devils Tower N.P, WY. Made famous by "Close encounters of he third kind"

6. Deadwood, SD. Old famous cowboy town.

7. Keystone SD. Mt Rushmore with sculpted Presidents

8. Crazy Horse Monument. A bit like Mt Rushmore, but bigger and not finished yet.

9. Bear Tooth Pass, WY. This was added late as a detour to our original route, recommended by a fellow boatie. It is an alternative exit road from Yellowstone N.P and climbs to almost 12000ft. It is supposed to be the most spectacular scenic road in the USA.

We will also visit Molly Brown's Museum in Denver and I will probably go to Wings over the Rockies museum there as well.

Booking that far out has led to a few interesting happenings and our itinerary has been subject to many changes in detail. Air NZ changed their schedules and we had to stay an extra day in Houston; both United and American Airlines have changed their flight numbers, departure times and have even cancelled flights for our US internal travel; and our hotel in New York that we booked in September advised us earlier this month that it had cancelled our reservation because it wouldn't be open in time. We were advised just a couple of days ago that there were changes to our Houston flight again because of the current Boeing 787 Dreamliner/Rolls Royce engine debacle, but that turned out to be a false alarm. Hopefully nothing else will impact on the itinerary in the remaining 40 days before we leave.

Blount also do a cruise up the ICW from Savannah (where we shipped Loopy Kiwi to New Zealand from) to Baltimore (almost New York). If this cruise goes well, we will look at doing that segment next year - which means I will have (almost) completed the entire Loop - although not in sequence!

Re routing holding tank discharge on a Silverton 453

Since we bought Loopy Kiwi in 2011, we have been plagued with the odour of sewage in the master stateroom. It was particularly noticeable as the tank filled and worst on the starboard side – to the extent that clothing in the bed and vanity drawers was being affected. It was obvious that this had been ongoing since new, as there were a number of deodorant plug-ins situated around the boat by the previous owner. The use of Noflex reduced the smell significantly and replacing the undersized and blocked vents (which I have already posted earlier on this blog) also helped, but the odour issue has remained as a frustrating annoyance. 

There are other problems with the design of the sewage discharge system, such as siphoning of seawater back through the macerator and the susceptibility to the outlet becoming blocked with marine growth because the underwater thru hull reduces the 1” pump outlet to a mere ½” hole in the hull. I also knew that there was a kink in the dockside discharge hose that may have been contributing to pumpout problems. A few months ago, I drew up a map of the sewage system and, looking at the layout and knowing the fall (or lack of it) in the 7.2 metres of discharge hose, it seemed obvious to me that areas of the pipework were remaining full of effluent resulting in the smell permeating the hoses. I have recently learned that several other 453 owners are experiencing the same issues and, in fact, I believe that if any 453's share the design of the sewage outlet to me, they must also share the problem.

The final rankle was the actual procedure required to discharge overboard at sea using the macerator: To prevent the siphoning mentioned above, I kept the macerator seacock closed. It is situated on the outboard side of the port propeller shaft, so it is good practice to be stopped when opening it. So we have to stop the boat 2km out to sea (we are required to be that far offshore when we discharge), I have to go from the helm down to the engine room, via the sundeck, salon, hallway and guest bedroom and open the valve, return to the AC/DC panel in the hallway, switch on the macerator and sit and watch the ammeter until it flickers to show that it is pumping air (the only way I know of to know that the tank is completely empty). It takes around 10 minutes to empty a full tank and it is rarely flat calm 2kms offshore. I then have to go back into the engine room and close the seacock before returning to the helm and getting underway again - a total trek of around 50 metres (seriously) and up and down 3 flights or stairs. Remaining underway makes things more comfortable, but that requires even more stair time to co-ordinate stopping and starting with the co-pilot to open the seacock safely.

I have installed and modified holding tank systems in both my previous boats (which could be discharged without leaving the helm), so I decided I would try and line all the ducks up and fix the odour, siphoning, blockages and user un-friendliness in one swoop. A word of caution here to other 453 owners: doing this modification requires access to the rear of the holding tank in the transom space behind the bedhead. I am lucky that in order to make my boat “NZ electric” I removed both cablemasters from that spot which gives easy access, particularly for a little guy like my good friend, Charlie.  On the Silverton Owners Club forum, a member recently posted a video showing that accessing this area is quite doable with a single Cablemaster. However if you have 2 cablemasters it would be difficult, if not impossible, to access the aft bilge and do the modification as I did.

We did this while on the hardstand last week when we came out to re-caulk the rubrail, antifoul and polish, so the boat was propped up in a more stern-down attitude than it would be on the water. We had a pumpout before we were lifted, and another on the hard, to remove as much effluent from the tank as possible.

The first act was to remove the hose between the macerator and the transom pumpout fitting. The transom end is easy to access by removing the mirror in the master bathroom. The pump end is also readily accessible, although it is necessary to demount the pump to get at the hose clips on the Tee piece that connects to it. I was hoping that when the hose disappeared into the bulkhead and behind the bath that we could simply pull the hose through. Unfortunately, when we took a pic of the space, we found the hose was cable tied to each hull frame all the way through.

I figured we could perhaps reach them by removing the gauge panel under the sink. I took all the screws out and the panel could move, but cannot be taken out without removing the front of the cabinet – which we never found out how to do. However, we DID find that the panel beside the toilet was removable – it was siliconed to the shelf and the RH side – but once we cut through that it could be simply pulled off. It is attached with those snap in clips like other removable panels in the master stateroom.

I could reach the first 2 cable ties and Charlie could reach one from the other end. But to get to the 2 remaining ones required us to make a special tool, which we used to saw through the "buckles" on the cable ties, rather than the "straps". The weight of the saw puts load on the blade so you only need to be able to push and pull to cut through the ties.

Once done, we taped up the ends of the hose with duct tape and pulled it up through the mirror hole and out the portlet onto the ground. I had slightly underestimated that piece in my map – it was a little over 6 metres long. We tied each end to one of the Acrow props holding the boat and filled it full of water and  Noflex to percolate for several hours.

We then disconnected the hose from the macerator while holding the pump up – it is a low point and contains effluent. We taped the opening and pulled it through into the bilge at the bottom of the stairs. While it was down low, we cut the tank end of the hose just short of where it passes through the engine bed rail. We then put a bucket under the end and lifted the other end of the hose through the hatch to drain it – about 10 litres of effluent came from it. We flushed it out with fresh water then sealed the aft end and added Noflex, which we left for several hours.

We then pushed the aft end through to the other side of the engine bed to get a straight pull at it, but no amount of pull could get it to even look like moving so we cut the pump end off as short as possible and sealed both ends with plastic bungs. The 2.5 metres that we cut off absolutely reeked both inside and out and was immediately thrown in the bin.

By this time I had figured that the other length of hose we had removed was in good enough condition to reuse instead of replacing it with solid pipe as I originally intended and, as it would now be installed with continuous fall back to the tank, there was little danger of permeation due to it holding effluent. We also reused the Tee and the original macerator and added a valve to the inlet of the pump (it is there to stop smell coming up the pipe if the pump is ever removed as both it and the pump are above the level of the full tank). We installed a 1” thru hull about 4” above the waterline and the macerator discharges through it. There is also a valve in that line, adjacent to the pump, which can be closed during dockside pumpout to prevent air being sucked in to the discharge pipes. The first section of hose from the pump is clear plastic so I can see when the discharge stops. The feed from the AC/DC panel is continuous (I used the old cablemaster supply) and there is an on/off switch beside the pump, which is conveniently located in a cabinet beside the master bed. 

So the discharge procedure will now be: Go 2km out to sea. Leave a co-pilot in charge of the boat. Go to the master stateroom (still 3 flights of stairs, but less distance), open the valve and turn on the switch. Watch the gauge drop (you can see it from the pump position) and watch till the sight glass empties. Switch the pump off, close the valve and go back to the helm. Ideally, I would like to have a stop/start station for the pump at the helm, as I had on my previous boats. I have already purchased the components to do this, but I would need to be sure that I had a method of knowing that the tank was completely empty before installing it.

The old macerator position provided a thru hull and power supply for another project I had been meaning to do for some time, and that was to fit a salt water washdown pump. We mounted the new pump where the macerator had been (even used some of the mounting holes) and used the outlet hose as the washdown inlet. We ran the outlet to a tap on the transom via the route that the old sewage discharge hose had taken and mounted it behind our outboard bracket, where it is easy to get to but protected. I am considering taking a supply from this to a valve that can rinse out the macerator discharge hose, or the holding tank, or both – but will wait and see how it works out first.

I guess time alone will tell how successful the modification is, but I am supremely confident it won't make things any worse!