May 30th. Comes cool and pretty. Crew up and remarkably eager for business. Was shaking out reefs and hoisting sail before I had cabin done up. Coney Island is a wonderful attraction for little boys. Away under single reef with breeze pricking on. Good track, and horses trotting fast. Went down the Staten Island shore fluke-o. Mighty different going from what we found on same stretch last November. Breeze pricked on so determinedly we laid her to and clapped in double reef which gave us handsome canvas. Away and across the big river with the ocean liners steaming to sea and the towers of Coney Island ahead. Dropped hook off Atlantic Yacht Club just in time to see it go into commission for the season. Pretty sight, with guns banging, bunting fluttering. Busy mending torn mainsail and in ship duties all afternoon. Dolled up and to Coney Island for supper for the evening. Spent it on roller coasters and shoot the chutes. There was a big crowd, it being Memorial Day, but everybody happy and orderly. Enough rum to sink a ship, but nobody the worst for wear.
May 31st. Got away by noon on turn of the tide and worked up river. Started into East River with kicker astern and no sail as breeze was ahead and flukey. Got by Governor’s Island and ran right into a most pernickety tide rip. Things began doing immediately if not sooner. Mascot lost steerage way and started turning around and round while tide swept us down onto a loaded barge at a Brooklyn dock. Got H. into launch and started it backwards with just power enough to stop her from crashing bowsprit on barge. Then we drifted helplessly alongside, but the backwater acted like a cushion and while we surged up to within a few inches of those iron shod fenders we just didn’t strike and when tide washed us the whole length of barge, I stepped off and caught a line to a bit and so we swung her into the slip unhurt. It was just as near to wreck and sinking as you can come and not do it. To have hit that barge one clip would have stove us from stern to stem and we were missing it only by inches at every lunge. For a short ring turn to, it did beat all. “What next,” says I. H. about this time said just a little more than necessary about waiting for tide to slack or until next day when traffic was less. Had he been a hired man, I might have said something. Wished I could have steadied her with the sail but to spread it in that rip was simply to tear it out of her, so I got H. into the launch and with a good long towline made another start and fetched clear all right although I rolled good, wet water over both cockpit railings and H. did some most extraordinary high jumping in putt-putt. From then on down to Hell Gate, it was back and forth across the river trying to find a way between the rips and avoid being swept into the docks. Everybody on tugs and steamers had a wave of the hand for H. who was clinging on for dear life with one hand and hauling tiller line with the other. With Mascot lunging and rolling along behind it was a very pretty game to keep enough steerageway on the launch to be able to meet the combing seas as they came along from every quarter. The steamers all knew it was a sporting proposition and gave him a good berth for we were quite powerless to do more than keep away from the docks. It is no fitting place for small sailboats and I would never try it again unless towed behind a barge or very early in morning before traffic gets busy. We swept through Hell Gate all right and thinking things were quiet enough, put launch astern. In five minutes we were spinning top in another rip and before we could get Mascot in hand we ran over a big spar buoy which tore the rudder off the putt-putt, but fortunately didn’t smash the propeller as H. was on the job and shut off engine before we struck. Then to a quiet anchorage off the Knickerbocker Y. C. station at College Point.
Here we found the 60 foot motor houseboat Buffalo which we have seen very often during the winter. The owner’s wife came over presently and told us her husband had been down three weeks with pneumonia but was now sitting up and wanted us to come on board for a gam, which we did. He and wife have lived on the boat for years, and charter it to go south in winters and cruise north in the summer time. She does the cooking for the outfit and he tends engine and runs boat. He was the first one we have seen to really know the game up and down the coast, as he had done it for years. He told us we were the only boat he had ever known to make the trip both ways under sail. He said he made a very good living but that motorboating was about the same as driving an electric car and in the end would turn a man to drink. We were to go over in morning and do a few things about the boat, for the wife has had busy days playing cook, crew and nurse for three weeks on a big boat. My hat is off to her.
June 1st. Lay at anchor.
June 2nd. Waked at 4 a.m. to find pouring rain and brisk breeze. Wind hauled quickly to northwest and pricked on a regular spring tartar. Quite a jump of sea and run of tide with everybody doing the ladies’ change. Tide turned and wind easing, we were under way with single reef and had the prettiest sail ever, eight miles down East River to Port Washington where anchored with fleet of well-kept yachts and most attractive houseboats. I have an idea the houseboat game is bound to grow. There is a lot in it.
June 3rd. Comes calm and fair. Looks mighty homelike to be once more surrounded by a fleet of well-kept yachts. Seemed as if I was in public garden pond for next to us was a motorboat named Leda and if that isn’t a swan-boat then mythology ain’t so. Breeze came light and pretty at southwest so we up sail and after taking a look at pretty Manhasset Bay, squared away down the shore and by three in afternoon were at snug anchor in Oyster Bay. We have beaten the spring lately and find here the scrub-oaks only in their young green. The highlands along here are just now at their very best and beautiful houses are snugged in among wonderful trees. The little bays make far into the green-clad hills and it is all very tempting to stay and loiter.
June 4th to June 22nd. We very lazily and with much content, quietly cruised eastward in Long Island Sound. We had fair skies and pleasant breeze and stopped on our way at Black Rock, New Haven and the Thimble Isles amongst the picturesque rocks of which I had not dropped a hook since I was a boy in my little boat, the Raven. Then merrily with piping northerly airs and dancing seas all sparkling in the sun to New London where I left H. to keep ship while I went to Cambridge for the 25th reunion of the class of ’88 the finest and most remarkable class that was ever graduated from Harvard College. On returning to New London we saw the Harvard crew show four handsome miles of rudder to “them Elis” and then spreading canvas we jogged along to a quiet night behind Point Judith breakwater and manned halliards for the last time next morning and with kicker kicking, pointed her nose for Potomska and the Pascamanset where we just caught the tide on the bar. The little chain rattled, the blocks sung their song and with a shake of the hand the cruise was done.
8 Months, 8 Days
from
Port to Port