Is there ever a day that it is not windy on the South Shore of Long Island? Is it like that on the North Shore as well, or are we just “lucky” to have this wind, which seems like it is every day of the week? The mornings start beautifully – sunny, calm winds. By the afternoon, it’s like a light switch and it becomes windy. I think that the worst is on the weekends when everyone wants to get out on their boats and enjoy some relaxing time after a week of work. The weekends have been terrible lately…it’s either sunny and windy, or it’s not windy, but it’s raining. We can’t seem to catch a break.
My last article ended with us once again upgrading to a new boat. We sold our 1998 25′ Stamas to a friend of a friend, Keith. I still believe that she is still around somewhere. I think there is some saying or “rule” that when you are upgrading your vessel, there is a certain number of feet that you should go up in order to make it worthwhile. Well, we were never a rule follower and kind of did whatever we liked at that point. Most times, our upgrade of a vessel was only about two feet.
This jump, though, was actually about four feet…our new vessel purchase was a 2000 290 Crownline. We change boats like people change their minds about things. We went from a die-hard fishing boat with a single outboard and a head that some people had to leave the door open to use the facilities because they could not fully fit in it, to what some of our friends called a “fufu boat”. We took possession of her in March of 2000 in winter jackets and sweatshirts. We named her Pride and Joy, and she was very pretty. She was a twin I/O boat with a green canvas top and a green stripe on her hull. She had that little designated space in the back for the fenders that made it so much easier to get to them and a cockpit sink that, when Dakota lay on the passenger seat, he would lie with his head next to the faucet.
Her cabin door was all clear. Thankfully, it had a curtain to pull over it, so everyone didn’t see right into the cabin at night with the lights on. Many years ago, we were at a marina and there were people who had a similar boat with the same clear door and they did not close the curtain one night…needless to say, the whole dock got some show that night. That always made me make sure the curtain was closed on the door whenever the light was on. It also had a screen door, which was nice, so you could leave the door open but keep the bugs out. Her cabin was a very nice size with a spacious galley, v-berth, an aft berth, which was a huge step up from the coffin-size one on the Stamas and a very nice size bathroom that had two definite perks…a very powerful shower head and a mirror on the bathroom door that made you look skinny. Boy, do I miss both of those things lol.
In the summer of 2000, we started going to Watch Hill, Fire Island, more frequently than we had in the past season and not anchoring as much. We had kind of started falling into the creature comfort stage as we liked being able to be able to get off the boat and socialize on the docks, take hot showers, cook on the stove and BBQ off the boat. Oh, and of course I got to use my hair dryer! One downside of the boat, though, was that we did not get it with air conditioning when we bought it. I can’t really recall why. Maybe it was the cost, or maybe we didn’t think that, for some crazy reason, that we wouldn’t need i
Joe and Janet also upgraded their boat that season, too…they purchased a 242 Rinker Fiesta Vee and named her Janet Julia. We spent all our weekends on the A/B Pier at Watch Hill that summer, which was a big upgrade from our first trip when we went there and were on “E” land without electricity. Joe, Janet and the boys, us with Dakota, Joel on his Bayliner Fanta Seas and Keith on his pilot house Osprey. We kind of took over the dock. Back then, the rules weren’t as strict for the dogs being on leashes. Dakota was always on a leash, but he wasn’t always attached to someone. Most times, he picked up his leash and walked himself.
Watch Hill was a perfect place…far enough away from the mainland to feel like you were on vacation, but close enough that anyone who wanted to come and visit you could take the ferry right across. There was one weekend that both my in-laws and parents came over for the day. It was a very cloudy and overcast day. My Mom, who is all Italian, has very sensitive skin and wound up getting sunburn even though the sun didn’t peek out at all. After that day, we made sure that she always had a hat and sunblock on when she came to visit us while we were boating. And the “kids” from the firehouse in Oceanside would come to visit us for the day… which normally turned into an overnight, with us finding them sleeping in the cockpit of the boat the next morning. Our boat was always an open invitation, and if you were willing to make the trek out to see us, you were always more than welcome to come and stay. There was even times that we got up in the morning and we had guests waiting for us off the ferry. But we loved it and loved that they wanted to come and spend time with us there and enjoyed it as much as we did.
We have a lot of happy memories on Pride and Joy. She was the stepping stone to many beautiful cabin cruiser boats that we have been very lucky to have had over the years. And this boat was just the beginning of our ability to travel outside of Watch Hill…well, for a few years anyway.
But our first real trip would be on the ocean…we decided that we were going to go up the Hudson River to the Haverstraw Marina. And that was the trip that Janet made Joe go through the East Rockaway Inlet, not once to get there, not twice, but three times just to get the trip started….