This morning I was out taking pictures of our lovely anchorage and, as the newbie, didn’t realize I was taking pictures of a police boat. I got a few nice photos and shortly after a watchful police boat as we pulled up anchor and left for our second anchorage. Oh dear! At least now I know what to look for!

We look forward to anchoring again. We will try to do this as much as possible as it keeps our expenses to a minimum which is important since we continue to cover other bills back home. Best of all there are no fees for anchoring but we do go without amenities like wifi (occasionally wifi offshore), laundry, and some appliances (hairdryer) as they drain the batteries. With the boat capacity and only two of us on board we can be away from land for several months so long we have enough supplies. It all just takes some planning.

We found our sheltered inlet with several other sailboats for the evening. At first the bay was calm providing a great window for Andrew to hopefully replace the anode under the boat.

An anode is a piece of metal in the shape of an ‘O’ which is clamped around the shaft of the propeller. Since the metal of the anode corrodes faster than the metal of the shaft or the propeller it actually attracts the corrosion, keeping it away from other moving parts under the water. Basically this little part keeps everything newer . . . longer. Amazing!

Anodes are made in different metals depending on what type of water you are in (saltwater, fresh or brackish – a mix of both.) Since we are headed into salt water we needed to switch from our magnesium anode to an aluminum one.

Unfortunately the water was too cloudy to replace it, so after a few dives below Andrew turned his attention to re-patching the Zodiac. In the meantime I caught up on blogs since we were able to get wifi from a nearby marina, and got the interior tidied up.

The wind and a rainstorm whipped up shortly after the Zodiac was patched, and the rest of the evening was quite wavy. We also had the bonus of loud train horns every 10 mins as commuters trains raced through the nearby town shuttling back and forth from NY city. Before bed Andrew sent out several emails to marinas in NY. Hopefully we have some responses by morning.