Through Hell Gate and onto Northport

The current changed against us at noon so we had to get an early start which for us was 6:00 am. Of course, the first order of business was to get the dog ashore for one of his twice a day visits to land. That accomplished, we set out but was in for a surprise. The motor started to hesitate and then surge. It had all the symptoms of a clogged fuel filter so after several repeats and not wanting to try changing a fuel filter in the middle of the east river, we pulled to the side of the Hudson and I changed the filter in 30 minutes (probably apparent on Spot track). That solved the problem and onward we went.

Almost all of the ferries around NYC use AIS (shows their location on your chartplotter) which really comes in handy when going around blind turns since it will show boat locations within a 10 mile radius at least. This time when I was approaching Hell Gate itself, I saw a very large tanker (see photo) just ahead of me using AIS, I couldn't see the tanker visually since it was around the bend. I hugged the right bank but had to clear the point just ahead of Hell Gate, there wasn't much room! Without AIS I would have been in the middle of the channel and it would have been much more exciting.

We pulled into the Sand City anchorage at Northport around 4:00 pm and it is perfectly calm. we saw a lot of rain on the way after passing through Hell Gate but it's not raining now. Ann and Hoolie were inseparable. He's not fully a boat dog yet since he got seasick once but he's getting better. Hoping for better weather tomorrow!