This is a light-weight dispatch from our anchorage in Great Kills Harbour, Staten Island, New York, using our new mobile technology (more about that later when the bytes count less), so no pictures, or video, but I’d like to paint you a mental picture of our departure from the 79th Street Boat Basin.

We’re very grateful all twenty seven horses came to work today. The combination of being anxious to get out of the 79th St Basin along with the pressure of getting the tide right caused us to make our exit with somewhat less strategy than we should have employed.

This might be a good opportunity to tell you why we were in such a hurry to get out of the 79th St Boat Basin in the first place. As I’ve already mentioned, it cost $2.75/foot, our slip bucked like a bronco (not that it could be helped, it’s the nature of the location) but there was duck poop EVERYWHERE you wanted to step, so the drunken sailor swagger you involuntarily adopted to navigate the docks was complicated by side-stepping’ the poop. Related to the buckin’ bronco dock was the buckin’ bronco boat, which helped develop our sea legs, but not much else.

So we were very ready to leave. Our interpretation of the tide tables told us that we should be out of the basin not much later than 10 am to minimize our chances of bottoming out on exit, and to ride the ebb tide south (our intended direction). Hence, our haste and lack of strategy.

Leaving the slip went well – much less stressful than entering. But once we were clear, we made a turn, that had we strategized, we would not have, and as a result had to take evasive action. Well, let me describe the evasive action, to paint that mental picture of our departure for you. I’ve been laughing all day about it when I think of how comical it must have looked.

It was like there was a great big heist and we were the get-away yacht.

We backed out of the slip, slowly and at a maneuvering speed, like the stately yacht Water Music is, then we made a bad turn (or rather a gesture towards a bad turn – the current and wind can quickly graduate a gesture into a turn). Rather than abort the current course and try some 17-point operation to extricate ourselves from the mess that was rapidly developing, Phill decided it would be more expedient to kick the spurs and take a chance on clearing the downstream piling that barred our exit.

Giddy-up, drop the hammer, punch-it – however you describe gunning an engine, that’s what Phill did to our Westerbeke. All twenty-seven horses were working this morning to narrowly clear the downstream wall of the 79th Boat Basin. There was a great noise, enough to rouse our otherwise habitually below-decks catamaran-dwelling neighbour (Phill saw this neighbour’s head pop-up to see what was happening, but was too busy to wave good-bye).

I may be dramatizing it – there were probably three or four feet clearance – but what got closest to disaster was our stern at the apex OF THE FISHTAIL. I’m not kidding, we peeled out of there, sail boat style, plume of diesel smoke and everything. We fishtailed, is the only way I can describe it, like a get-away car.

I suppose there comes a time when you find out what your engine can do. For us, today was the day.