The Ambition Vacation has come to an end .....
We tied the boat up to the dock at Treadwell Bay Marina on Lake Champlain this afternoon .... the return trip was uneventful with the exception of two run-ins with the US Coast Guard and one with Homeland Security and NYPD. The first with USCG was interesting in that all day Wednesday last week they announced on the radio that due to something called Fleet Week that the east side of the Hudson River and NY Harbour would be closed to all boat traffic. We respectfully plot a course up the west side where we are confronted by a USCG cutter (a big boat - with guns and all!!). They advise that we have to be on the east side ... go figure .... so they "escort" us over to the other side of the river just in case we didn't know where it was ..... Once there, we discovered that Fleet Week was a parade of warships ... this should be cool .... you can imagine how surprised we were to see that 5 of the 6 warships in the parade were Canadian Navy vessels!!! I guess that everything is being subcontracted these days ... times are tough in Canada and the US when they can rent our Navy for less than using their own!
Anyway .. we motored up the river further taking pictures of NYC and as we approached the exposition of an old aircraft carrier Intrepid and lots of planes, I gather that the famous "exclusion zone" applies to this as well, as soon we were greeted by 3 armed boats that "escorted" us to the west side of the river .... I love when good plans are well executed ....
The next day we motored all the way up the Hudson to where we removed the mast from the boat to get under the low bridges in the canal. All this went well, as did the re-installing of the mast yesterday.
Well now it is time to get back to work .. make some money so that we can do it all over again ... it has been a fantastic vacation and a wonderful experience. We covered 4300 miles since leaving the lake last September. We met some great friends that we hope cross our paths again soon. For those that came and shared in the fun with us - thanks - we loved the company! For those that missed out, there will definitely be another time....
Cheers,
Merrill and Cindy
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