(Originally published in 2012)
The Hudson River
Having just finished our transit of the Erie Canal, we were once again embarking on another new adventure. Here we were in the Hudson River, still 200 miles upstream from New York Harbor and the Atlantic Ocean, yet suddenly we were presented with a five foot tidal range and all of the associated currents. We were glad we were carrying our tide tables. At the time I carried both Reed’s and Eldridge’s.I eventually settled on Reed’s as my preferred source. I still am amazed that I now have all of that information on my smartphone, but, as with so many apps on my phone and computer, the electronic version lacks that “hands-on” accessibility of holding a book in my hands and being able to thumb my way back and forth through it.
You can anchor just about anywhere along the Hudson. As is always the case, the shallower your draft, the more options you’ll have for anchoring. Just stay well out of the marked channels. This river has commercial traffic, mostly tugboats and their tows, from Troy all the way to New York Harbor, although we found large ships to be few and far between.
As we entered Catskill Creek in search of Hop-O-Nose Marina we spotted a marina with a mast stepping crane located on the northern point at the entrance to the creek. Thinking that this must be our intended marina, we pulled in and found that this was Riverview Marina, rather than Hop-O-Nose. They were extremely friendly and accommodating and cordially directed us up the creek to our appointed stop. We would have gladly restepped our mast there except that we had our new rigging shipped to Hop-O-Nose and we already had reservations there.
Hop-O-Nose was a pleasant layover. It took me four days to finish up rigging the mast and this was a great location for it. A swimming pool provided much needed relief from the heat each day after hours of work in the hot sun screwing together the Sta-Lok fittings and reassembling the rigging. Everything went fine until, in the process of remounting our masthead Windex, it went plop! into the water off the stern of the boat never to be seen again. I was just a tad chagrined, having removed it back in Tonawanda when we unstepped our mast so that it wouldn’t accidentally get broken or lost. Obviously I was not the first to have suffered this little mishap as I found a plentiful supply of brand new ones in the marina store at a hefty price.
Once the rigging was finished, the crane was brought into action and the mast was lifted from its supports on our deck and carefully lowered through the deck collar, down through the collar in the cabin sole and onto the mast step down in the bilge. Our deck had actually changed shape slightly with the weight of the mast lying on the deck surface to the point that it took a few days before we could get everything to fit properly between mast and deck and get the mast bolt into place. Over the next few weeks we tuned the rigging and adjusted everything periodically as we continued our trip down the Hudson River and the east coast.
There is an abundance of mast supports at Hop-O-Nose, just like we had seen at Wardell’s back in Tonawanda, left by those who have come down like we did, and have had their mast restepped there. Our supports, having performed splendidly, were happily contributed to the mélange. For those who come through the canal with plans of heading back at some future date, they can mark their supports so that they hopefully will be available for reuse on the return trip. Two different boats were here on their return trips while we were, and, after a lengthy search, found their respective pieces.
We found Skipper Bob guides available in the ship’s store at Hop-O-Nose. We found the Skipper Bob guides to be invaluable in our travels of the Erie Canal and the east coast ICW. We found them available in printed format at Wardell’s Boat Yard in Tonawanda, Hop-O-Nose in Catskill, and also at Utsch’s Marina in Cape May, New Jersey. I’m sure they are readily available at most marinas and boating stores along these routes. In addition they are now available online in electronic format for downloading. These simple little guides are reasonably priced and contain a wealth of constantly updated cruising information for most of the east coast and the eastern U.S. circumnavigation routes.
Coming from the non-tidal Great Lakes, we continued to be amazed by the tidal range (still about five feet) while we were tied up in Catskill Creek. After walking up the long, grueling hill in downtown Catskill (It felt like 10 miles but was probably only a mile or so.), we provisioned at the Price Chopper supermarket prior to our departure downriver. Coming back we actually hired a cab, something almost unheard of for us. We had finished our rerigging job and were ready to resume our trip down the Hudson and on down the coast. Finally, we were a sailboat again.
We headed downriver and made a stopover at the Poughkeepsie Yacht Club. Located just beyond Esopus Island right next door to the Norrie Point Yacht Club, we lost our race with a fast-moving squall as we were trying to pick up our mooring ball. We were forced to maneuver into the wind under engine power as we road out the brunt of the line squall. Once it had passed we proceeded with our mooring attempts which led to an exchange of words between Annie and myself. Fortunately we were interrupted by a local greeter who came out to welcome us to their mooring field and invite us to use their facilities, complete with a basement laundry. The marina was extremely friendly and we met their Commodore, Eina Reves, who was at that time the 95-year-old patriarch of the yacht club. Commodore Reves had emigrated from Denmark when he was 18 years old, still lived aboard his boat at the yacht club, and was still very active around the yard. Everybody made us feel welcome here.
Some people that we had met along the way had suggested we stop for a free overnight at the U.S. Military Academy at West Point on our way down the Hudson. Apparently at that time cruisers were welcome to tie up for free on their way up or down the river. I suspect that welcome expired with the sudden arrival of the age of U.S. terrorism a couple years later. The timing was not right for us to stop and we chose to continue past West Point further on down the river. This entire segment of our trip around West Point was characterized by a number of forest fires burning in the hills along the western bank of the river. Gargantuan helicopters were dipping huge buckets of water from the Hudson River. We watched as they carried these buckets inland over the fires and dumped the contents. Even though the choppers and the buckets were huge, once they got above the fire areas and dumped, the amount of water looked pretty insignificant. It was interesting to watch these maneuvers.
Further down river, as the river shorelines began to take on a more suburban look, we picked up a mooring ball in a huge mooring field along the western bank at Julius Petersen’s Boat Yard in Nyack, New York. We spent the night here enjoying a view of Sing-sing prison across the river in Ossining, New York as well as the Tappan Zee Bridge about a mile to the south, the last bridge spanning the river before Manhattan. Julius Petersen’s offered decent bathrooms and shower facilities for our Friday night overnight and next morning we were off toward New York City.
The following morning we dropped our mooring and headed south under the Tappan Zee Bridge and down past the New Jersey Palisades on our starboard side. We passed the Harlem River and cruised downriver under the George Washington Bridge. It was Saturday and the river was alive with activity. We passed above the several subterranean tunnels that connect Manhattan with the New Jersey shoreline and exited the river into New York Harbor. It was another spectacular sunshiny day under clear blue skies and the Manhattan skyline loomed on our port side – the twin towers of the World Trade Center, the Empire State Building, the Chrysler Building – and the Statue of Liberty rose off our port bow. Staten Island Ferries and countless other commercial vessels whisked to and fro as we worked our way through the harbor traffic and headed toward the Verrazano Narrows. Coney Island was visible in the distance along the Brooklyn shoreline.
We had intended to spend the night across the harbor from Manhattan at anchor off Liberty State Park in Newark, New Jersey. This free, well-protected anchorage is located due west across the harbor from the Statue of Liberty and had come highly recommended to us from more than one source. We had hoped to stop there, drop the hook, and spend some time enjoying the hustle and bustle of Manhattan, maybe taking in a museum, dinner, and perhaps even a Broadway show. However New York Harbor ended up being even more hectic than we had anticipated and, as a result, rather than coping with it, we ended up just letting the city traffic chase our country butts right out of town. We zipped on through and left all the hubbub behind us. Once we finally arrived in Baltimore, we heard more than one positive report from people who had actually stopped to smell the roses in New York and we regretted our spur of the moment choice.
We had dropped our mooring at Julius Petersen’s Boat Yard up in Nyack at 0715 that morning and it wasn’t even noon yet when we found ourselves motoring through the shadow of the Verrazano Narrows Bridge and past Coney Island into the Atlantic. We made a quick turn-off into the protection of the bay at Sandy Hook, New Jersey where we holed up for a night of R&R and to celebrate our exit from the inland waterways into the Atlantic Ocean, not even wondering whether we should have stopped back at Liberty Harbor. We were just too caught up in the excitement of the moment. The inland trip was behind us. We anchored off in the far corner of the bay and rode out a moderate squall during the night, but our Delta anchor on the all chain rode held nicely in the sandy bottom. One of the boats at anchor had their roller-furled jibsail ripped to pieces in the squall. We were ready to move on down the Jersey Coast on the final leg of this sojourn.
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