Hudson River Heading North: Amazingly we left our dock at 1100 hours as promised on the 4th of July. The captain said we had a "weather window" - rain had ended earlier but thunder storms were threatened for later, so it was time to shove off. We reached the Statue of Liberty about 3 hours later. From there we continued past NYC to Lincoln Harbor Yacht Club where we stayed the night to view the Macy's fireworks. We strolled the area in the late afternoon / early evening scoping out the area. Security was high at the yacht club for the 4th, so we were issued arm bands to show that we were 'legit". Due to the 90 something degree heat, the captain kindly offered to buy us dinner. The first menu we looked at was a steak restaurant where the steak by itself was $50 and everything like a potato, salad, etc cost extra. I said no to that menu and we settled later for Houlihan's where I had a $9 hamburger which was yummy so it worked out just fine. The fireworks lit up the sky for 26 minutes starting at 9:20 or so, and we had a bird's-eye view. We could see the synchronized fireworks from 3 separate firework's barges - AWESOME!
Thursday morning found a more subdued yacht club as boats had either left or their owner's had left them depending on whether they were club members or visitors. It was us and a few straggler's and very different than the day before. We weren't moving too fast ourselves and found ourselves pulling out of the yacht club to continue on our trip at just about 1100 hours. The intent was to make it as far up the Hudson River as possible with Waterford at the entrance to the Erie Canal as the ultimate goal. Alas, leaving at 1100 hours meant that our goal was not achieved though we did make it as far as Albany where we pulled up to a dock at the Albany Yacht Club at 8:00 p.m. I have to say that I was quite cranky after 9 hours on the boat and supper not yet on the table. Since I did not feel like searching for (on foot) and hanging around a restaurant for the rest of the night, I pulled out my electric wok and made up some stir fried zucchini, a fresh salad, and meatloaf I had brought from home. After a reasonable meal my crankiness mysteriously disappeared.
The sights along the Hudson were many and we took more than a few photos to record our trip in pictures. We had no surprises along the way except for the mine fields of wood floating in the river with us. We passed more than a few very large branches, or perhaps they were small trees, as well as various pieces of lumber including at least one 4x4 railroad tie which was either part of someone's landscaping or part of a dock - can't imagine which! All I know is that if the propeller hits something like that the trip ends in a hurry while the prop is repaired - a very expensive endeavor both in time and money as the boat would need to be hauled out of the water for the work. Fortunately we hit nothing large. We were unable to avoid one set of branches, so the captain pulled back on the throttle to go through the "mine field" at minimum speed. I heard a crunch and when I looked back one of the branches was now in multiple pieces, so the prop had managed to chop it up. I guess the wood was rotted enough to give way to the prop.
Tomorrow's challenge will be the Federal Lock in Troy, NY. Back in 2003 when we last did a canal trip, the captain rigged up "bumper boards" which consists of a 2 fenders which sit against the boat with a board attached on the outside to rub up the wall of the lock. The captain pulled them out and has been trying for the last hour or so to remember how they were configured on the boat as all the lines appear to be too short for deploying them the way we thought they should go. I decided to leave him to it. Meanwhile I have my own difficulties. I have tried everything I can think of but I can' t get my pictures uploaded from the computer and it is now heading on to 1:00 a.m. I'll try the next time I get wifi to get the photos with captions to be available for view.
Sounds so good so
ReplyDelete