Catskill to Troy

We continued up the Hudson under motor power only to our rendez-vous with the NYS canal system.  Someone building the next southbound freight train wanted to remind us that we were getting closer to our home in almost Canada.

Just above Catskill there is a large island in the river called the Middle Ground Flats.  If you take the channel to port, you end up in shoal waters.  This beautiful lighthouse marks the south end of the safer starboard channel for the big boats.

The town of Hudson featured this picturesque waterfront and had a small tour boat tied up at the quay.

The southbound parade continued with a set of three Ranger Tugs following one another.  This is the smallest of the three.  It fits a standard size trailer and can be easily moved down the highway from cruising ground to cruising ground.  We liked her because her color scheme is similar to Broad Reach, but we need a red canoe on top to complete the ensemble for our boat.

We knew we were closing in on Albany when we saw this canalboat headed down river.  Before we moved to Maryland, we had debated renting one of these on the Erie.  There are a number of companies and locations on the Erie Canal and the Champlain Canal that offer these narrow boats.

The south end of the river near Albany is very commercial.  The port is the northern terminus for most of the large barge traffic that we had been dodging for the last several day.  These cormorants did not seem to mind the huge pile of recycled steel behind them.

The river is pretty narrow going through the Port of Albany.  It was a little intimidating to pull past all those huge barges at close quarters.  None of the tugs were underway, but a few were actively making steam, with smoke coming out of their stacks as we slid quickly by.  These two were all quieted down for the night.

Turning past the oil storage area and refinery we were greeted with this view to port.

And to remind us that this was a gritty working port, when we looked to starboard we saw this on the eastern shore.

Above the working port the views became more citified.

We sure felt sorry for the guy who had to move from Maryland to New York by land instead of by sea.  He must have gotten hijacked along the way, cause somebody lost his U-Haul truck for him, really and seriously lost it.

But even those who regularly travel by sea can lose things.  Look what the United States Navy lost all the way up the Hudson River.

The view looking back from the river to the capital is pretty cool.

And if we ever live on a barge in a river, I want it to be done in the Japanese style of building like this one.  This was just a few blocks above the Capital Theater.

The upper Hudson and the Erie Canal took a lot of flood damage during Hurricane Irene and Tropical Storm Lee.  The high water mark was evident on most of the bridge abutments above Albany.  Check out how high the piles are on these pilings.

The marina we had planned to stay at on Saturday night in Troy was below the Troy Federal Lock.
We were not sure we could make it to the lock by nightfall, but we soon discovered we had no choice.  The Troy Municipal Marina had been wiped out completely by the flooding.  We motored past downtown Troy in the late afternoon.  The riverbank showed the remnants of our hoped for marina.

  
We decided together that Niki would take the helm to pilot the boat into the locks, while I grabbed lines and stanchions on the lock wall.  We got the green light at the bottom of Troy Federal Lock and she motored us slowly into our first concrete bathtub.  The Troy lock has no lines to keep the boat centered.  There are large vertical tubes built into the lock wall.  By running a line from the deck cleat on top of the doghouse behind the big steel tube and then forward, we were able to safely ride up the rising current as the lock filled.  The lock master came down for a chat and to obtain the boat registration numbers.  He congratulated us on our first ever successful locking through.  We were too busy in the locks to get many pictures, but here is the view as we left heading to North Troy.  The lock tower and exit are just below the backstay on the far right side of the snapshot.

We were trying to call around for a marina for the night, since our plan A was washed away in the flood.  Niki's call to the old number for the Troy Municipal Marina somehow got switched to a part of the NYS DMV.  The gal on the other end of the line responded to our predicament with three suggested possibilities for dockage in North Troy.  The Troy Motor Boat and Canoe Club told Niki we could tie up for the night.  This is a private club that does not usually do transients, but it was directly across from the entrance to the Erie.  A club member met us at the dock as darkness was gathering, made sure we were safely tied up for the night and hooked up to shore power, and gave us a recommendation for a restaurant four blocks away.

If you are ever in North Troy and you like Italian, you must, you must, you must, go to Testos Restaurant on 4th Ave.  Our waiter Mike was a real professional.  When I quipped that the entrees were the size of Rhode Island, he quipped back that I should have read the gluttony disclaimer at the bottom of the menu.  Huge home cooked Italian dishes served in a casual family atmosphere and the place was packed to the walls.  Good wine and great gnocchi made a long day seem well worth the effort.

Unstepping the mast

Friday was a workday for us.  To make the journey up or down the Erie Canal, all sailboats of any size must have their masts removed.  The bridges and lift gates on the canal are just too low to allow anything except a small daysailer to pass under them safely.  We had checked references on the web when planning our trip, and there seemed to be a consensus that Mike at Riverview Marine Services in Catskill was the guy with the equipment and know-how to get the job done.  When we called on Thursday afternoon to set up transient dockage, he advised us to pull up to his fuel dock for the night.  We woke to a bright clear morning with perfect weather for the job ahead.

One of the reasons that we chose Broad Reach was the fact that her mast is stepped onto the top of the deck, making the removal job easier than if it were attached to the keel.  We knew when we bought her that we would one day take her north to explore the canals in NY and Canada.  Before leaving Maryland, we built a system of crutches and stays that could support the mast in a horizontal position above the deck.  We built the crutch system high enough so that we could stand at the helm underneath the top of the mast while the mast base sat just a few feet over the bow.  We needed to be able to easily move from one side of the deck to the other while guiding the boat into and out of the lock basins.  We measured the length of each wire stay as closely as possible, but we were not able to get exact lengths while the mast was still vertical on the boat.  We needed the stays to be within 6" of their final length, within the maximum adjustment length of each turnbuckle, so the stays had been constructed with one working end loose.  We hoped that the little tiny wire rope clamps on that adjustable working end would hold up under the stresses of the weight and momentum of the mast above the deck, but the system had never been tested or used by us before.

Mike and the folks at Riverview were as good as their advance press.  He had a full load of south bound boats that were being restepped after coming down the canal from Canada and the Great Lakes.  It took us a few hours to pull off the sails, remove the boom, and get the boat prepped for the final act. Mike fit us into the rotation of boats being worked as soon as we were ready to go under the crane.  Here is what she looked like before we went to work with the crane.

Mike and crew got a line set under the spreaders to take the weight of the mast off the deckplate.  He wanted the backstay taken off first, so I had to balance with one foot on the sternrail and one foot on the binnacle, and stretch out with my full length, to reach that turnbuckle at the top of the inverted V where the two split stays meet.  Once the shrouds were released from each side and the clevis at the base of the forestay was pulled, the crane lifted the mast up off the deck complete with furler and rigging.

I needed time to set the crutch supports before the mast could be laid down horizontal, so Mike shut down the crane, and broke his team for lunch.  I worked frantically with all the tiny wire rope clamps to get the bow and stern crutches set.  When they came back from lunch, we discovered a small logistical error.  In building the crutches, I had cut the tops to fit the smooth U-shape of the front of the mast.  The crutches did not have a notch to fit the sailtrack on the aft profile of the mast.  We needed to turn the mast 180 degrees from how the crane was holding it.  A few southbound Canadians volunteered, and we used the spreaders to turn the mast, ever so slowly, as we eased it down into place.  I was at the bow. Mike kept shouting to me repeatedly above the noise of the crane "Whatever you do, don't let go of the base of this thing."  She came down and spun around, and fit into the crutches just as nicely as possible.

Mike needed the crane for the next boat on his schedule, and we walked the boat around to the next slip.  We fitted the other two crutches, tightened the turnbuckles on the untested system, and called it done.  It took another few hours to straighten and secure the furler and standing rigging into the crutches.  The last step was to sling the boom under the mast on top of the doghouse.

It was getting on towards dusk when I remembered the problem with the helm from the previous day.  I slipped on my trunks and went for a cold dip off the stern. A visual inspection of the rudder just wasn't possible, so I dove under the back of the boat and did my own impersonation of a raccoon, seeing the rudder with my hands through the water.  Everything checked out OK.  After a quick shower, Niki and I headed off to a cold drink and a hot meal back at Frank Guido's Ports of Call, satisfied that our mast was secured to the deck.

Newburgh to Catskill

When we checked in at Riverfront Marina, we asked Jamie if there was a grocery store nearby for provisioning.  She said we would need to take a taxi across town to get to any decent shopping.  When we got up Friday morning, we went looking for coffee and breakfast.  We walked up the steep waterfront two blocks past the community college, and ended up in a distressed part of town. We passed the Rescue Mission and turned in at a little diner run by a Greek family.  The portions were huge, the grits were smooth and hot, and the coffee was endless.  When the local cop on the beat gets his breakfast at a small coffee joint, you know you have hit paydirt.

After breakfast we crossed the street to investigate the little grocer across Broadway.  It was run by a Pakistani guy who told us we were not locals, and to stay off the streets at night.  "These young hoodlums around here kill people just for the fun of it".   The customer behind us in line took exception, and told us we would be "jus fine" as long as we didn't "go lookin for no trouble".  We paid for our purchases and headed back down street, feeling a sense of how lucky we were to be doing what we are doing, and recognizing that it sometimes a very thin line between the hood and the highlife.

As if to emphasize the point, the views upriver to Poughkeepsie and beyond were filled with upper class mansions and expansive institutional edifices.  We were kept busy trying to decide if we were looking at colleges, or churches, or monasteries.  The river charts don't give a lot of references to buildings on land, so we just made up stories to go with the views.  Here are some of the pics.

Or if you prefer modern and really upscale, there is this..

The weather continued to tease us.  The clouds lowered and rain began to get heavy just as we got to each narrow part of the channel.  We put the running lights back on so the southbound barges could see us.  As soon as we passed each blind curve on the river, the clouds would lift and give us good visibility again.  Sometimes the shapes of the fog on the river paralleled the shore behind.  Niki really loved the misty curvature in this view.

Each major bend in the river had its own little lighthouse.  This one reminded me of a special sometime ago walk down a beach in NH carrying a bucket of ice and a bottle of champagne.

The light reflecting off our wake as we made the corner around that little lighthouse was curious.

As we got to the end of the day, the clouds lifted and the sun began to break through the overcast.  We knew we had made it to our next stop at Riverview Marine Services in Catskill when we looked off the stern and saw the Catskill mountains framed like this.

This perfect sunset was unassailable to us.  Nothing could detract from it.  Just as we rounded the last buoy on the approach to the marina, we struck something in the water.  For a few minutes, the helm would not respond properly.  We were in just too good a mood to let it bother us.  We backed the prop a little, and slowly motored up to the fuel dock at the marina for the night.  Once she was tied up and the shorepower was plugged in, we walked down the waterfront for a late dinner at Port O' Call on the Catskill Point.  I planned an early morning swim to see if anything important was wrong with the rudder.

Up the Hudson River Valley

The forecast on Thursday was for rain.  The 79th Street Marina is located beyond a roundabout at the west end of 79th.  There is a hole in the middle of the stone roundabout, and down in the center of that hole is the Boat Basin Cafe.  We were hoping for an early cup of coffee and bagels to go, but the place was closed when we walked up the steps.  We were back on the boat and heading up the Hudson by 8AM.

Just as we were leaving the marina, a group of middle schoolers came down the dock to board this classroom on the water.  We wondered what you did with a bevy of teens on a big boat in fog and rain, but did not hang around for the lesson plan.

We made steady progress up to and under the George Washington Bridge.  This is the first time either of us had seen Uptown from this perspective.  It was cool to note all the different styles of architecture from the water.

The further Uptown we got the ferry traffic died out.  We still had some southbound barges to contend with.  Because the weather was just off the deck, we had set the nav lights on before we left the marina.  That turned out to be a good choice.  As soon as we got upriver from Harlem the rain started to come down in sheets.  Visibility dropped precipitously.  Niki went below decks while I tried to keep to the far east side of the river.  Between the GPS and slight breaks in the downpour, I could just about parallel the shore about 50 yards out.  It went on that way for about an hour.

By the time we turned the corner to come up on the Tappan Zee Bridge, the rain had lifted again.  It looked like the sun might break through after all.

There is a sharp dogleg in the river at the very northern end of the Tappan Zee.  We were surprised to see a nuclear power plant so close in to the city.  The Indian Point Power Plant appears to be sited on the grid next to an older gas turbine plant, and that may explain the location.

There are rail lines on both sides of the river.  The lines are very busy.  We saw Amtrak and freight and some very weird looking yellow service vehicles that check the lines for distortions or possible derailment issues.

One of the most lovely bridges on this part of the trip was the Bear Mountain Bridge.  The river narrows down and turns a sharp corner.  Amtrak has to do the same thing, and this short little tunnel made such a hard curve that we couldn't see the light at the end.

Some guy who couldn't wait for Amtrak parked his alternative conveyance in his backyard.  Actually the plane was boxed in by driftwood and looked in pretty poor condition, but it would be a neat way to get down to the city if operable.

The combination of the lowering clouds and the narrow steep hillsides just turning to autumn colors was mesmerizing.  We could really believe we were in the land of Rip Van Winkle.  Other folks must have found it spellbinding as well.  The hills were planted with spectacular homes and every turn of the river bank revealed new wonders.

We thought we had seen some amazing edifices, and then we turned the corner on West Point.  The view from the river is an archetypal portrayal of power in stone.

We turned up the river to Newburgh.  The wind was filling from the south and we were able to get some extra push from the jib.  As we were closing in on our final destination for the night, we came across this odd little stone tower set off to side of a larger island.

When we got just north of the island and looked back we were treated to the ruins of Bannerman's Castle.  Bannerman was a successful arms dealer in the Civil War and used some of his profits to build this Scottish castle on the island.  It was a family summer residence until a fire gutted the interior and left this facade.

Half an hour up from Bannerman's we pulled into Riverfront Marina at Newburgh.  Jamie met us at the dock, helped us tie up, gave us the keys to the kingdom, and referred us to the restaurant Billie Joe's Ribworks adjacent to the marina for dinner.  She looked at me and quipped "Tonight they feature that band that plays all the oldies.  That should be good for you."  Any place that is owned by an old goat, plays classic rock n roll, and serves BBQ is really good for me!

Goodnight!