Captain's Choice blog: The Hudson River

Once we passed through the Troy Lock the river becomes tidal with 5' swings from high to low. The tides don't effect our tie up at marinas as long as we are on floating docks. The important thing is knowing your tides and tide times when your at an anchorage. If it's low tide you want to make sure you have enough anchor rode (chain/rope) out to accommodate the increase in water depth when the tide comes in and if it's high tide you want to make sure you have enough water under the boat that you'll still float when the tide goes out! The other thing with the tide is it can give you a push or slow you down, if your traveling all day it doesn't matter but if it works in your favor you can save a little fuel with the push.

After 2 beautifully warm days the rains came and lasted all day Thursday while we were at Shady Harbor. This marina is great with a pool (seasonal), clean amenities including laundry, restaurant, great Wi-Fi and a courtesy car...which we took advantage of Thursday to get groceries during the rainstorm. With grocery shopping, cleaning and laundry done we were ready to take off Friday morning for our first anchorage 56 miles down river at Gumaer Island near Kingston. We anchored in 12' of water, sandy bottom, light winds and we could also see a few other boats anchored around the bend.

Saturday morning had us wondering if we were going to be able to leave as the skies opened up and just wasn't letting up. Mark had decided if we didn't leave by 11 am it wasn't worth leaving. At 10:30 one of the sailboats that was anchored went by and we realized the rain had slowed to a drizzle so up the anchor came and we were off. The rain stopped and we ended up with a cool and partly sunny day. We traveled 54 miles to our anchorage at Haverstraw and anchored in 25' of water. The catamaran with the people from South Africa were anchored in there as well.

The Hudson Valley and river are just beautiful, it's unfortunate that pictures don't do it justice. To us it's comparable to the 1000 Islands and the North Channel in Canada. We saw more eagles, mansions on mountaintops, leaves just starting to change colors... just pure beauty at every bend in the river.

We awoke to a magnificent sunrise Sunday morning which had me running for the camera. With the anchor up by 7:15 we were off and on our way to Great Kills Yacht Club on Staten Island, 54 miles away. The visibility was great and we could see the Manhattan skyline from over 20 miles away. It had a mirage effect and it looked as if the buildings on land were actually floating. Although we have made the trip past NYC and the statue of Liberty before, I couldn't help taking more pictures, it's kind of like a kid in a candy store...once is never enough!

Now that we are back in salt water we have to add flushing the engines with fresh water and rinsing the boat off to our chores. We will be at the yacht club until at least Wednesday and then we will leave the first good weather/wind day after that (currently looking like Friday). Our next section of the east coast takes us out into the Ocean until at least Manasquan but we would like to travel as far as Atlantic City.