Final leg to New York City

We are under way southbound in the Hudson, on our final leg to New York City. I know I said I would not have time for a post, but I find myself with nearly three hours under way today on an easy autopilot route, in calm seas and with no traffic, so I thought I'd get out one more quick update before we settle in to Manhattan.

The Diamond Mills Paper Company dam across Esopus Creek, just upriver from our anchorage.

With the ebb starting in the afternoons right now, we had a quiet final morning in Saugerties. I returned ashore stag for a bit more of a walk around town, and we weighed anchor on the 1pm ebb and steamed out of Esopus Creek. As we passed Kingston, in rapid succession we had to do-si-do with the Rip Van Winkle III tour boat, were overtaken at speed by the downbound ship SSI Magnificent, and hailed by an upbound pleasure craft that recognized us from my Facebook posts.

Stella's did a nice job preserving this former gas station.

We arrived to Poughkeepsie, passed both bridges, and dropped the hook in the same spot we used on the upbound trip, across the river from Shadows (map). The river was calm this time, and we splashed the tender and headed across to Shadows for dinner, where we ate in the bar and found the food to be decent. On our last trip up we had stayed at the marina but missed the restaurant.

The former Newberry store in Saugerties still bears the old signage on the glass.

In the morning, while waiting on the ebb, I returned ashore at the city courtesy dock in front of the old ice house. A new restaurant, The Governess, just opened in the building a couple of weeks ago, replacing the Ice House restaurant where we ate last trip, and it seems to be more pleasant, an option for some future visit. After looping through the train station I walked north to the Upper Landing Park and the elevator up to the Walkway Over the Hudson. The view is spectacular from this re-purposed historic rail bridge, as I remember from when I walked onto it from the west side on our first visit a decade ago.

Atop the Walkway Over the Hudson. Vector is a spec just below the span of the Mid-Hudson Bridge.

We decked the tender and got under way on the ebb for a fairly short cruise to Newburgh. We keep missing this historic town, and I figured this time to be the charm, but mother nature had other plans. The twin cities of Newburgh and Beacon lie on a straight, deep section of river, and there is not a single spot to drop the hook with protection from north or south winds. As we arrived, unforecast southerlies had whipped the river up into a chaotic mess, with steep three footers splashing water on the pilothouse windows. Even the $3/ft marinas here put transients on an unprotected face dock. We decided to press on and see if we could find ourselves at least a little bit of a lee further on.

We passed this cable-layer south of Saugerties close aboard. They were on Dynamic Positioning and getting ready for underwater operations.

We continued south to Storm King mountain, and I maneuvered in as close as I could get to shore, just off the town park at Cornwall-on-Hudson (map). We dropped the hook in 25' and hoped for the best; it was a bit better than Newburgh, but some swell was still coming around the corner upriver. Louise was rooting around in the galley for something to make for dinner, since our resources said there was no place to get ashore here.

Our night view in Poughkeepsie of the Mid-Hudson Bridge, with the walkway behind it, both tastefully lit.

That turned out to be untrue. We had not noticed it until we had the anchor fully set, but there was a town boat ramp with a small, rickety floating dock a mere 500' from where we were anchored. That's close enough that even a little chop on the river was no problem, and I pulled up the map to find a Mexican place and a pizza joint just over a half mile from the dock, and a nice Italian place nearly a half mile beyond that. With a break in the rain, we grabbed our jackets and umbrellas and headed ashore.

Vector anchored just a stone's throw from Donahue Park.

The Village Pizzeria turned out to be a great choice, with real NY style pizza and a selection of beers in bottles and cans. They also had a Sicilian that looked good, but we could not eat that much. We made it home before the rain started back up. In the morning I returned ashore for a longer walk further into town. The town is 150' above river level, so we got our stair-climbing in again.

As seen from the gazebo against the backdrop of Breakneck Ridge.

We needed to get a pump-out before we land in Manhattan for a week or more, and my other morning project was to call the places on the state pump-out station list to see who on our route could get us in. The very first place to try was the Cornwall Yacht Club, which was not even a quarter mile from where we were anchored. When I called they said there might be just enough depth for us at the dock since it was close to high tide, the pump-out had just been repaired the previous day, and there was no charge.

When we weighed anchor in Esopus Creek we brought up this tree. It's a theme lately.

That sounded great to us, and so we weighed anchor ahead of the ebb and headed over to the pump-out dock, a straight-in shot perpendicular to the river. I don't think we touched bottom, but the sounder did read down to 6.5' as I was maneuvering, and it read just 7' when we were tied up. The pump was one of the fastest we've ever used, and the club let us take on water as well. Louise did a full load of laundry while we were tied up. When the falling tide had the sounder reading 6.5', we dropped lines and backed out into the river. By this time the ebb had started and we turned south to Peekskill.

USCGC Wire is home-ported in Saugerties.

Once again our plans were foiled by the weather. Where we anchor in Peekskill was going to be too exposed for forecast thunderstorms, and those same storms would likely keep us on the boat instead of making our way to one of the restaurants down near the waterfront. We opted to continue on to the deeper Half Moon Bay, where we were able to tuck in behind Croton Point (map) for some protection. The storms were already starting as we were dropping the hook, but that did not deter the two day boats anchored nearby with a half dozen kids playing in the water.

Vector as seen from dinner at Shadows. What, you don't see that tiny dot against the hills?

We had a nice dinner on board, and the day boats eventually left before the thunder and lightning started in earnest. At one point we saw and heard a strike so close we though it might have hit the sailboat that came in and anchored a short distance from us, but it must have hit something ashore instead. I marched into the pilothouse to check all of the electronics, after our direct-hit experience in Florida.

Village Pizzeria was also in a restored gas station. Texaco, I should think.

There isn't really a courtesy dock in Half Moon Bay, nor any good way to get across the massive Metro North rail complex to visit Croton, so we just had a quiet morning aboard until the start of the ebb. The plotter says we'll have the hook down off Manhattan by 4pm. (Update: we are safely anchored.)