Misty fjord

We are under way northbound on the Hudson River, having just passed the Kingston-Rhinecliff Bridge. We have just two more days on the river before we turn off onto the Erie Canal.


Looking through the mist toward the Bear Mountain bridge in the morning calm from our anchorage at Con Hook.

We enjoyed our last couple of days in New York City. We had a nice lunch with our friend Gerry, whose insights on his home town are always interesting to me. On this occasion, as we chatted about the growing gulf of inequality in the world at large, he observed that New York City is a place where some of the richest people in the world on occasion literally step over some of the poorest on their way to their limousines.

Our vantage point abreast of the Upper West Side, which essentially becomes "our neighborhood" when we are in town, is similarly revealing. From our deck we could see hundreds and hundreds of apartment units where we could never afford to live, and yet, a significant number of them are dark. That's because they are not even second or third homes, but rather one of numerous homes used by their wealthy tenants -- a place of their own just for when they are in the city, whether that's one day a week or one week a year. The buildings themselves all have staff, so mail never accumulates and would-be miscreants can't get past the doorman.


Columbus Circle as seen from inside Time Warner Center.

All this accrues to our benefit in terms of how nice the neighborhood is and what services are available to us. As if to underscore the point, we were having a casual dinner and a couple of nice drafts at the Amsterdam Ale House when John Lithgow walked past our table on the sidewalk. This is an everyday occurrence here, and the roster of tenants at many of the buildings lining Central Park West reads like a Who's Who of the world's wealthy.

One of the neighborhood's appeals for them also appeals to us: there are virtually no tourists here. Other than the museum and a handful of little-known and less-visited monuments such as Grant's Tomb and the Soldiers and Sailors Memorial, there are no tourist attractions here. That makes for a stark contrast and sometimes a rude awakening when getting off the Broadway Local in, say, Times Square.


We passed this sign daily on our way through the Boat Basin Cafe. Glad we did not receive a "summits."

We did exactly that on our last day in town, to visit the main library, the one with the lions out front that is often depicted in cinema. Regular readers may remember I spent a bit of time there on one of our previous visits, but Louise was not with me. She wanted to see it, and I wanted to see the main reading room, which was closed for renovation on my last visit. We also enjoyed sitting in Bryant Park on a lovely afternoon and watching the world go by; the park has become a very vibrant space.

The previous day I had also ventured down to my old stomping ground of Midtown and wandered around. I was pleasantly surprised by the enormous retail and dining complex at the bottom of the Time Warner Center at Columbus Circle. Back in my day the site was occupied by The Coliseum, a convention center where I had my first exposure to boating when, as a small child, my dad took me to a couple of iterations of the New York Boat Show there. Less of an improvement was the abomination across the street that is the Trump Hotel, which, to my eye, looked much better dressed in white as the Gulf & Western building of my youth.


Our view from the Yonkers anchorage. Public pier at left; Manhattan and the GWB downriver.

Friday afternoon, after the 4pm turn of the tide, we weighed anchor and proceeded upriver to the Yonkers Pier. We've stayed there twice before and interacted with some Yonkers Parks personnel on the site, but this time I actually called the parks department ahead of time. That's because, on our last stay, we were surprised by the historical sloop Clearwater that showed up late at night with a reservation for the dock. I did not want to repeat that experience, which had us scrambling to move in the middle of the night, so I thought I would ask if any tour boats had the dock reserved. The Clearwater was actually tied up at the Boat Basin our final three nights there, but none of the crew I spoke with knew if they had Yonkers on the schedule.

That was a mistake. The bureaucrat now in charge of the dock insisted that, to spend the night, we'd need to send her a signed, notarized liability release and have the City of Yonkers listed on our insurance policy. Stopping for day use such as shopping or dinner, however, required nothing, so long as we were off the dock by 10pm, and we made it back through the gate before they closed it at 8. We guess she's never even seen the dock, and she certainly has no understanding that the process of docking involves a much higher liability risk than spending the night tied to the dock.


Steaming upriver from Yonkers we passed some of the old Tappan Zee Bridge on its way downriver.

Her disconnection from reality was confirmed when we arrived at the dock at 4:30pm to find it already chained and locked, due to ongoing renovations, even though she was certain it was open till 8. We took her earlier statement about being off the dock by 10pm as permission to use it until then, and a Parks employee on our very first visit had explained to us at the time how to re-access the dock after it was locked.

We walked up to Shop-Rite with our folding hand truck to reprovision the larder, including two cases of all-important beer, and more wet cat food lest we have a mutiny among the pest control detail. After loading it all aboard we walked back across the street for a casual dinner at Cafe Hudson. We passed magically on and off the locked pier, as did several of the city's more colorful characters. We did make sure we were through the gate by 8, and we dropped lines and cast off the pier shortly thereafter. We could certainly have spent the night without trouble, save for the fact that we'd been told otherwise. This reinforces my philosophy that it is often better to ask forgiveness than permission.


The new Tappan Zee Bridge, with some remnants of the old on barges.

It turns out that there is a little-known and less used Special Anchorage just a few dozen yards upriver of the pier, and so within ten minutes of dropping lines we were anchored for the night (map). We would have just anchored in the first place if we had not needed to load so many provisions. It was a calm and peaceful anchorage, with a lovely view downriver of the Manhattan skyline over the George Washington Bridge.

I had set an unambitious goal for Saturday of Croton-on-Hudson, thinking we'd only have an hour or two of tidal help. But after a long day Friday we crashed early, and so were up in time to catch most of the flood. After passing under the whizzy new Tappan Zee Bridge and past the barges deconstructing and carting off the old one, our cruise upriver brought us through some of the most scenic parts of the river. The Hudson is actually a fjord, and that fact is prominent in these sections.


Approaching the US Military Academy at West Point.

We ended up dropping anchor in the bight of Con Hook, off the town of Highland Falls on the west shore (map), squarely between the Bear Mountain Bridge, downriver, and the United States Military Academy at West Point, upriver. We had a nice view of both throughout the afternoon and evening, and enjoyed a nice rack of lamb on the grill for dinner. Despite nearly two knots of current in the river, the bight is mostly still water. An endless parade of freight trains on the west shore and passenger trains on the east shore kept us company through the night.

Yesterday we again weighed anchor with the flood and cruised past West Point, Newburgh, and Poughkeepsie on our way to Kingston. Newburgh's waterfront always looks inviting, but with the lone marina wanting $3 a foot, we can literally come back sometime and stay in the nicest hotel in town, where they make your bed and feed you breakfast, for less money.


What's left of Mariners on the Hudson. A sad ending.

Poughkeepsie was having some sort of skulling event on the river, associated with a breast cancer awareness charity, which had us on the west side of the river. Mariners Restaurant, where we tied up on our last transit, is shuttered and mostly dismantled, and with anchoring in the river here nearly impossible, our only stopping option in Poughkeepsie is another expensive marina. With plenty of flood left, we opted to continue on.

As we approached Rondout Creek we had to dodge and weave among numerous sailboats, possibly some sort of club event. A storm system was arriving just as we were, and every boat headed for the barn simultaneously; I throttled back and followed a conga line of sailboats into the creek. We tied up in the same spot we used on our last visit (map), although the restaurant whose dock it is has since changed hands and is now the Ole Savannah Southern Table and Bar.


Our free digs last night. The old boiler house of the historic Cornell Towing Company.

We had a beer at the bar shortly after tying up, even though it was early afternoon, in part to be good citizens, and returned for a nice dinner after strolling the town a bit. Although they had a large and varied menu, we both settled on barbecue items from the smoker, which were quite tasty. We sat on the patio and had to scramble for cover under the awning when the second wave of the aforementioned storm arrived, but it left us with a lovely rainbow as we finished dinner.

Update: we are docked at the free town dock in the small riverfront community of Athens, New York (map), a stop we did not make on our last pass through. A sign on the dock reads No Overnight Docking, but our cruising guide says that is no longer in force. Having learned my lesson on forgiveness versus permission, we'll stay unless asked to leave, in which case we can anchor a short distance away. The go-to restaurant in town is dark Mondays, but a well-rated pizza joint up the street is calling us. Tomorrow we will be in Troy, just downriver of the lock.


Our after-dinner view from under the awning.