Beautiful Day - Sunny, lots of gorgeous scenery and structure for me. These are some old mountains here. The remnants of the ancient ones. Synclines, anticlines, plunging folds and beds. Slate, and other metamorphic rocks (phyllite?) that I can't really tell from my perspective on the boat.

We passed by some mammoth buildings, mansions, old churches, etc... one huge one that wasn't on the chart before we reached Poughkeepsie looked like it should have been part of West Point or another military academy.

We crossed a Caravel Ship going upstream as we were going down stream. What an oldy or a wonderful replica of one. Very cool. Saw many freighters and barges today too.

One place called the "Pirate Canoe Club" cracked us up. As we went by we envisioned beating off pirates in canoes with oars.

We finally reached pollepel Island - it has the ruins of a castle on it. You're not allowed on the island (I guess the ruins are dangerous at this point - the state let it fall into disrepair) but can anchor behind the island if you follow the charts carefully. Our draft is about 6 ft and the island is surrounded by 3-4 ft of water except for a very narrow channel if you hug the eastern shoreline of the Hudson. While following the narrow channel, we were slowing our speed to nose closer up to behind the island to anchor and when I went to throttle up a bit in reverse, I was still in idle... Oh no... I told Wayne to drop the anchor because I could go nowhere fast. We were stuck in idle speed (650rpms) whether forward, reverse or neutral. So it looks like we have our first problem. Luckily we seem to be out of harms way (not in the channel) for now but we're surrounded by very shallow water with rocks. Hopefully we're in a good position to swing when the current runs the opposite direction and the tides change. I think we're on a rising tide.

I put together a salad earlier and defrosted steaks for dinner. The Amtrak seems to use the tracks that go right next to the island and where we're anchored. It's a very cool looking castle - wish we could explore it while we're stuck here. The throttle either came loose from the engine or we broke a cable somewhere.

So, anchored at 41o27.140 x 73o59.065 for tonight and...tomorrow? West Point is right down the river from us I think about 5 miles away. Unfortunately I've heard that you can no longer anchor there - no transients due to security concerns .

I looked up the poop on Bannerman's Castle. I guess he was some kind of munitions dealer that built this castle and used it as a summer home and storage place from 1900 to 1918. The State took it over and ran tours to it - then it burned down. They continued running tours to it for a while but now nobody is allowed in the ruins because it's in a treacherous state.

We wanted to see it, so deftly followed the only way in for us along a narrow slot in the current along the eastern shoreline (8-10 ft). We got closer and closer to our destination, when all the sudden, my throttle stopped working. The only speed I could achieve was idle and with the currents running 3 knots, idle was not enough! It was like some force wanted to stop us from approaching any closer to the island. I had Wayne throw out the anchor to prevent us from drifting into the rocky shore or running aground on the southern tip of the eerie island. Once anchored twilight approached very fast.! I heard a cat pitifully meeeeeowing off the starboard side of the ship and went to investigate. I could see nothing in the water. I called - kitty, kitty, kitty, and heard a pathetic mewling off the port side of the ship and raced over to that side to search the water. Nothing... Was it a trick to get me into the treacherous currents? A train came roaring along beside us blowing its horn - long, hard... It seemed to last forever. It was so close and so loud it made my teeth rattle. It was a dark, cold night... dark... cold... you could see your breath hanging in the air under the light of the full moon as the clouds periodically covered it casting gray tones to the mountains surrounding us. The train of lost souls from New York City keeps coming by and blowing his horn at us (actually most the night and in the morning - strange because there's no crossing here...I think he wants us to join him). Nothing to do - but tell ghost stories. We actually had fun putting spook stories to the castle - it really did look eerie in the glow of the setting sun and in the dark. It would be a terrific place to host some sort of Halloween bash... It WAS a COLD, DARK (albeit the bright full moon) night...and I was very scary on the videos we were making - not... LOL Good to have fun in a bad situation though...