September 9, Sunday New York, New York

Can you believe that they actually CLOSE the Hudson River for a power boat race?? We got here and the river was closed from 11 a.m. to 4 p.m.. We pulled over and anchored to wait. They actually called about 2 and said the river was open again. We decided to try 79th Street Boat Basin for a mooring ball, but the ones we could fit on were taken so we continued on down to anchor behind the Statue of Liberty at Liberty State Park. It is quite calm in here after all the wakes, waves, tide and current in the river. There is really nowhere to go on shore here, except to Liberty Park, so there will be no walk in Central Park on this trip. We can see the Verrazano Narrows Bridge from here. At night it is all lit up with lights and is very pretty. The "Narrows" can be a tough spot to get through, due to tide and wind, so we will choose our time to go with those factors in mind.

Once again, our trip was crowded with history on the way down from Haverstraw Bay. We passed Sing Sing, Sleepy Hollow Cemetery, more mansions, and historic sites. We were surprised that across the river from Yonkers and the Bronx are the Palisades, which are tall rock cliffs and are quite beautiful.

Today was the kind of day that made me think of great sails on Lake Michigan-hope someone did that!

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Saturday September 8th...... Hudson River

It was apparent early on today that even at 6 miles an hour we were going way too fast to deal with the history that was racing by on each shore. Thanks to Kurt (and his dad) we had in the cockpit, a mile by mile guide to the Hudson River complete with a description of all the castles, mansions and other cool stuff. It was a long day motoring and not without excitement. On our way out of the Creek our engine started racing plus or minus 300rpms .... it turned out to be a primary filter so I switched to the back up and ran smoothly all day. Then, with our anchorage in sight a few miles away, our bilge pump went off and wouldn't stop which is a real bad sign...I checked all the thru-hulls and everything was fine. The only thing left was the packing gland on our drive shaft which is located in the basement of our boat.... and boat basements are not the easiest places to operate a wrench. After emptying the area under the cockpit, I slid down...did I mention that it has been about 90 degrees the last week....and found a steady spray instead of the one drip per minute that is normal. So the good news was that we were not going to sink... the bad news was that as soon as we were anchored I had a nasty job with which to deal.

Anyway, it was a great day. Hot, long and loud with the motor running all the time and tons of traffic. Even better when Ellie called with football scores... we won and THEY didn't for the second week in a row. We passed West Point today and there looked to be tailgaters everywhere. The roof of one of the building said "Beat Air Force" so I assume they had a home game as well. By the way, West Point looks a lot like Hogwarts from the water... but with the haze, photography was tough today.

We are about 30 miles north of New York City and hope to anchor at the Statue of Liberty tomorrow afternoon. It looks like we may be there for a couple of days. Our next run will be in the Atlantic and we would like to dispense with New Jersey in one fell swoop... 120 miles to Cape May. We'll see. There are lots of places to bail if we decide to, but if we leave at about dusk and sail all night, we'll be there with good light.

We met some folks last night in Catskill who are heading the same direction as we..... their boat is a Valiant 42 that is not only beautiful but equipped as a cruising boat should be. We were moored next to them in Put in Bay but never spoke. We saw their boat in Waterford as we were leaving but never had the chance to chat until last night.

Later....

I would like to add that we drove through mountains all day and they were beautiful, reminding us of the Smokies. It has been HOT and humid. We have sunshine every day and have had unbelievable weather.

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Wednesday and Thursday September 5 &6 Catskill, NY

We arrived in Catskill on Wednesday afternoon. It was a pleasant ride down the Hudson River past Albany and some other towns. We took a walk when we got here. There is a nice park across the road from the Riverview Marina, which is located on Catskill Creek, the park is on the Hudson River. Then we walked up to the town to look around. It is a cute town and they are doing lots of renovations, but many stores are empty. There are cats everywhere on the sidewalk on pedestals, each decorated a different way, apparently playing on the "cat" part of the town name. There is also a wooden carving of RipVanWinkle in the center of the street, as this is allegedly his home town.

Since that nice walk, we haven't had time to do anything except work on the mast business. I won't bore you with the details of that. It is now Friday morning and Mike is working on the wiring now, and then it will be finished. We are happy to be put back together and look like a sailboat again.

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