Poughkeepsie to Haverstraw (Day 4)

When we leave in the Fall to head south, one of the critical parts of the trip is off-shore down the coast of New Jersey.  The weather patterns in the Fall tend to be constantly changing with fronts coming through every 3-4 days.  Because of this, we typically wait in Catskill until we see there is going to be good sailing weather down the coast 2-3 days in the future. 

Since we were in Poughkeepsie, we had a choice of going back to Catskill (our dock was paid for the season) or heading south down the river.  I check the forecast and there was no good weather window showing for the next week.  I was thinking maybe we should go back to Catskill since we would have power (with heat and A/C) plus our car was there.  Laura and I talked about it a bit and it wasn't until Monday morning that we decided.  We both wanted to keep going even if we had to anchor for several days waiting for NJ coastal weather.

Up early to prep the boat for leaving.  Stow everything loose, fill up water tank, disconnect power and leave.  We were off the dock at 7:45am and turned the boat south. 

It was another sunny day with light winds (no sailing - boo hoo).  We caught a couple hours of the ebb current which helped us almost to West Point.  Then it was a slow trip for the next 15 miles to Haverstraw Bay.  Our goal for today was Haverstraw Cove anchorage on the western shore of Haverstraw Bay.  Here is a picture Laura took a short while after we left Poughkeepsie. Pretty fall colors in the mountains.

 Passing Bannerman's Castle, Laura took this nice picture of Storm King mountain.

Winds were only 3-5 knots in Haverstraw Bay but we decided to roll out our big sails to make sure everything worked.  No problems and I turned off the engine for a short time as our jib and mainsail pushed us along at 2-3 knots.  A little while later we rolled them back in and motored into Haverstraw Cove.  The blue dot on this picture is the location of Haverstraw Cove.  A very protect anchorage.

The only problem with Haverstraw Cove is getting in.  I religiously use ActiveCaptain on my charting systems which is a crowd-sourced application showing anchorages and obstructions.  If a boater runs aground, he can create an obstruction on ActiveCaptain showing the location and how to get around it.  Anchorages have reviews from other boaters telling about entering the anchorage or places to see.  I followed the instructions from an ActiveCaptain review and never saw less then 9 feet of water around us.  A Canadian boater came in behind us and ran aground - twice!

We motored around inside the cove for awhile looking at depths.  Not much under 20 feet so we anchored near the northern end away from the inlet.

Around 4pm I decided to open a bottle of our 19 Crimes Banished red wine.  It's our favorite and we bought two cases before we left (it's only $9 a bottle).  I worked on the blog a bit and we started dinner around 7pm.  Laura had thawed a thick bone-in NY strip steak which I cooked on the grill.  It was awesome with some mushrooms and fresh veggies.  Fresh apple pie for dessert completed our day. 

I had downloaded the whole current season of "The Ranch" from Netflix and we watch 3 episodes.  This season is a big downer so far.  Hope it picks up.