Catskill to Haverstraw Cove (Day 1)

First day of the trip - Catskill to Haverstraw Cove

Air temp 68, water temp 72, winds S @ 10, cloudy (but comfortable temps) with rain in the afternoon

65 nautical miles today in 11 1/2 hours

The last few weeks -

We had planned on leaving a couple weeks ago and spending some time cruising Long Island Sound and Buzzards Bay before heading south.  Unfortunately, the weather turned cold (highs in the 60s and lows near 40) so we stayed at the marina where we had heat.  

Instead, we took a 3-day car trip through northern Vermont and New Hampshire before turning south to visit family near Boston.  We had planned this trip for "leaf peeping" but we were a little early for the fall colors in most of the areas we visited.  There were some nice colors but they were spotty.  Here's a pretty one from New Hampshire.

It was nice to get away from the boat for awhile and revisit some of the beautiful Northeast countryside.

Summer boat work - 

We had a long list of items to fix on the boat this summer and actually finished most of them before leaving. The biggest completed projects were making new canvas and windows for our cockpit and fixing a problem causing our engine to run about 20 degrees hotter than it should.  Laura made the new canvas in just under 2 weeks using her Sailrite sewing machine and a large table we setup in the marina garage from 2 picnic tables and a 4 X 8 sheet of plywood.  I troubleshot the engine overheat for 3 weeks before finally finding the root cause (bad thermostat that I couldn't get out) and basically replaced the entire engine cooling system.  

Jobs we have left include installing 4 new port-lights (we did install one that was leaking badly) and some new paint around the decks.  Maybe we'll get to these on our trip south?

The past few weeks we cleaned everything up before stocking the boat full of food and spare parts.  Just yesterday we did our last runs to Walmart and Price Chopper.  As usual, our freezers are chocked full.

Planning for today and the next few days - 

Our only major plans for this trip south are to stop in New Bern, NC for some professional interior woodwork (needed because of rot from a multi-year leak) and try to see some new places.  Maybe this is the year for visiting the southern part of the Chesapeake Eastern Shore?

We've learned over the years to wait in Catskill until we see a possible window for the sail down the coast of New Jersey.  In the past, we've waited in Sandy Hook up to 10 days on the anchor for decent weather down the coast.  This weekend the weather is supposed to be nice for that trip which takes us about 36 hours to travel from Sandy Hook to the Sassafrass River in Chesapeake Bay.  We are currently anchored in Haverstraw Cove (off Haverstraw Bay) and will sit here through storms tomorrow.  This bay has 360 degree protection from seas and no currents.  On Thursday plans are to head south to Atlantic Highlands (near Sandy Hook) and probably sit there 2 days until leaving for down the NJ coast on Saturday.

Today - 

I had the alarm set for 5:30am this morning so we could catch a few hours of the ebb tide down the Hudson before it changed at 8:30am.  Both Laura and I were awake at 5am so we just got up, pulled in the power cord, ladder and dock lines then motored down the Hudson in the dark for about an hour.  We started our trip south at 5:40am.  It was a cloudy day and I think we only saw the Sun for a couple minutes.  The temps were comfortable but we did have to put up all our cockpit canvas for the afternoon rain.

The colors were just starting to come out in the Hudson Valley and Laura took this picture near Hyde Park.

The river was pretty calm until we got to Haverstraw Bay with a 2 foot windchop coming right at us.  We bounced around a little for the next 1/2 hour before pulling into Haverstraw Cove and anchoring just as the heavy rain was starting.  I slowed the boat to a crawl (2 knots?) coming into the cove so we could back off if we ran aground.  It was low tide and at one point we had less than 1 foot of water under our keel.

Right after anchoring we had 20 knot winds and lots of rain.  That helped to make sure our anchor was set well for the storms tonight and tomorrow.  It's a few hours later now and the rain stopped so we have the windows open downstairs to cool off a little.  The engine keeps downstairs very warm when we can't open windows plus Laura is baking pizza in the oven for dinner.- chicken fajita pizza!

We had the anchor down right at 5pm for a 11 1/2 hour day.  Everything ran good which made me very happy (knock on wood!).  I might lay down for a nap because there are supposed to be heavy storms here with 30-35 knots gusts between midnight and 4am.  That will probably keep me up watching the boat swing around the anchor.