Friday, May 24th - Haverstraw Cove to Catskill (Day 53)
64 nautical miles today. 1,595 total trip miles
Warm and sunny. Winds light and variable
We love this anchorage because of the peace and quiet. No wakes or tidal currents to move the boat around and it's always quiet after any day-boats leave before dark. We were looking forward to a calm nights sleep until we were VERY LOUDLY awakened at 1am by the one of the loudest sounds I've every heard. We both jumped out of bed to try and figure out what the heck was going on. Did a jet plane just crash right next to us? Did our gasoline storage just blow up? It was wild!
Eventually, we figured out the loud scream-like siren was coming from the nearby power plant. It must have been some kind of relief valve or something that let loose. It lasted about 5 minutes then shut off. Just as we were relaxing back in bed it went off AGAIN! Oh man. Was this going to happen all night? Again it shut off in about 5 minutes and we both laid there waiting for the third siren that never happened. It took a long time for us to fall back to sleep.
It also might not have been so bad but the wind had turned the boat on anchor so our stern was facing the power plant. That's where we sleep and we had all the windows open. It sounded like the siren was right in our bedroom.
My plan was to pull anchor and head north a couple hours before the tidal current changed to north. This way we would have the most help for the longest time when it did start.
We pulled anchor at 8am on a beautiful morning. Sunny with light winds.
It was almost dead low tide as we sloooooly motored out of the cove. I've never hit bottom here but today we only had about 6 inches below the keel over the shallow area. Now we were free!
We did have about 1 knot of current against us which gradually decreased until it changed to helping just before West Point.
After we passed Newburgh the west wind built in a little so we ran out the jib to help with boat speed. In this picture, we are between Newburgh and Poughkeepsie. You can just see the Poughkeepsie bridges in the river horizon.
After passing under the Poughkeepsie bridges, we saw this dark shape coming down the river. It took us a while to figure out it was an interesting tug and barge. The dark colors fooled us for several minutes.
Later in the afternoon we approached Germantown and the Catskill Creek. I took this picture of the Catskill Mountains to the west.
If you look all the way to the left, this section of mountains is called "The Sleeping Man". The first mountain on the left is his knees, second is his chest and the next few are his face. See it?
We pulled into our slip in Catskill Marina at 6am. Dinner plans were take-out pizza with my sister Denise and brother-in-law Tom. They had brought our car down and picked up the pizza on the way. What great service!
There are a couple boat jobs on our list for the summer (always) and we are planning on a car trip to Maine where we will hopefully meet up with fellow sailors from the Ocean Cruising Club. Other than that, time to relax and enjoy the warm days and cool nights.
Quess what? I made the whole trip without the boat touching bottom. Yea! This is only the 3rd time in 38 trips up and down the coast. Plus we stayed in many new anchorages so it wasn't like we played it safe.
Note that a couple weeks later we took family out for a boat ride and ran aground in the middle of the creek before we even got to the Hudson River. It was low tide but we've never hit bottom here before. Guess the winter sent down a lot of mud / sand from the mountains that built up in the creek. Luckily, we came in at high tide from our trip. It would have been awful to run aground on our last mile after 1,500.....
Trip Stats
Anchored - 24 nights
Mooring - 5 nights
Paid Dock - 15 nights
Free Dock - 7 nights
Overnight at sea - 1 night
Major trip expenses
Groceries - $2,037 (includes stocking up before leaving which was over $800)
Dockage - $1,429
Fuel - $1,289
Dining out - $1,030
Repairs - $867 (includes transmission cooler and starting battery)
Internet - $300 (two months of Starlink)
More???
If you've enjoyed our blog, it goes back 5 years of our travels on the U.S. East Coast and Bahamas. We did keep a detailed blog for the 12 years before that and I've used it to published 4 inexpensive (less than $5) books on Kindle if you would like to read about more of our travels from 2007 to 2018. You can find more information on Amazon about our sailing books by clicking HERE.
Thanks for traveling along with us!
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