The Hudson River

Days on cruise:  80

Miles traveled: 64.5

Travel Time: 7hrs 39 min

Total odometer: 1,773 statute miles

Sunday morning we cast off from Tarrytown Marina without a plan for the day, other than to head north. This segment of the Hudson River is gorgeous! Train tracks run on the eastern shore all the way to Albany, 150 miles.

The river skirts the edge of the Appalachian mountains, and the shoreline is steep, tall (by east coast standards), lined with granite cliffs and very heavily treed. It actually looks sort of like our home cruising grounds on Puget Sound near Seattle, but the rock is granite not basalt, and many more of the trees are deciduous instead of evergreen.

We can imagine how spectacular it would be to make this trip during the Fall when the leaves change color.

There was lots of boat traffic near the larger towns on a weekend day, but not much otherwise, and the travel was easy. It would be hard to get lost on this river, though there are some daymarks to navigate, marking shallow areas.  The water is brackish now, not salt, and will be fully fresh soon.

It was hot today (80s) with no wind, so we had all the canvas and isinglass open on both the flybridge and sundeck.

Twenty miles north of Tarrytown we passed West Point, the Army's school for cadets.  To maintain inter-service equity we tried to arrange a tour, but were not able to do so because it was Sunday.  We will say that Army beats Navy in the field of architecture, though for the past 10 years Navy has beat Army in football.

The Hudson River is tidal all the way to Albany, 150 miles above New York. Unfortunately we spent all morning going against the ebbing tide, and only started to get the boost from the flooding tide late in our travel day, so we probably burned some extra fuel today.

Five miles past West Point we passed “Bannerman’s Castle”, above . This structure was built in the early 1900s to store Mr. Bannerman’s surplus munitions.  He started the military surplus industry just after the Civil War.  He originally stored his supplies in the middle of NYC, but the officials eventually decided storing all those explosives in the middle of the city was not a great idea and made him move them.

Late in the afternoon we arrived at the Kingston City Marina (very few anchorages along the Hudson River) only to discover six other Looper boats were already there, all of whom we’d previously met except for one.

We joined the whole gang on “One September” (the folks we had dinner with the night of our storm experience off the Jersey coast) for cocktails, then all went to dinner together at Ship n’ Shore, a busy steak and seafood place. Other Loopers included  JimsJoy,  Kismet, Marks Arc, One September and Brown Eyed Girl.  It was a lively dinner, and the food was great!

We had planned to spend Monday as a layover day in Kingston, touring the Vanderbilt and Roosevelt Mansions, and having lunch at the Culinary Institute of America. Unfortunately we were unable to get lunch reservations as we waited too late to call, so will head north in the morning instead.