CS'ta Time Odyssey

Saturday, August 31, 2013

To get to our anchorage in Kingston, NY, we had to go under three bridges. The first was a fixed bridge with a vertical clearance of 56' at high tide. CS'ta Time's clearance is 55'. Fortunately we were going under just as the tide was beginning to rise, so essentially low tide. The captain said "no problem". I sat in the cockpit covering my face, waiting for the crunch but there wasn't one. That was way out of my comfort zone! So we had to also come out of the anchorage at low tide. We set the alarm aiming to hit the tide change at 0600. We pulled anchor around 0530 and all was going well until I misjudged where the channel was and ran us into the mud, only about 3 minutes from our anchorage. Jorge and the 46 hp got us out of my jam. I was then demoted from helmsperson to dead head observer. No problem. Looking for dark pieces of wood in a dark river in the dark - a piece of cake! Thankfully we did not encounter any and the captain decided to keep me on as crew.

We entered the Hudson River at 0600. The wind was on our nose and the current was against us by about 1 knot. It was overcast with a small amount of drizzle. We were only going about 4.2 knots SOG so the going was slow today.

A tug crosswise in the Hudson (at anchor) in early am.

Diana and Gilbert decided not to get up and travel as early as us. They had no concern with the bridge height. Rob and Serena had no problem either so they too were late leaving Kingston.

The Hudson was certainly widening and the homes along the way were more like mansions. The boats too seem to be getting larger.

We reached out destination of Pollepel Island and anchored around 1300. Rob and Serena arrived and anchored at 1430 and Gilbert and Diana arrived around 1530. There were castle ruins on the island and we tried to explore them but discovered you had to take a tour. Oh well, we toured around the small island instead and took pictures from the dinghy.