We crossed into the Hudson River on a rainy Saturday morning, finally tackling our last lock, the Troy Federal Lock, in a rainstorm. Once on the other side of the lock, we were officially in tidal waters – a whole new adventure for us! Fun fact about the Hudson River: it is actually a tidal estuary, not a river, which means the “river’s” current direction switches three to four times a day, with the tides. This meant we had to plan our trips carefully to limit the amount of time spent motoring down the river, against the current.
After a few hours of motoring, we pulled Alaya into the crane slip at Hop-O-Nose Marina in Catskill, NY, first in line to get our mast stepped on Monday morning. We spent the rest of the weekend finishing our re-rigging project. The marina was nice enough to move our mast to the dock on Sunday allowing us to finish the last stay. It was all slightly sketchy, the only spot to put the mast was next to the boat on the floating dock, however the mast was too long to fit. This meant half of the mast was supported by land and the other half was supported by the floating dock… as the tides came in and out, our mast moved up and down and creaked on its saw horses. Ekk! Despite this scary set-up and with the help of our new friends on SV Pokey, we completely disassembled our furler, strung the new headstay wire through it, reassembled and by nightfall, we were ready to become a sailboat again.
The next morning, the yard team assembled around Alaya, the crane lifted the mast and they set it back into place. We scurried back to a slip exhausted, but happy, and spent the rest of the day tensioning the rigging, cleaning up the boat and helping our friends on SV Pokey get set-up for their mast raising on Tuesday. We’re a sailboat again! We celebrated with some ice cream and a sunset dinghy ride down the Catskill River.
We were ready to continue our journey down the Hudson River but woke up the next morning to a heavy fog. Hoping things were better out on the big river, we carefully motored to the end of the Catskill River, at which point we realized the mighty Hudson had just as much fog. We pulled over at a local dock at the mouth of the river to wait out the fog. After a few hours, it lifted and we headed down the river again. It was a beautiful day and we motored for about 20 miles, anchoring south of Kingston, NY, on the east bank of the river. This was our first time anchoring in a current. It was pretty wild to watch water flow past the anchor chain and we had river junk, twigs, sticks, weeds gathering at the bow, so every couple hours we would head to the bow and push everything away with a boat hook. We spent the rest of the afternoon reattaching Alaya’s mainsail, which had been stowed below while our mast was down.
The next morning we woke up to the same story, more fog. As we were waiting for it to clear, we got an email from a homeowner along the bank who could see our boat from his office window. He found our blog and sent us a kind note! Such a small world!
As the fog mostly cleared, we headed down the river again, twisting down some of the prettiest parts of the Hudson. Some of the highlights included Bannerman castle, which was built in the early 1900’s to house ammunition for a private military surplus store; the “World’s End,” where the river takes a sharp bend, with the trees and mountains it looks like the Hudson just ends; West Point, with its stunning views and history; and the Indian Point Nuclear Plant, now defunct. We learned that after a fraught history, Governor Andrew Cuomo had declared political war on the plant and it eventually shut down in 2021. As you can tell, we did a lot of wikipedia searching as we continued down this historic body of water – so many cool sights! We pulled into Safe Harbor – Haverstraw around sunset, ready to stay for a few days.
We put our time in Haverstraw to good use. We rode the hogs to the local Aldi and stocked up on food. We finished putting the sails up and checked off other boat projects, including installing our AIS, a system that broadcasts our location, speed and heading to nearby boats. AIS adds an extra layer of safety and we really wanted to get it working for our upcoming New Jersey coast passage. We also spent some time chatting with SV Seeker, who just brought their boat into the Hudson from Maine.
By the weekend, we were ready to move again. We left Haverstraw, topped off our fuel tank and headed down the Hudson for our next anchorage, near the George Washington bridge. It turned into a wet and sporty day of motoring, wind on the nose, with a squall gusting to 38 knots. It was exciting to see the squall coming and watch the wind gust ripples move across the water. Luckily, we stayed mostly dry thanks to our canvas cockpit enclosure.
As if 38 knots of wind wasn’t enough excitement for the day, as we were getting close to our anchorage, we almost had a run in with a cruise ship. Hudson River traffic is interesting and reflects hundreds of years of seafaring in this river. The east side of the river is a charted channel, reserved for boat traffic, while the remaining two-thirds of the river is reserved for anchoring. Large barges and freighters, and some pleasure boats like us, anchor in this western area as they wait their turn for an opening at a terminal or for a weather window. As we were moving down the river on the anchoring side, a cruise ship seemed to be heading straight for us. We thought they were lining up for a view under the George Washington bridge, however they stayed on their course after passing under the bridge. Lucas hailed them on the radio, as they were on a collision course with us. Luckily, the captain answered our hail, they redirected and continued upstream. The view of a cruise ship bow heading straight for us at 15 knots will be ingrained in our minds for a while. About thirty minutes later, we heard an NYPD vessel hailing the same ship, apparently they had not slowed as they passed within 500 feet of the NYPD vessel with its emergency lights activated. The officers were not happy and after a bit of back and forth, with real New York flair, they promised to have officers waiting for the ship at its next port to explain “the navigation rules”. I’m sure that was an interesting conversation.
After that excitement, we laid anchor in a really cool spot, just north of the George Washington Bridge. The view was phenomenal, we could see the lights of NYC’s skyline south of us, framed in by the bridge. To our west, was New Jersey’s Palisades Interstate Park, with striking basalt towers, lush greenery and even a waterfall. We had dinner in the cockpit that night, listening to TayTay’s “Welcome to New York” song on repeat, as we watched the sun go down and the city lights turn on.
Alaya was in New York City!
