Back aboard! Time to go! Croton-On-Hudson to Catskill NY

We have returned to the boat from Michigan!

We accomplished what needed to be done while home and flew back this morning from Grand Rapids to Newark Airport.   Flight left early, arrived early!   That was a surprise.  We landed in NJ before 9am!

Since we were so early we opted for a Lyft ride ($120) instead of two trains, a bus and an hour and a half of walking.   We managed to get to the boat before 11am which let us check out of the expensive marina we were at a day early!   

A quick pump out and fill with water and we were off.  I didn't even unpack my bag.  Before we even got into the river channel we began with the boat saga.   Katie could not start the generator and make lunch.  Joy.  

After 15 minutes of her driving and me debugging I narrowed the issue down to a dead generator battery.    Unfortunately I also found I had a dead jumpstart pack battery. I put the jumpstart pack on the USB charger for an hour while Katie at snacks.... And then I could get the generator started.  I charged the jump starter fully and we left the generator on all day so it could re charge anything that was low.   Nothing should have been low though as we were on shore power in the marina.  

Nonetheless we had power and we could drive.  Today we decided to drive as much as we could so that we could get close to the Erie Canal and maybe get started in it tomorrow.  

We looked at several places to stay where we could try to tie to a wall but they were either full or there were some other issues.   

The Hudson River is absolutely stunning.  We drove past West Point on the river 

And continued for hours until we reached Poughkeepsie.   We had been to each of these places before using a rental car.  We did that on purpose because we didn't want to stop four times on the way north up the Hudson.. 


The 2nd bridge in this photo is the walking bridge we walked two weeks ago. 


Now we got to drive under it....

We also passed a number of really cool light houses. 

And some beautiful estates....

Most of the houses up river are more normal.  At least what we would consider normal....

The mountains start not very far north of the city.  

It was just a beautiful cruising day.   

It turns out the dead battery for the generator was not because it wasn't charged.  It's just reached end of life.  I'll have to find somewhere to purchase a replacement in the next couple of days.  Until then we will just leave the genset on most of the time so it's not so much of a pain to get AC power..  It's not cheap but....no choice.  

We also came across one of these.   These are old ice houses that used to be used to store ice cut from the frozen river in winter and keep it through the summer to be used for refrigeration etc! 

We finished the day just short of the Rip Van Winkle bridge.   The author lived in a house right here and wrote the Icabod Crane and Rip Van Winkle books here so they named the bridge after the character. 

I missed most of the sunset.  Another issue on the boat.  
It appears the windlass will not let out or pull in the anchor chain anymore.  The solenoid isn't tripping the motor.  I was able to short the motor to the battery cable across the windlass solenoid enough to get the anchor out and get it to catch.  We also threw a 2nd anchor which is normally our stern anchor, just in case...  One upstream, one down.   

We are still where the tides reverse the flow of the river so about 10pm and again at 6am we will switch directions and pull the other direction on the anchor.   Hopefully the 2nd one will catch before the anchor alarm goes off. 

Tomorrow I'll have to short the windlass contacts again to get the anchor back up to the boat.   I'll figure out that problem some day when we are NOT at anchor and it won't be essential to keep us in place.   I'm guessing corrosion on a contact somewhere...  We've been in salt water a lot and the anchor chain comes in and out with salt water every time.   We are finally out of that so it should stop adding to the damage.  

My old e-bike and Katie's are both really rusty as well because of the proximity to salt water every day .. 

77 miles today upriver after flying back to NJ and riding in car up to Croton On Hudson.  It's interesting the RPMs on the boat were the same all day (pretty close) but our speeds varies greatly because of the tides.  

Boy are we tired.....    Good night ..




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