Travels with Polar Pacer

Catskill to New York City – August 31 to September 2, 2009

The Hudson River Valley is every bit as scenic as the guide books tell you. The river is wide with high banks that are mostly tree covered. The amount of residential and industrial development increased as we approached New York City with a range of old to new, cottages to mansions, small commercial marinas to nuclear power stations. There is a lot of history in the valley.

The crew at Hop-O-Nose Marina (I wonder where that name came from?) were very efficient and within an hour the mast was back up on Polar Pacer. We were put ahead of the other boat as it had a lot of prep work to do before the mast would be ready. Our rigging was done and the oil changed and they were still not ready to go. We left Catskill Creek around noon in order to time our passage down the next section of the Hudson with the outgoing tide.

Hop-O-Nose Marina from the water. Note the creative use of shrink wrap.

Grounded!

The channel is well marked making navigation of the Hudson River relatively easy so we were a little surprised to see a 40ft. Beneteau aground in an area where the chart showed the water depth at 1-3 feet! They had tried to go on the wrong side of the Esopus Light. What were they thinking? With only 30hp we would not have been able to pull them out so did not stop to assist.

Esopus Light

After four hours on the water we decided to call it a day and stopped at the Poughkeepsie Yacht Club. Docking in the strong current and into the wind was not an easy task even with the steerable drive leg. PYC is a self help club much like LSYC but in a more rural setting. They are not actually located in Poughkeepsie as the name would suggest but are at Hyde Park which is a few miles north. We were advised by one of the members that they were forced to relocate from Poughkeepsie some 40 years ago when the city decided to embark on an urban renewal project on their waterfront.

We have not been able to identify the impressive building in the background that is across the river from the yacht club.

We found these interesting looking seed pods on the docks at PYC. We think they might be from the water chestnut plants along the marshy banks.

There was still relatively little traffic on the river. We saw a few power boats looking like they needed to be somewhere else fast, a couple of sailboats tacking back and forth across the river but not really going anywhere and some humongous barges being pushed by little tugboats. We passed Pete Seeger’s sailboat the Clearwater at a dock near Piermont.

West Point was quite awesome. As we passed they were practicing parachute jumps. The helicopter took off from a dock just in front of us with a load of jumpers.

The marina at West Point

Bannerman's Island

We anchored one night on the river in a protected bay on the south side of Croton Point. There was a light north wind predicted overnight and this was a good place to be. From the anchorage we had a good view of the Amtrak trains on the shoreline running every 15 minutes in each direction, the Tappan Zee Bridge and Sing Sing Prison. The Tappan Zee Bridge was an important landmark for us. This is the point on the trip where our insurance company wanted more money. We called to let them know our location just before we passed underneath it. The bill will be in the mail.