August 12, 2021: Another travel day on the Hudson River.
We were all up by 5 AM to prepare for what we thought might be a long travel day: 55 or so miles from Half Moon Bay to Kingston. We washed up, dressed, and had our usual breakfasts: cereal for me, toast for my boatmates. I made my coffee with less water in an attempt to get a stronger brew, but failed; the resulting cup was too water-like for me to enjoy. (I broke out the first of my Awake chocolates a while later to get the caffeine kick I needed.)
Crew Duties
Capt Paul went through his checklist and Dianne and I did our crew jobs, disconnecting shore power and putting away the cable and eventually casting off and stowing the fenders. Paul steered the boat away from the docks and out into the bay. I turned on my Nebo tracker to get a track log for the day. It was about 6:10 AM — just after sunrise — when we left Half Moon Bay behind us.
Sunrise as we departed Half Moon Bay.
Although the weather called for more heat and humidity, it soon became clear that it would be a much nicer day, with blue skies and more sun. I was glad, mostly because of the impact on my photography — everything so far had been kind of gray and gloomy. It would be nice to have prettier skies and brighter light.
That morning — the start of my first full day as a crew member — Capt Paul explained crew duties to me. We basically worked with a two-hour rotating shift set up. One at the helm, one on watch up front beside the helmsperson, and one at rest. I started at rest, meaning I could do anything I wanted: sleep, eat, read, etc. Capt Paul was at the helm and Dianne was on watch.
Although Capt Paul had set up a route using an automatic routing feature on his GPS, he preferred to steer with a sort of manual autopilot mode. That meant that he used the autopilot to set a compass heading and would manually adjust it as necessary to maneuver around bends in the river or around other traffic. It wasn’t necessary to touch the wheel at all, although you could if you needed to make a quick steering input. He set the engine’s RPM at about 3200 RPM, which put us at about 11 knots. There was no reason to adjust that; the water was relatively calm and there was no traffic.
The river was very wide where we started out, but soon narrowed. The boat, which had been rocking a bit more than I expected — making it impossible for me to sit down and read — settled down and we motored smoothly northward, passing a bunch of points of interest along the way. I used my iPhone to take photos — it really is a lot easier than dealing with my Nikon. We were getting close to the northernmost part of my family’s boating explorations and soon everything would be very new to me. But now I had dim memories of what was around us: Indian Point Nuclear Power Plant, Bear Mountain Bridge, West Point.
Indian Point Nuclear Power Plant is on the east side of the river.
Bear Mountain Bridge.
West Point.
I’m glad I texted my friend Cheri and made arrangements to meet up later that day.
We were just down river from the Mid-Hudson Bridge with Dianne at the helm and me in the watch seat when I started thinking about some friends of mine with a weekend home up by Hunter Mountain. I realized that Kingston, our stop for the night, wasn’t that far away. If they were upstate, maybe they could visit? I hadn’t seen them in three years and wanted to. So I texted them.
The text response came back quickly. Before long, we’d made a tentative plan.
Autopilot Failure
While this was going on, the boat suddenly decided to make a sharp left hand turn at speed. We’re not exactly sure why it did this — it might have had something to do with Dianne steering using the wheel instead of the autopilot — but the only way to override it was to turn off the autopilot. There had been some weird hydraulic message on the panel, too.
Capt Paul came back to the helm, cut the throttle to idle, and tried again. The same problem resulted.
He started troubleshooting. The hydraulic fluid well, which was on the steering column, had fluid in it. Maybe it needed to be topped off? Meanwhile, I worked Google on my iPad and found some info about the error message on the Garmin website. We didn’t have a bottle of steering hydraulic fluid and the Garmin site made it seem as if that message was almost normal. We decided to press on, using the wheel to steer.
The Mid-Hudson Bridge. It was just downriver from this that the autopilot system hiccuped.
I Take the Helm
After a while, Paul tried the autopilot again, starting at idle speed and then bringing it back to cruise power. It worked flawlessly. He handed the helm over to me. I was careful not to touch the wheel, using only the + and – keys on the autopilot controller to change the heading 1 or 10 degrees at a time. I also learned that at 3200 RPM, Nano cruises at about 10 to 12 knots, depending on current and other conditions.
By this time, we were only about 10 miles from Kingston. After a brief encounter with a clump of weeds — Paul instructed me to go to idle power, then reverse briefly, and then forward to clear them — I steered us up the river past Wappinger Falls, Poughkeepsie, Hyde Park, and Esopus Island. I went wide around the island where the Esopus Meadow Light stands and managed to avoid a bunch of sailboats with people in the water. On the last few miles to Kingston, there were a lot of small boats and floating weeds in the water and I stayed clear of all of them.
Paul asked if I wanted to take the boat up Rondout Creek, but I declined. I turned the helm back over to him when we reached the Roundout Lighthouse.
The Rondout Lighthouse sits at the confluence of Rondout Creek and the Hudson River.
At Kingston Harbor
Although we’d planned on staying at the Kingston City Marina for the night, we needed to get fuel and pump out the toilet tank. Neither of those services were available at the City Marina, but they were available a bit farther up the creek at Rondout Yacht Basin. We went there first.
A guy came down to the dock when he saw us loitering in the creek near the marina, not quite sure where we should go. We made our way over to him and he grabbed a bow line. He told us his name was Tom. Soon we were tied up and Tom was turning on the diesel pump for us. Dianne did the fueling while I watched the fuel gauge, which is a little wonky. After we were fueled, Tom offered to pump out our waste tank and we were all for that. I watched him work; I’d never seen it done — other than on video — and knew that my day to do it would come, possibly sooner than I expected. It was actually a pretty easy job, neat enough that he didn’t even put on gloves.
I went up to pay for the fuel and pumpout, as well as to buy some toilet chemical and ice. The marina had a nice little shop, but didn’t have any hydraulic steering fluid, which we weren’t even sure we needed.
Tom cast us off and we were on our way back to the waterfront area of Kingston — known as Rondout — where the city marina was. The original Rondout was the victim of an urban renewal project that destroyed homes and neighborhoods and didn’t do much to replace them. You can explore that on your own; it’s too much of a side story to cover here. Google Kingston Rondout Urban Renewal to get started.
The Kingston City Marina is right on a park in Kingston’s waterfront.
The dock manager, Philip, was waiting for us when we arrived. He directed us into a slip that was conveniently close to the ramp to get up to the waterfront park. Capt Paul backed in and we tied up Nano. I got a (literal) shock when I plugged in shore power; lesson learned: turn off the circuit before plugging in.
Our Nebo track log for the third day of my trip. You can track me on the Nebo app; just search for Nano Paul G to find our boat.
An Afternoon in Kingston
The museum included full-size and scale models of a wide variety of boats.
At the tiny octagon building that’s Philip’s air conditioned office, we got various gate and door codes for access to the dock, the restroom, and the shower, as well as the wifi password. (The wifi turned out to be quite good at this marina.) Then we went to lunch at a nearby restaurant, Ole Savanah, which specializes in Southern food. Although we’d been trying to eat outdoors as much as possible, it was just too hot and humid so we ate inside in air conditioned comfort. I had another great meal, this time shrimp and grits.
Afterwards, we visited the Hudson River Maritime Museum just a half a block away. It was a nice little (air conditioned) museum with lots of exhibits about Hudson River ecology, boating industry (including tourism and transportation), and manufacturing (the area was known for brick production). We wandered the exhibits, masks on, together and separately.
Eventually, I was ready to go back to the boat and did so, leaving them behind. I got an ice cream pop at the octagon building along the way.
This museum included a relief model of New York State and its canals, including part of the long gone Delaware and Hudson Canal, which terminated in Kingston.
Later, when Paul got back, we talked about plans for the next day. Would we stay an extra day or go? Paul had planned a stop in Albany where he thought we’d walk around and take in some of the sights and architecture. But I was very honest with him: I had no desire to walk around a city in 95° heat that, with the humidity factored in, would feel like 105°. I suggested sticking around Kingston and maybe doing a tour of the lighthouse, which the museum offered. He thought that was a good idea and I booked a tour for the two of us; Dianne didn’t want to come.
Dinner with Friends
Meanwhile, I’d been struggling to finish a blog post about the second day of the trip and wasn’t getting very far. I was also running out of time. My friends were meeting me at 5:30 PM and I hoped to get in a shower before they arrived.
I had just come back from finding the showers occupied when a Twitter friend who’d I’d been in touch with came by with his partner. We chatted in the shade in the park until my other friends arrived.
Then it was a scramble to get changed into something a little cleaner and nicer and see if Capt Paul and Dianne wanted to join us for dinner. They did.
The five of us walked up to Armadillo, a Mexican restaurant my friends like. Along the way, I chatted with Cheri, catching up with what was going on our in our lives. She and her husband Fred had been retired for a while and Fred had recently had heart surgery. But they looked great and in were high spirits (as usual). It was really good to see them.
We sat outside on a covered patio and had some good food — the shrimp-stuff jalapeños are not to be missed — and great conversation. Fred and Paul seemed to hit it off — they both had interest in and knowledge about the area history. And my Twitter friend and his companion wound up at the same restaurant, seated at a nearby table.
Later, we walked back to the marina, saying goodbye to my friends at their car. I’m wondering whether it’ll be another three years before I see them again, or if I can finally get them to come visit me at my home in Washington.
The evening had an even happier ending: I managed to get that shower I wanted before bed.
