20th Nomadiversary

We are anchored in the Hudson River, in General Anchorage 17 of the Port of New York (map). This is a familiar spot for us since the closure of the W. 79th Street Boat Basin at the end of 2021. While we are actually anchored in New Jersey, just a little over a mile from where I went to high school, we are here because of the boat landing across the river at Dyckman Street, in the Inwood district of Manhattan, a neighborhood with which we are now thoroughly familiar.

The million-dollar view from our anchorage.

Exactly 20 years ago today, we closed the door on our last full-time fixed dwelling, a condominium unit in downtown San Jose, California, for a final time before setting off in our custom-built motor coach home, Odyssey, for which this blog is named. Odyssey was our full-time home for just a hair shy of a full decade, when we transitioned to the life aquatic aboard Vector.

I regret it now, but we were juggling so many things during the early days of bus life that I did not have the bandwidth to post here in the blog, even though I had previously taken steps to create it. It was a full three months before I started blogging in earnest, and though I made some vague reference to trying to backfill those three months, in reality they are lost to history. You can read my very first post from the road here, and if you click "Newer Post" at the bottom you can scroll through the whole blog. You'll have to click over 2,600 times to get back to this post.

It was raining when we set the hook, and this was our reward, a rainbow stretching from The Bronx to Manhattan.

The blog has evolved over those 2,600+ posts. Early on, we had no good way to generate and post map links, which came along later and went through some iterations including Mapquest and others before coalescing on the Google Maps links we use today. And we did not have many photos in the early days; when we did, they usually went into a separate post rather than inline in the text. The march of technology has made it all much easier.

On the bus, of course, I could not type under way, and I tried to post from every stop or two, lest I get behind. On the boat, it's much easier for me to do my typing at the helm, when we are under way in open water. Typing takes longer, because I am still maintaining a lookout and I can't even make it through a paragraph without scanning the horizon and the instruments, but the hours are long and so it works out. Good typing days are sometimes infrequent, and some posts now end up covering a span of two or three weeks. Also, Past Me sometimes annoys Present Me by omitting important details like whether or not a particular restaurant was any good, and so Present Me is including a lot more detail nowadays to avoid annoying Future Me when we come back to a place years later.

The day we arrived was also the blue supermoon, rising over The Cloisters, Fort Tryon Park, and Dyckman Landing. That's our neighbor, the tug Choptank, at left.

With two decades of nomadic experiences and memories, this blog is sometimes the only way we keep it all straight. Our memory plays tricks on us, but having it here in print can restore our sanity. An expression we sometimes use is that we drink to forget, but we blog to remember. In preparing to write this post today, I found myself reading a dozen or so old posts, in the way you can't stop yourself from reading those old notes you found while going through the attic. I was looking for when we first started posting about our "nomadiversary," which turned out to be our ninth, written up here, wherein I shared where we got that term.

Having now spent nearly a third of my life, and nearly half my adult life, as a peripatetic, the logistics of doing so have become second nature. Which is not to say there are no difficulties, only that we've become accustomed to them. The benefits are legion, and I am typing right now with a million-dollar view of the Manhattan skyline as a reminder of that.

The George Washington Bridge as seen through the glass of the Port Authority Bus Terminal. The terminal also contained a very nice grocery store, and a Marshalls that had a suitcase Louise has been needing. I ended up here while Louise was having an eye exam a block away.

Speaking of which, long-time readers will know that we always stop in New York City when we pass through, and we've stayed for several weeks at a stretch to enjoy what the city has to offer. This time is no different, but we adjusted the timing of our visit to coincide with our good friend from California, who is here because her mother is in the hospital for heart surgery. The hospital is literally a ten minute subway ride, after a ten minute walk, from where we land the tender, and so it has all been super convenient. We've been meeting her either at her hotel, the hospital lobby, or a pub we found in the neighborhood, the Fort Washington Public House. Ironically that pub turns out to be nearly a carbon copy of the pub we like right here in Inwood, with the same owner, the Tryon Public House.

Right across from the pub is the historic Audubon Ballroom, famous, among other things, for being the place where Malcom X was assassinated. You can make out his image in one of the windows.

While we are here in Manhattan, I am trying to arrange a yard visit in Mamaroneck to get some lingering issues with the paint addressed, and, time permitting, some other work done. The yard manager has been elusive and nothing is, as yet, pinned down. I expect we'll be in the NYC area through September, with a goal of heading south in October, a bit earlier than our start south last year.

We're enjoying our time here, but it is colored by some devastating family medical news that we received right after we arrived. Respecting the privacy of our family, that is all I will share here in the blog. We're also grappling with less serious but rather urgent medical news from some boating friends. Boats are needy, whether you are healthy enough to care for them or not, and I have offered my help in getting their boat to a better place if need be, which would leave Louise to care for Vector in the interim. If they accept my offer I will update our plans here.

Today we pass a children's back-to-school fair on Dyckman street, complete with pony rides and this petting zoo.

Crossing the Hudson this afternoon from our dinghy landing in Manhattan, we had to divert for a swimmer who was circling Manhattan. (They had a safety boat with them.) We knew this was coming, because the Coast Guard had announced it in the morning, and it's in the Local Notices to Mariners. The swimmers left The Battery at 11:12 this morning and were expected to take until 7:12 this evening to return to The Battery.

This is not the first time we've been in the river for the swim around Manhattan, officially known as the 20 Bridges Swim, part of the Triple Crown of Open Water Swimming (the other two are the English Channel and the Catalina Channel). I marvel at it every time, because when I was growing up here, you could hardly swim in the Hudson, and swimming in the East River or the Harlem River was unthinkable. Certainly the sort of exertion, breathing of water vapor, and mouthfuls of water involved in a strenuous eight-hour swim was out of the question. And if you had asked me back then if I could ever imagine people swimming in these rivers, I would have told you no, without qualification.

Vector looking diminutive against the NJ Palisades. As seen from my walk along the waterfront north of the bridge.

It is a testament to the environmental movement, and the legislation, including the creation of the EPA and the Clean Water Act, that these rivers have made such a remarkable recovery. They are by no means pristine, and there is more work to do, but I am happy to be here to enjoy them. We have a mostly clear view of the city and are breathing mostly clean air; I hope no one turns back the clock.

Report from the shipyard

Another three weeks have flown by here in Mamaroneck in the blink of an eye, and once again I find myself needing to use part of the weekend to catch up here on the blog. We have just a week left here in this apartment, after which will will move to another place on the other side of the tracks. We booked one overlapping night to be able to move across town in reasonable fashion. On the yard's best guess, we've booked that unit for an even month.

The flybridge shortly after my last post, a tableau of old paint, bare metal, gray primer, and pink fairing compound.

Yard work over these three weeks has principally consisted of the paint contractor grinding, blasting, priming, fairing, and sanding. Just in the last two days we started to see some white finish paint on the flybridge, even as prep work continues on the hull sides. There have been at varying times from one to five workers on the boat, with work continuing six to seven days a week. Working hours are all over the map.

The beer store is a short walk from the house, and I like to fill my growler, which we acquired in Yarmouth, NS, from their tap selection.

I continue to go to the yard every weekday, arriving around 8 and leaving around 3. Not only because I have plenty of work to do myself, but also because mistakes by the contractor in this phase of the project, unnoticed, will get covered over and be hard to correct later. For example, they faired over a number of mounting holes for various pieces, and we had to have them sand it all down to find the holes and then fair around them again. I also found untreated corrosion in hard-to-see places that got covered in primer before I could point it out, and that, too, needed to be sanded back down. I attribute a lot of our corrosion problems to not having spotted these issues the last time around.

They replaced the pilothouse door with this piece of lauan, with tape down one edge for a hinge, and a block of wood for a pull. So much paint dust and blasting media came in that I rigged up this bungee cord to keep it tight; later I added a Visqueen curtain as well.

After I inspect the previous day's progress, usually before the contractors even arrive, I set about my own projects. Those included removing the locks and latches from the pilothouse doors just before the contractor took them off the boat altogether, a project which took me far more hours than it should have, owing to corrosion of the hardware. I had to Dremel through a couple of the proprietary blind nuts, which I fortunately was able to find on eBay.

Pilothouse doorlatch. The bits in the middle are blind nuts; two rotated in their holes and I had to cut slots in them for a screwdriver.

I also continued refurbishing many of the components I removed but intend to reinstall later. I fabricated a dielectric separator for the windlass from a thin sheet of HDPE, learning in the process that the template I worked so hard to print accurately did not conform to the reality on the deck, requiring a last-minute adjustment. And I had some trial-and-error parts ordering for a more robust mount for the Starlink mast.

I was very glad to have this template, but you can see where the separate piece for the spurling pipe did not line up. And my note-to-self to check the template on the deck before cutting.

It all worked out in the end. 1/8" HDPE from Amazon, cut with a jigsaw and hole saws.

I fabricated a new mount for the Comnav satellite compass, which will be returning to the flybridge coaming from its more recent perch on one of the mast spreaders, and I ordered, received, and tested a new depth display and new radar repeater for the flybridge from the ever-dwindling listings on eBay. I also took advantage of the already dusty environment in the saloon to saw through the settee to install a badly-needed power outlet.

New outlet. This is actually an extension cord, with a plug on the end, made to go into furniture. I did not need the USB but that's how it comes. No room here for a regular outlet. I spent over an hour with an oscillating saw and rasps cutting the hole.

A couple of other pieces of equipment needed repair. I had found a broken bolt on the cable gland when I removed the radar, and I spent a couple of hours carefully removing it and cleaning up the threads, which broke my M4 tap. And the VHF radio on the flybridge had become barely readable after two decades, so I tore into it and replaced the polarizing film on both sides of the LCD, which worked remarkably well. I found the basics of the procedure in a YouTube video about a motorcycle dashboard.

Flybridge VHF, barely readable after 20 years outdoors.

After replacing the polarizers with $7 worth of material from Amazon.

I still have plenty to do on the refurbishment and organization of exterior hardware, but I had to stop procrastinating on the bilge work, and this week I tore into the engine cooling intake plumbing, which had sprung a slow saltwater leak that I discovered on our northward journey. I had wrapped it in a towel to get us to the yard, not wanting to even probe at rust-damaged steel while still in the water, for fear I would cause the need for an expensive haul-out before we even arrived here. Similarly, some rust in the bilges needs attention.

Smoke from the Canadian wildfires on a clear sunny day. We could smell it.

My reluctance to touch the leaking pipe any more than necessary proved correct -- when I sawed through that pipe to remove it, the area in question had become wafer thin from corrosion and a pinhole leak resulted. Putting a wrench on it would have crushed it, creating a full-on flooding situation that would have had us dead in the water. As it stood, it took a reciprocating saw with a fresh carbide blade, cuts in four places, a big wrench, and all my body weight to remove the problematic section over the course of two days.

A very thin spot in a galvanized nipple; it was actively seeping.

The very last fitting, threaded into the sea strainer, needed a MAPP torch, a bigger wrench than I own, and a guy half my age, who got it out in less than five minutes. This is another reason why I'm doing this work here at the yard, where I can call for help if I run out of equipment. Or skill. He put a lot more heat on the sea strainer, with acrylic bowl still attached, than I would have been comfortable doing -- the hallmark of years of experience. Now that it's all out I will be replacing it with something other than the original galvanized steel, which, to its credit, lasted two decades in salt water.

The connector on the masthead light turned out to be an obscure instrumentation cable, but commercially available. Old one on right.

In the course of doing this I was reminded that replacing the hose section of this system nearly a decade ago was made extremely difficult by having to thread it past part of the hard-piped emergency bilge pumping system connecting to an engine-driven pump. The likelihood that this pump would be working and usable in the event of flooding while the larger and more powerful electric pump was somehow incapacitated is so vanishingly small that I had taken the belts off it years ago, and now it was once again in my way and needed to go.

I knew I had crossed some kind of threshold with the yard manager when he told me I could use the Genie lift. I needed it so I could drill out the ten screws holding this bezel in place. We're going to clean this up and leave it bare aluminum to avoid a similar fate later.

Thus it was that I spent the past two days removing another ten feet of galvanized piping and the pump itself, then capping off the two tees where it had tied into the system so that the electric pump would remain usable. More time with the reciprocating saw as well as the wet vac for all the ancient water that was trapped in those pipes. But as a bonus, having all of this out of the way will make it much easier to get to all the rusty areas in the bilge. I'll chip and descale what I can, but most of that work will be left to yard guys in Tyvek suits and respirators.

Skiing, anyone? This mountain is outside the commercial ice plant a block from our unit. Behind it is an industrial supply house that turns out to be a full-service hardware store that Google does not know about.

The tender was still in the water as of my last post, and shortly thereafter I went to breeze it out but found the battery dead. That meant releasing the hydraulic pressure in the tilt mechanism so I could pull-start it. After breezing it out just past the harbor limit, the yard agreed to crane it out of the water altogether before it grows a beard to rival ZZ Top. 

Flux in the rigging yard. They lifted it out with the crane they use to step masts.

On other fronts, we both managed to get massages at the nearest, uh, legitimate spa over in Larchmont.  There are several massage places here in town, including one less than a half block from here, under the dentist office, but they have all the hallmarks of focusing on a very specific part of the anatomy. The place in Larchmont was good, if a bit spendy. And I made it over to the eye doctor at Costco for my second exam this year -- my prednisone-initiated cataracts continue to cause deterioration in my vision and I now have my third script in two years.

What a 65' aluminum catamaran looks like when you take it out of the IKEA box. Some of the ring frame are leaning against the port keel. Bow at right. All of this is being made right here.

Two weekends have come and gone since my last post. I spent a good part of the first working on parts orders and drawings, but we also attended a lecture at the local library on the topic of George Lucas and the creation of the original Star Wars. While there we learned we could get temporary library cards just by showing some mail we had received here, and Louise has already checked out a couple of books.

We asked the yard to cut this drain hole in a spot where water accumulation has been a problem. They did a cleaner job than I could have with limited tools.

Later that week our friends Tim and Crisálida, fresh from moving their sailboat s/v Paquita to Long Island Sound all the way from Fort Lauderdale in just two long hops, stopped by for a visit. The yard very graciously allowed them to stay on the dock, and after I helped them get tied up we walked over to Peruvian restaurant La Gladys, where Louise had already staked out a table, for dinner. It was an excellent evening catching up, and, consistent with Tim's schedule of always having to move the boat during his three off weeks, they were off the dock before I even returned to the yard the next morning.

Flybridge faired and fully coated in gray primer, the first visceral indicator of reaching the hump.

A few days later it had been painted. Tacky overspray on the boat deck kept me from going further to get a photo.

Last weekend we rented a car and drove up to visit my cousins in New Hampshire. We're clearly not going to make it that far north in the boat this season, and that's when our schedules aligned. I took the county bus down to Mount Vernon Friday morning to get the rental car, and we arrived at their place just in time for dinner Friday. We had a lovely two nights, including taking in a show at Jimmy's Jazz & Blues Club in downtown Portsmouth. We stayed through Sunday afternoon, arriving home in the evening and returning the car Monday morning.

Alastair Greene trio at Jimmy's. Dude with the sax was sitting near us in the audience and went up to play two numbers; I missed his name but he clearly has chops.

One of the things we did with the car was to drop off an enormous box of Louise's finished quilts at UPS; she's been quilting up a storm. The car prompted us to do the shipping before she could fill the "quilt niche" all the way to the top. She also knocked out a project for good friends Stacey and Dave, sewing up a new helm cover for Stinkpot using their old tattered one as a pattern. She ordered extra of the same material to re-make our flybridge console cover as well.

As high as the stack got before a handy car prompted shipment.

The box dominated the back of our rented Rogue. UPS was our first stop.

We've only added a single restaurant to our already extensive list, Zenzo Sushi, which was not worth a repeat visit. We now have our list of favorites which we seem to rotate through regularly. The Village Station pub, where more or less everything went wrong on our first visit, is among them, and Hannah the barkeep now recognizes us and knows our drink order.

Dave sent us a pic of the new cover in place, after he added the snaps. Loose appearance was as designed.

There is a nice community theater in town, the Emelin, attached to the library, and when we learned they would host a Crosby, Stills, & Nash cover group last night we put our name on the waiting list for tickets to the sold-out show. I got the call just as we were heading to dinner last night, and our last-minute seats turned out to be front row. The group, Laurel Canyon, was quite good and quite knowledgeable about CSN history. We had a great time, even if we got back way past "boater's midnight." Our second live show in just over a week, when it's literally been years since our last one.

Graham Nash, David Crosby, and Stephen Stills mimetics.

The work ahead is still cut out for me on the boat, and I will be lucky to get through my whole list before the yard is done. That puts the lie to the fantasy we had, coming in, that we'd have plenty of time to visit friends and family, or spend some fun afternoons in the city. But we've been enjoying what Mamaroneck has to offer, and if the weather forecast improves, we might even try to catch some of the Pride March tomorrow in downtown Manhattan. It looks like most of our NYC ambitions will be on hold until we get back that way in the boat.

Finish paint on the flybridge coaming juxtaposed with areas still being faired.

We've chosen a color for the hull paint, Clay Tan, and I expect paint to be showing up on various  parts of the boat over the next couple of weeks. We're still resolving details about work on the anchor roller, gate latches, and other miscellaneous bits that need to happen before final coats, but it is feeling like we have passed the hump and are now on the downhill run. Stay tuned for more pics as things take shape.

Cat starting to take shape. These are the watertight bulkheads in place. Sheet aluminum comes in the front door and a complete Savannah Belles ferry will go out the back. Fascinating to watch as I cross the shop several times a day.

Making tracks

We are under way southbound across Massachusetts Bay, bound for the Cape Cod Canal. I am reminded today that Vector, with her stalwart crew of two, is exactly the same size (length, beam, draft, and displacement) as the Pinta, the smallest and fastest of Columbus's ships, which had a crew of 26.  We could perhaps stuff another 24 people in here in a pinch, but the mind boggles.

This morning's sunrise over Eastern Point light station, Cape Ann, as we left Gloucester.

We arrived to Portland Harbor Friday on a flood tide, and were approaching the Casco Bay bridge by 5pm. Just under the bridge is a city dock that is free for four hours, or $1.50 per foot overnight, first come, first served. We had contemplated perhaps spending the night there, or else anchoring in the harbor and tendering in on Saturday morning to pick up the part from the sewing place, just a half mile walk.

With the possibility that the dock might be unavailable and the further possibility that the anchorage where we often stay could be rolly all night from the ocean swell, I had called the South Port Marina right next door, also just a half mile walk, while we were still offshore to see if they had room. They had just switched to their winter rate of $2/ft, and with the delta being just 50 cents plus the ability to have power overnight when the forecast said it was going to drop into the 40s, I booked it. We'd arrive after closing, so checking out either the city dock or the anchorage first was not an option.

Departing Portland we spotted the brand new, ice-class pocket cruise ship Ocean Explorer.

We arrived at dead low tide, carefully navigating the entrance channel with just a foot under the keel, and were tied alongside (map) by 5:20. As soon as the boat was secured we made the short walk over to Foul Mouthed Brewing for good burgers with some excellent house-made drafts. I enjoyed the brown so much that I purchased a four-pack of pint cans to take home.

As usual, Louise took advantage of having unlimited water and power to do some laundry, and even though I tend not to start projects after dinner, I could not pass up the chance to change the oil while the engine was still warm from the passage. Doing it at the dock rather than waiting a day to the next anchorage also meant I had the brighter AC-powered engine room lights for the task. I also tore the sewing machine back down in anticipation of having the part first thing in the morning.

Moonrise over the Atlantic from our anchorage at Stage Island.

The sewing place opened at 9:30 and we walked over together to grab the part. The two-day shipping from Juki in Miami, at $30, was more than the part, $21. We stopped in at the Hanaford supermarket next door for provisions, and had nice bagel sandwiches for breakfast at the Cia Cafe on our way home. South Portland is a nice little town, with a very different vibe than its big sister across the river.

I installed the new speed sensor first thing upon returning to the boat, and I was quite relieved that it immediately solved the problem. I still don't understand what happened to the old one while I was replacing the motor -- it's just an LED and a photocell, after all -- but all's well that ends well. I'm sure we disappointed the sewing shop, who was hoping to sell a whole new machine, which they had in stock, for $999. That's exactly what would have happened had I not been able to fix it before they closed at 2pm.

This morning Enchanted Princess crossed in front of us on her way to Boston.

We were all fed, watered, and walked, just like pets, before noon, and we dropped lines to make whatever progress we could in another day of great passage conditions. We left Portland Harbor without ever even stopping in the eponymous city. As a harbinger of our good passage ahead, I spotted a fluke just before it disappeared under water, just off Willard Beach.

Outside conditions were excellent, but with a mid-day start Cape Porpoise was as far as we could reasonably get in the daylight. We pulled into a familiar cove called Stage Island Harbor and dropped the hook (map). I grilled up some chicken for dinner.

At dinner last night, somebody (not I) tipped the restaurant that Louise's birthday is this week.

Conditions had also been forecast to be good yesterday, but winds were much higher than forecast, blowing 25 knots out of the west rather than the forecast 5-10. That made for rough water as soon as we left the protection of Cape Porpoise, putting our intended goal of Gloucester, some nine hours away, in jeopardy. That, in turn, would ace us out of the canal today, with the ultimate effect of being pinned down by this incoming system in a less than ideal place.

That's not a big deal, but still we'd like to take as much advantage of this good window as we can. We figured we could still make good progress if we hugged the coast instead of taking the direct route, and so we angled in toward the coast at Bald Head until the seas diminished, and ran just a couple of miles offshore all the way past New Hampshire.

Our planned route (blue) and our actual track (thick black) from Cape Porpoise to Cape Ann.

On the near-shore route the sensible way in to Gloucester Harbor is via the Anisquam River and Blynman Canal, a route we've used previously. But the river has some shallow sections of just seven feet, and we'd be arriving at a low tide of -0.65 (yes, that's a below-zero tide). Navigating that with a couple of knots of following current would be a recipe for running aground and waiting hours for the tide to lift us off. Instead we angled back out and around Cape Ann, once we were in its protection from the southerly swell. In all it added an hour to the trip, and we had the hook down in a familiar spot in Gloucester Harbor (map) a full ten hours after weighing anchor.

Scrambling to make tracks during this relatively short window of good passage weather meant whizzing right past Porstmouth, NH and Newburyport, MA, the two closest harbors to my cousins in New Hampshire. Usually we stop for a couple of days to get in a family visit. When they learned we'd be stopping in Gloucester they opted to make the hour-plus drive down to meet us for dinner. We met them ashore at the 1606 Restaurant in the Beauport Hotel, where I scored the very last table when I made the reservation in the afternoon. We had a great time catching up over good food and lots of drinks.

Post-prandial family selfie at the restaurant.

This morning we weighed anchor at 0630 in order to arrive at the Cape Cod Canal on a favorable tide. At this writing it looks like we will just make it, with a favorable current all the way to Onset, our destination for today. We could get further, but they have a good price on diesel fuel, or at least they did yesterday, and we're hoping to bunker there before moving on. With any luck, we will get all the way to Newport before we have to hunker down for weather.

Unalienable Rights

Happy Independence Day, everyone. We are back under way, northbound in the Hudson River, with no particular stop in mind for the day. We had a late start waiting for the end of the ebb, and we'll ride the flood until the confluence of a good anchorage and a pre-dinner stopping time.

Early fireworks on the Poughkeepsie waterfront from our anchorage. People were setting them off well past our bedtime.

Wednesday evening we did go ashore, landing at the park dock on the Poughkeepsie waterfront. Signs limit docking to 15 minutes in consideration of other boaters, but with the river and dock empty mid-week, we were not too worried about it. We hiked up the hill in search of dinner, scoping out the train station on our way.

Of the three or four restaurants in walking distance, none was appealing, and we ended up at the taco joint right next to the dock, which has a full bar. We were able to get a somewhat shady table on the patio, where we could also keep an eye on the dock in case we needed to move the dink. The food was fine, so we made the right choice.

Vector anchored in the Hudson, as seen from the Poughkeepsie waterfront.

In the morning we weighed anchor just at the end of the ebb and headed three quarters of a mile back downriver to Shadows Marina, adjacent to the fine-dining restaurant of the same name. We tied up on the outside face dock (map), where we were met by dockmaster Keith, who was oddly indifferent about collecting the slip fees.

We spent the next couple of hours going through shutdown and layup checklists and getting ready for our trip, then made the three-quarter mile hike to the train station. We were unprepared for the Ethan Allen Express to be absolutely packed on a Thursday, and we found no empty seats together or anywhere even close to one another; the conductor told me that all the trains were sold out for the holiday weekend. We ended up sitting in the snack car until Hudson, sipping a beer I purchased to justify taking up a table.

Mid-Hudson Bridge as seen from our anchorage. The lights along the main cable cycled through many colors.

In spite of that it was a lovely train ride. Running alongside the river drives home how slowly we move in the boat. Before we left the boat, a couple of loopers passed us going upriver on full plane, doing maybe 15-20 knots, which to us is lightning fast. On the train we flew past those same boats a good two hours later, leaving them in the dust at 70mph. At Hudson the train started to empty out and we moved to a pair of more comfortable seats in one of the coaches.

My cousin Chris picked us up at the station at Fort Edward and drove us over to the VRBO in Lake George, a seven-bedroom affair that turned out to be an early-20th century manor home, complete with servants' stairs and call system leading directly to the kitchen from the back hallway above. We had a lovely room overlooking the lake, and I think only four bedrooms ever saw use during our stay.

Servant call annunciator in the kitchen. The little arrows told you which station pressed the call button when the bell rang. This house likely had a cook and a housekeeper. 

The next three days were a whirlwind of social visits with my cousins and their extended family interspersed with setting up and then tearing down our nephew's graduation party. The party was Saturday afternoon with some 40-odd guests. As I predicted we exercised little self-control and ate far too much of the seemingly endless supply of food. After the party there was so much left over that we carried leftovers back with us which will feed us for days.

It was a great party, a wonderful weekend, and, of course, we very much enjoyed catching up with my aunt, uncle, and cousins whom we see only very occasionally. We all had to clear out of the VRBO by 10am yesterday, and since our train did not leave till 1:30, we spent a nice final hour or so with my aunt and cousin in a coffee shop in downtown Glens Falls before hitting the station. We had our pick of seats for the return trip.

Vector docked at Shadows Marina.

Amtrak was fifteen minutes late getting back in to Poughkeepsie, and we were back at the dock, hauling a couple dozen extra pounds of loot, just before 5pm. Keith came over to collect the fees as we were making ready for departure. With two very large boats inbound for the holiday festivities, he was very appreciative that we kept our word about our departure, and charged us a good deal less than I had expected to pay for our three-night stay.

We were under way at 5:10pm, and with almost two hours of flood left, we ran eight miles upriver to a nice anchorage east of Esopus Island (map), between a yacht club and a state park. It uncharacteristically took us three tries to get the hook set in a spot with good holding where we would not swing into the shallows. Dinner on the aft deck was, of course, leftovers, and we hardly made a dent.

Dinner on deck -- pulled pork sandwiches with fruit salad and chips.

This morning we waited until the change of tide to weigh anchor, which meant we did not get under way until after noon. The plotter says we'll be in Catskill around 4:30, but we'll have plenty of flood left and will probably push on at least to Athens. We've already missed the fireworks in Catskill, which were on Saturday, and Kingston, which has them today, is now behind us. On this, our fourth time through here, we're opting for making distance rather than smelling the roses.

The tug Elk River pushing a fuel barge upriver passes the downbound Erieborg from our anchorage. We were right next to the pilot station and you can see the pilot boat alongside; we watched one pilot board and the other disembark. I follow the former skipper of the Elk River online.

In large part that is to keep our options open. July is a late start up the Hudson for it, but one of those options is to take the Down East Circle route, which would bring us down the Saint Lawrence Seaway to the Canadian Maritimes, then back along the coast into Maine and closing the loop in New York. Lots of ducks have to line up for that, including a timely start into the Seaway, water levels in the lake, and weather forecasts for the maritimes.

We won't make an actual decision until we are well into the Thousand Islands. But it can't happen at all if we don't make steady progress towards them. The point of no return is roughly Brockville, NY, beyond which there is really too much current for us to turn around. If we wave off, we'll be coming right back this way, on a much more leisurely pace.

Approaching the Esopus Meadows lighthouse.

We did have a brief moment of excitement this morning. A sailboat made an abrupt tack right in front of us, and as I was trying to figure out which way they were going to go, I realized they were trying to circle back to their dog, who was in the water. In short order the skipper jumped in after the dog, leaving the mate to try to wrangle the boat. We stopped dead, but as we were noodling on how best to help, a State Trooper boat just happened along right at that instant. All's well that ends well, and we resumed our journey.

A very wet dog and skipper on the back of the Trooper boat, as the mate tries to steer away from the cliff.

Wednesday I expect we will lower our mast, and by Thursday we should be off the Hudson River and into the Erie Canal. My ability to type underway will be more limited, so we will be well into the canal when you next hear from me.

Massachusetts bound

We are underway southbound in the Atlantic Ocean. As I begin typing, Gosport Harbor, the Isles of Shoals, and the Star Island lodge are off to port, and the Hampton River is off to starboard. We have finally left the thickest areas of lobster floats behind us and I can divert some attention to typing.

Not long after I last posted on Friday, we arrived at the Piscataqua River and headed directly to our familiar spot in Pepperrell Cove, off Kittery Point, Maine (map). It was very comfortable when we arrived, and we looked forward to perhaps spending a few days in that spot, running upriver a couple of miles in the tender to enjoy downtown Portsmouth. We had a quiet dinner on board.

Unfortunately, at the evening turn of the tide, we ended up broadside to a gentle swell that was right at Vector's resonant frequency, and Louise had a miserable night. Things were again tolerable when we awoke, but at the midday tide change the rolling started again, and we decided we needed a different venue.

Normally we would just go upriver to the city docks at Prescott Park, but there is a three-night limit there, and we were still sorting out when we might see my cousins, who were away for the weekend, and my aunt and uncle, who might drive out from Saratoga to see us. We wanted to save our three nights for the visit, if possible.

Instead we weighed anchor and cruised up the Piscataqua in search of an anchorage. The tidal current in the river is wicked, to use the local parlance, and thus most of the riverbed is scoured down to rock. Even the places where sediment and gravel collects are deep, from 30-60' at low tide, making for large swing circles that will inevitably encompass lobster floats or mooring balls.

Upbound on the Piscataqua, approaching the very modern Sarah Mildred Long lift bridge, with the I-95 arch bridge behind it.

Hoping to still be within dinghy distance of the city dock, perhaps three miles or so, I scoped out a couple of possibilities along the industrial waterfront north of town. We requested an opening of the Memorial Bridge just upriver of Prescott Park, passed under the swoopy Sarah Mildred Long lift bridge without needing an opening, and then under the fixed I-95 bridge before reaching the area.

One of the two spots I had scoped out had enough holding and just enough room for us to swing among the pots. But as we were getting ready to snub, an irritable lobsterman came by and started harassing us about being too close to their gear. We never tangle with fishing gear at anchor -- every time we've caught a piece of gear we've been under way -- but this was not an argument I wanted to have in the middle of the river, and especially knowing we would be leaving the boat unattended periodically. We decided to just move along.

That meant going all the way around the corner, past Dover Point, and into the start of The Great Bay. The narrows under the Little Bay bridge at Dover Point has some of the highest current on the river, three knots at max flood or ebb, and we whizzed through with a following current, hand steering. We dropped the hook in a wide spot in the bay with some sand on the bottom (map), in an area marked on Google Maps as "Boston Harbor" (really).

From here it is five miles to Portsmouth, which is a 20-minute ride going flat out. Not something we wanted to do with temperatures in the 60s, so instead we headed a short distance across the bay to Lexie's, a burger joint at the Great Bay Marina. Dinner was fine, and it was nice to get off the boat. It also gave us a chance to check out the marina.

We spent two nights in the anchorage, and it was dark, quiet, calm, and peaceful. Sunday was cold and rainy, a perfect day to work in the engine room, where I replaced the zincs on the main engine heat exchanger. That's a particularly fiddly process on our engine, best done when there is no deadline for moving, in case anything goes awry. We had a quiet dinner aboard.

Monday my cousins returned from their trip, and arranged to pick us up in the afternoon. Our preferred digs at Prescott Park were unavailable for those three nights, and so instead we simply moved the boat over to Great Bay Marina and tied up to the face dock (map). As usual, we filled the water tank and Louise started a round of laundry before we left for the evening.

Last night I had to replace this anchor roller, which the chain nearly wore in two. Note the hole in the middle.

We had a great three evenings visiting with my cousins and my aunt and uncle, who arrived Tuesday. In between visits we kept one of their cars, which we used to make runs to the grocery store, Walmart, and Costco for provisions, Lowes for maintenance supplies, and Goodwill to deposit the last couple of months' worth of superfluous items. I thought I'd be trundling seven gallons of used motor oil, too, but the marina had a collection tank and just took it.

My cousin and uncle dropped us back off at the marina Wednesday night just as the remains of Hurricane Ida landed on us. We had torrential rain all night, swelling the river, and saw winds up to around 30. Not enough for us to notch Ida into our tropical cyclone tally, but clearly it wreaked death and destruction on NY and NJ, where we will be headed shortly.

Yesterday we dropped lines after the worst of the storm had passed and the current was favorable. The freshet was so large that I had to idle most of the way due to the extra current, to avoid station-keeping at the bridge. We arrived at Memorial Bridge at low tide, and I had lowered our tall antennas in the hope of just squeezing under, but again the extra water reduced the clearance to where we had only millimeters to spare, and we asked for an opening.

We continued all the way to Pepperrell Cove in anticipation of today's passage. But once we had the hook set, it became clear we would again have an uncomfortable swell all night, and instead we moved over to a mooring ball at our old friends the Portsmouth Yacht Club, across the river (map). We were comfortable here all night, although there were some wakes in the evening and this morning. Launch service is included in the $40 mooring fee, but we opted to just remain aboard.

As I finish typing, the plotter is projecting an arrival in Gloucester Harbor around 16:30, and if it's warm enough, we might tender ashore for dinner. Tomorrow's passage weather is also good, and so we will make way across Massachusetts Bay in the morning.