We are ready for Hermine!

 

We are still in Great Kills Harbor on a mooring ball. Today we spent part of the day taking down the front sail and strapping down the main sail. I have also strapped down the dinghy on the deck. The word around here is they are expecting a bit of a storm surge and that Hermine will linger for a little while. Our mooring ball is 500 LBS so we are very secured and feel safe. We have topped up with fuel and water and groceries so we will be good for a few days.
The rest of today I spent redoing the dirty deed! The hold tank was leaking again so the silicon didn't work. Today was a big smelly job. I had to disconnect the hoses and pull the tank right out. This time I used some JB Weld to seal the leaks so I am crossing my fingers.
My last post was hurried because we had to do it in Burger King. So I have a few more pictures.

Just a picture of something!

Just passed Poughkeepsie 

Lighthouse before Poughkeepsie 

 Kingston NY

 Lighthouse before Kingston NY

The Catskills 

 

I was very surprised how scenic this area is. Lots of mountains from Troy all the way to New York city.

 

Harlem

Yonkers 

 Just before New York city

 

We haven't had WI FI service for a while!

We left HOP-O-Nose in Catskills Aug 26 with the tide. The mast is up and everything is working well.  We motored until we saw a great anchorage in front a small town Kingston N.Y.

No Pictures!

 We motored for 7 hours to a town called Haverstraw. We fueled up and anchored for the night. It was another hot day on the water. Haverstraw is at a very wide area in the Hudson the water was very rough.

moorings in Haverstraw

Aug 26 we made our way to Nyack only 6 miles away. We tied up to a mooring ball and stayed for a few days. We had lots to do in town, I had to find more charts and I also had to get my cell phone problem resolved at Best Buy. When we arrived a couple came out to greet us on the dock. Howie told me there was no place in town to buy charts but he would drive me to Haverstraw. So off we went to Haverstraw. He took me to the marina where I fueled up the day before. So far every where we go people are so friendly and so willing to help.

Moorings at Nyack Boat Club 

Building a New Bridge



With our new charts and new cell phone we left for the big city. Again we motored all day and it was very hot in the sun.

WOW!

We had a great day passing buy Hyde Park where FDR was born and Tivoli where Eleanor was brought up and West Point Military Academy.

West Point 

Then we arrived in New York and we grabbed a mooring ball at the 79th Street Basin. The current here is very strong. I couldn't get my dinghy in the water and even if I did my 2hp motor would go anywhere in that current. This mooring was a few blocks away from Central Park. It's to bad we had a great spot but couldn't get off the boat.

Looking south from our mooring.

Looking on shore 

George Washington Bridge 

We left New York in the morning without seeing any of the city. Driving the boat through the harbor was very rocky. There were a lot of water taxies everywhere.

 Statue Of Liberty

New York Downtown 

 

Air Craft Carrier

World Trade Centre 

Hudson Traffic

Today we are in Great Kills Harbor. We have a mooring ball from a yacht club so we can dock our dinghy on the property.

We are doing laundry and shopping and we are also watching the hurricane coming our way. This area is calling for a tropical storm so we will stay here until it passes.  



 







On Our Way To The Big City!

Today's Friday and we are going to leave Hop-O-Nose marina for New York. It should take a few days. Right now we are waiting for the tide to start going out. Then we will travel down the Hudson for about 6 hours until the tide starts to come back up. Not sure how far we will get.

Mauna-Kea is ready to go.

Yesterday was a very busy day with lots of cleaning and repairs and connect up all the wires for the mast. We also went to Walmart. It's true! All those pictures you see on the internet about Walmart shoppers are true. We saw a couple and he was dressed like a doctor and she was dressed like a doll, Laurie says Maggie Muggon's. We walked up to Walmart for some exercise and took a cab back. As we were waiting for the cab we did some people watching. That was a lot of fun!

Ahoy From The Poop Deck

 

Yes from the POOP deck. If you are following the blog back in July, I found a leak in the black water tank (holding tank). For all you landlubbers that means the poopoo peepee tank! I hate working on this thing. Well I thought I fixed it but the smell never went away. Laurie went down there and cleaned really good and an hour later it smelled. So I had to do the dirty work again. I wiped everything down real good, and you have to get your head right in there to look around. I loosened all the supports and lifted the tank and wiped underneath to let it dry. DIRTY JOB! Well it was wet again so I had to wipe it again and keep my head in there to watch for the leak. I found it! I always complained about this to the guys that installed it last year. They kept saying "it's a new tank". It was leaking from a place where they mold in a fitting, one drop every 10 seconds. So a little silicon and that stopped the leak. Today I asked the people in the marina to cut me a couple pieces of wood because the wood that was around the holding tank is all rotten.
August 22 we stayed in Amsterdam N.Y. for the night to wait for the rainy weather to pass by. The next night we motored 9 hours and made to Waterford N.Y. at Gate 2. The last 6 locks have about a 150 foot drop so they have 2 safety gates to hold back the water in case something goes wrong.
So August 23 we passed through the last 6 locks and made to the Hudson River ( YIPEEE! ) at Troy N.Y. It was a long way to motor 31 locks in 4 days, we are tired. As we were passing by Troy N.Y. I noticed  our speed was about 1 knot faster than normal. I also noticed that some docks didn't reach the water. We are in tides!!! The water will drop here about 4 feet so we will have to make sure when we tie up to a dock  that it's a floating dock. If it's not we have to keep our tie up lines loose for the changing tide. Something to get use to. Later in the day I notice that we were going 2 knots slower than we usually going and I also noticed the current going by the buoy markers. The tide comes up from New York all the way to the dam in Troy. Here are some pictures of the Hudson before Catskills.

 

Light house with the Catskill mountains in the back ground.

 

Traffic on the Hudson 

 

Some guys boat in Albany.

Some important building in Albany

 

 Troy N.Y.

So now we are in Catskills N.Y. to have the mast put back up. We arrived yesterday around 6 pm and the place was busy with boats having masts going up and coming down.

Hop-O-Nose Marina 

View of the docks

 

We had restaurant food for the fist time in 2 weeks. Great food.

 

 

 

Today we got a lot done and of course it was HOT!. 33 Celsius. Tomorrow I will finish the wiring and then it's shopping at Wallmart!. It's a 1 mile walk and then we will taxi back to the boat. We are planning to leave Friday morning. Now I will have to look at the tide charts. The tides will travel at a speed of 1 1/2 knots so it's best to leave while the tide is falling so I can go with the current. 

It's Been Very Hot!

We left Brewerton at 8 am and made it to lock 19 just east of Utica. That was a long hot day! We motored 11 hours that day and it was hot. We crossed Lake Oneida with no trouble at all considering our GPS stopped working. Seems our new GPS doesn't have the Erie Canal installed. Before we left I downloaded some charts and that was one of them. Lake Oneida was a long 21 miles but it was calm and cool. When we got to the other end Sylvan Beach looked like a great place to stay but we couldn't stop that early. We moved along until 7PM and couldn't find a place to stay so we stayed at the next lock. It was a very quiet night, it looked like we were in the middle of nowhere.

 

We need POWER! 

 OK I goofed, it may be the first time I ever made a mistake.

 

 



If we look back to when I found the mast support at Little Sodus Bay I was so happy with myself finding such a prize. Well after we set the mast down on the support guess where our power cord could be found??? As we docked in Brewerton I realized my first ever mistake. The power cord was under the mast support. No problem the solar will charge the batteries. NOPE! Because the solar panels are cover with the mast it wont charge that well when there's shadows on the panel. So when we got to lock 19 we had to lift the mast and get the cord out of the anchor locker. I lifted it just enough that Laurie could get her arm in and grab it. This was important just so we could make coffee or have a shower if we didn't get into a marina. So today we are in a very small town called St Johnsville NY. We are finding it very hard to provision the boat with food and water. When we stopped in at Brewerton we were told the grocery store was called the Easy Mart. We walked about 2 miles in the heat and found it was like a 7 11. Gas station with a small store with mostly beer. So we got lots of beer! Dragging all the beer back to the boat was so hot we had to stop and get Laurie and Ice Cream Cone! Laurie was happy!!

Pictures on our way down the canal.

 

 

We passed close to the Adirondack Mountains.

 

 

Here's a picture of us in the locks. Today we started going into locks that are going down. Locks are a little tricky. Going up there is a lot of current and it pushes you around a lot. Going down is so much easier. We got the hang of it after the second lock in Oswego.







Tomorrow we will try to get to Amsterdam NY then maybe Troy Monday and put the mast up again and then on our way down the Hudson.