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| West Point is on the Hudson River |
The wind blew all day yesterday out of the north which blew water out of the Hudson River so when I took Hoolie ashore, I noticed that the wall was visible on one side of the entrance to the cove. Normally, the wall is underwater but not today. That was a clue that the low this morning was going to be much less than normal. Yesterday afternoon I had seen 5.0 ft MLW over the entrance channel but I was afraid it would be even less with the strong north wind of the last day or so.
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| The Hudson River is much like a fjord, 1340 ft high Storm King Mountain is on the left |
So I told Ann we had to leave an hour earlier than we had planned so we caught a 1.0 ft tide over low. If we waited and had breakfast we would have left at exactly low tide. Leaving the anchorage we saw 4.6 ft over the bar in front of the entrance even with a 0.8 ft tide according to the tide tables. Since we draw 4.75 ft, we slid over the bottom, it was soft mud, no rocks, on the way out. Had we left when we had first planned, we would have had problems. When cruising, one must pay attention to all the clues: weather, wind and tides.
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| Home base, the PYC clubhouse |
In contrast to yesterday, the ride up the river today was calm with flat water. We had the current against us the entire way but we still made 6 to 7 kts most of the way. Ann expertly guided Fleetwing into our dock and I jumped off and secured the lines, we were home!
We had many visitors from the club welcoming us home which is always nice, good to be part of a yacht club. This year we don't plan on a cruise to Long Island Sound. Ann wants to do more pastel work during the summer and I plan on writing a book on cruising the ICW with guides to trouble areas as well as tips on getting ready and what to take along, both in electronics and otherwise.
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| At home at our dock |
However, we plan on doing our sixth cruise down the ICW starting September 15 of 2015. Please come back and visit us again. The blog will restart then, mark your calendars.
5 comments:
Enjoyed reading your log the past two years. Will look for you in Sept!
Looking forward to your ICW book!
The book or rather the travel guide will be a huge undertaking for me. I plan on using Amazon for publishing and have no idea yet on the cost. Learn by doing I suppose. It will cover how to get ready for cruising, apps of use, cruising resources, problem areas, recommended anchorages with personal notes on depths, favorite marinas and restaurants and more.
Best of luck on the guide. From someone with your experience it sounds like it will be an invaluable resource when it's done.
Thanks for the support. The guide will be a huge undertaking. I have no idea of what's involved yet but I have an idea of formatting it for both print and iPad ebook. I would like to have one problem area fit on one page of the iPad for convenience, everything in one spot and then just page ahead as cautions come up, one page at a time with charts. Oh well, great plans but getting them to fruition is another matter.
It won't be an all purpose guide, just the areas I'm personally familiar with including hazards, anchorages with dog access and marinas I've found to be good along with a few good restaurants too. I'll also have how to get ready for the ICW at home, what's needed for the trip, tips for ICW cruising and an overview of electronics beyond the standard wind/depth/autopilot/speed meters.
Oh well, we'll see if reality can match ambition.
Thanks, Bob
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