Our Journey Tracks: Off the Ocean!!

Thursday, July 14, 2022

We left Manasquan Safe Harbor Marina at around 8:30 to let the tides work with us on our way out of the inlet. The trip up the coast was easy (thank goodness!) and we got there in plenty of time to pause and circle around with our companion traveler today, Nowhere Fast, snapping quick shots of our boats in front of the Statue of Liberty.They then waited for Esperanza so they could take a picture of them. Both of the other boats were headed to a marina in the area…But we did our usual thing of anchoring in an anchorage near the park behind the Statue.

We were the only power boat in the anchorage and shared it with only about 4 sailboats. Sweet! We then celebrated our successful trip coming off the Atlantic Ocean by opening up the bottle of wine Chuck and Vickie shared. Perfect ending to a perfect day….

View of Jersey shore while traveling up to NYC

Friday, July 15, 2022

Haverstraw Bay was our destination today. We left the Statue anchorage around 7:00 in hopes of finding the NY harbor somewhat clear…and it was! The last time we left here we left at 8:30 thinking we’d miss all the traffic. Nope! We had ferries blowing their horns at us all the way up while we were trying to get out of their way!

Taking our ride up through the NY harbor I couldn’t take enough pictures of the architecture. So many unique buildings…

We found our anchorage in the early afternoon, nestled in a little cove behind a park. It was a quiet night…

Saturday, July 16, 2022

View of the Hudson River as we left our anchorage this morning...

We were both up early this morning and left our anchorage around 7:00 to travel to a marina, Norrie Marina in a state park about 40 miles up river. $1.25/ft for the night and $5 for power. Deal of the trip, so far!! The cruise up the Hudson was all scenic entertainment: passenger and freight trains running on both sides of the river; huge, gorgeous homes; West Point; and cliffs that would challenge a “climber”in spite of names like “Break Neck Cliff”.

We finally got to our marina and it’s a perfect place to relax for the afternoon and catch up on blogging. Tomorrow we’re hoping to get to Troy City Marina for a couple of nights before we get on the Erie Canal. It’s a 60+ mile trip from here and we’re hoping the tides will cooperate…

NOTE: Non-dog lovers might want to skip this part. It’s about training a dog to “cruise” on a long boat trip.

Maggie hadn’t been on land since Thursday morning at Manasquan. We have a grassy pad on the boat that she trained on early and last used about 3 years ago. So, here’s the deal. There are times when we anchor out in spots that don’t have good places to dinghy into and since we can’t hit land…we have a grassy pad that substitutes for real land…or so we hope. So we didn’t take her to shore until this afternoon…in hopes that she would start using the pad. She had peed on the mat, but that was all. We were uncomfortable with her situation…but she would only pee. Today, when she got the leash attached to her harness she was, needless to say, thrilled. And had a lovely time on land making up for the time since Wednesday morning. As with most training like this, I think Wayne and I were more miserable than she!!

And it ain’t over yet….

Sunday, July 17, 2022

Up early this morning to travel 63 miles to Troy, NY, and their marina along side the river. As we thought would happen, our mileage wasn't the best due to either current or breeze. Must have been mostly current because there wasn't much breeze... and it was HOT! Again, the trip was interesting just looking at all that was around us. One thing in particular was spotting 3 of the Hudson's remaining lighthouses. You can read all about the lighthouses on this website:https://www.hudsonriverlighthouses.org/

Got into our slip in Troy shortly after 4PM. Maggie and I took a short tour of the area and were pleased to see lots of people and activity. And...the area looks very well tended. Ordered take out from a restaurant nearby and relaxed knowing we had a whole day ahead of us for grocery shopping and laundry. ;-)

Monday, July 18, 2022

It's raining in Troy today, but not so hard that Maggie won't walk in it. It's 9:30AM and we've ordered groceries to be delivered and Wayne took an Uber with our laundry to drop off for pick up this PM. Our next travel day, tomorrow, will take us to the Erie Canal so we've been looking at our trip records from last visit there...and the charts we have. More later....

These are the three lighthouses we saw in traveling to Troy. The last one shown, the white one, looked like a church as we left Norrie Marina. When I saw, finally, that it was a lighthouse it made me think of all sorts of allegories with church, on a rock in the river, and a light guiding one to safety.