A Regatta in Kingston and Some Tricky Anchorages!

Sunday, August 30

During our lunch, we saw many sailboats leaving the river. Departure at 10:05. We caught up with the sailboats that had left a little earlier. They were racing! We joined them. We didn’t officially participate in the race, but we still felt the spirit of competition and, above all, we had wind in our sails. It had been a long time! We enjoyed it for a few hours.

Then finally, the wind died down and we turned on the engine.

After several hours under power, several bridges and several towns, we arrived at our anchorage at Pollepel Island.

It’s very beautiful, but the trains constantly honk, continuously, as if their lives depended on it! We felt like the train was going to crash into us every ten minutes. We took wonderful photos and, despite everything, we managed to sleep.

Monday, August 31

We worked until 3:00 PM. We realized that the power to our two refrigerators was failing. We restarted everything! Then we left for Cold Spring. About 2 hours of sailing.

We anchored and went to the yacht club, but they wanted $25 for the dinghy dock! The day was already well advanced and we found that a bit expensive for a few hours. Miela still did her business. So we decided to leave the dinghy on the rocks, tied to a post. Once tied, I remembered that there are tides. We went for a walk, checked, and everything was fine—the tide was going out. In our minds, we simply thought that if the tide had been coming in, there would have been too much water between the shore and the dinghy.

The town is super pretty, with a passage under the railway to access the upper town. We ate at a good French restaurant, Le Bouchon, where all the diners fell in love with Miela.

On our return, our dinghy was dry, meaning there was no water underneath at all. The engine was on the rocks and the dinghy was completely flooded by the waves from the freighters that must have passed during our absence. It was disgusting.

And a dinghy with an engine is already heavy. Imagine it filled with water, on the rocks! We worked hard to get it back into the water. We were lucky—no damage, aside from our shoes full of mud.

We learn something every day!

Tuesday, September 1

We left at 8:30 heading for Haverstraw.

We arrived at Safe Harbor Marina after checking several other marinas. None had the water depth required to enter and do the pump-out! But all the better, this marina offered self-service pump-out and free access to a slip while we visited the ship store, ate at the restaurant—which we did!—or even went into town.

We learned that other Quebecers were in Catskill and planned to go to the same anchorage as us on Wednesday: Patrick, Maryline and their two children.

We were in a rather difficult-to-access anchorage, Haverstraw Harbour, since you need a high tide to enter. We looked for a dock for the dinghy to visit the town. All shore accesses had been closed off. There was a private yacht club and a membership-only restaurant that refused us access.

We finally used a private kayak dock belonging to a residential complex. The town is very Spanish and, even though it was Tuesday, it was very lively. However, we didn’t really feel like we belonged there and preferred to leave. We had read that the level of pickpocketing is fairly high.

Back on Eolo, we made ourselves a good spaghetti carbonara.

We spent a very calm night there.

After Kingston, we began to understand that anchorages on the Hudson sometimes come with their little set of challenges! Between trains that wake us, the dinghy ending up dry and shore accesses that aren’t always as simple as we thought, we learn something every day.