The End of Summer

The Mariner Restaurant
N 41 42. 851 W 73 56.895

Well it's been a great, been a great, been a great summer. It was our third summer on board Tarwathie and I think it was the most fun one. What did we do that was so much fun?

Well, since passing NYC last June, about 100 days have passed. We traveled about 1000 statue miles. We passed 65 locks. We set a new altitude record for Tarwathie, 420 feet above sea level. We spent about 50 nights at anchor, 42 nights on lock walls, and 8 nights at marinas or on rented moorings. We ran aground zero times; remarkable! We took the mast down and put it back up three times. We visited two states, two countries, two provinces, and one Indian reservation. We suffered two attacks
by hostile Indians. Our social calendar was very full. We met with friends and family on 34 occasions. I estimate that we met and chatted and swapped stories with 200 interesting strangers along the way. I even attempted to converse in French two or three times. My oh my, it makes my head spin to think of it all.

Still, there's a lot we didn't do. We had plans to maybe sail The Great Loop to Chicago, and the Mississippi River. We didn't do that. We had plans to sail the Down East Circle Route to New Brunswick, Nova Scotia, and Maine. We didn't do that.
I wanted to sail the entire Erie Canal to Buffalo and back. We didn't do that. We wanted to sail with all grandchildren and children. We only got some of them. I guess all that leaves room for another trip some other year.

I recall the decision we made in the Yucatan. We are not going to the Pacific to sail around the world until we get bored with this region. We're nowhere close to getting bored yet.

Here's our advice to other cruisers or cruiser wannabes. Exotic places are great, but leave room in your plans to sail on your home waters from time to time.

Slow progress today. In the morning there was so much fog that we couldn't raise anchor until nearly 11:00. We had to stop here near Poughkeepsie because we couldn't reach the next anchorage at Bannerman Castle until well after dark. It's not safe negotiating the way in to Bannerman after dark, so we stopped early. That leaves us 75+ miles to NYC Liberty Island, more than we could do tomorrow most likely. The weather forecast says that the offshore winds should be favorable starting Sunday.
That sounds good.

We've stayed here at the Mariner Restaurant twice before. They offer free docking if you eat dinner. It's a good trade. It's also the noisiest place we've ever stopped. We are less than 100 feet from the train tracks. A train passes every 25 minutes. There is a crossing so every train blasts it's whistle when it's right next to us. It reminds me of the Blues Brother's flat. However, it is the only place to stop for 20 miles upstream or 20 miles downstream. The Hudson has strong currents,
and it is too deep to anchor right up to the shore. Bannerman is the one and only anchorage for 100 miles from Kingston to Liberty Island in NYC.