Friday, September 21, 2007

We arrived back at CIYC at about 9:15 pm, loaded our stuff onto the launch, and headed out to the boat. Dixie was excited to be back and acts like a true boat dog now. On the launch, she stands up on the side and sticks her nose up into the wind, her long fur and tail blowing out behind her. The life jacket is no problem for her now. The launch brought us up to the side of the boat, where it’s easier to unload our stuff than onto the swim platform. Lin and Dixie climbed up first, stepped onto the deck, and ...CRUNCH!! Crunch?!? What the heck is that?!? As our eyes adjusted to the dark, we saw that the sides and deck of the boat were covered with dead crabs. Big ones, little ones, crushed ones, broken ones. Crunch, crunch, crunch. Everywhere. The seagulls must have been partying here for the whole month while we were gone. Ohhhhhhhh, there is a lot more than crabs here. There is poop everywhere. Seagull poop, thick, white and dripping, dried in layers all over the blue canvas cover of the boat, the dinghy, deck, roof, radar, and solar panels. Yuck!

This week we plan to go up the Hudson River as far as we can, then back down again to City Island. There will be a lot of sights to see, and hopefully not too many seagulls. What a mess. Well anyway, we are back on the boat and back in New York. Or as Lin was recently reminded by her brother Jeff, and to quote the famous words of Ace Frehley, WE’RE BACK, BACK IN THE NEW YORK GROOVE….

And we definitely need some sleep.

Saturday, September 22, 2007
Moe woke up at the crack of dawn, left Lin on the boat to snooze, and took Dixie and his credit card in to town to do a little shopping. He arrived back at the boat with some oat cleaning supplies, a seagull repellant whirlie-bird thingie, some good information about a nearby IGA, two cups of coffee and two hot breakfast sandwiches. After breakfast we took the launch in, and drove into town to finish our grocery shopping. We got back to the boat and Lin put away groceries while Moe struggled to scrape and hose seagull poop and more dead crabs off of the boat. It is horrible to see in the daylight! Didn’t smell too good, either! The weather report called for clear skies, so we headed out towards the Hudson River. The weather man was wrong. It POURED. Where the seagulls had pooped on the roof, the 303 waterproofing had dissolved, and rainwater mixed with seagull poop leaked through the canvas over the flybridge and onto us. Yuck.

We left City Island Yacht Club at about 11:45 am. We traveled west on the East River to Hell’s Gate, then north up the Harlem River into the Hudson River. Eventually the rain stopped, and we had cloudy skies but decent weather the rest of the way. Since we don’t have enough water or water pressure to really wash the boat well, we booked a slip at the Tarrytown Marina, near the Tappan Zee Bridge. When we were just about there, they called Moe on his cell phone and let us know that they’d over-booked, and didn’t have room for us after all. Argh! We had no choice but to travel another hour and a half north to the Haverstraw Marina. The Hudson River is pretty, what we can see of it. There’s a lot of fog and mist, so you can’t see far. The left side is mostly heavily treed with high, straight rock cliffs, and the right side of the river is somewhat developed –but doesn’t look overcrowded, as we’d expected.

We had a nice lunch of English muffins, all natural peanut butter, big fat tomato’s from our garden, and cold milk. It is like camp, only better!

Heard on the radio: “We got some fog here, I can’t see ya”. “Put the radar on.” “Ok, I got the radar on.” “Good, can you see land?” “No, I’m on land.” There are very few boats out here today, probably a good thing.

Dixie is having a good day, sleeping under Moe’s feet as he drives the boat, begging for treats, and trying really hard to sneak up on the bow to munch on a few leftover crab shells. We arrived at Haverstraw around 5 pm , fueled up, pumped out, and moved tour slip by about 6 pm. There are a lot of boats here, some really big ones. We were fortunate that the people in the slip next to us came over and helped us tie up. The boats are very close together. People here are all very social, and have come over to introduce themselves and say hello.