Kingston NY a jewel on the HUDSON

Kingston NY a jewel on the HUDSON

Our museum dock in Kingston is next to the rowers’ dock so mornings were full of chants and the coxswains’ calls as the youngsters launched and retrieved their sculls. After our close up look at rowers in Chattanooga we have a lot of respect for this sport and enjoy the rhythms of their workouts – from a distance.  Besides, their clamor makes a better alarm clock than the traditional buzzer for sure. Anyway, as we move north, it is light these mornings early which suits our bodies long accustomed to early starts from our stint in Arabia. 

Taking advantage of the early wake up call we hiked up the hill to the old Stockade historic district of Kingston.  Come to find out, we are docked in the old village of Rondout which joined with Kingston in the early 1800s about the time the Delaware and Hudson canal was built. So there are historic districts in both places and some in between. We learned about the Rondout district in the Hudson River Maritime Museum in front of our dock. We had to hike a little to visit  the Stockade area of Kingston which was founded before the Revolutionary War. There is an intersection that boasts four stone buildings that all predate the Revolutionary War. This is apparently the only such intersection in the US and is even more remarkable since the British burned Kingston at the beginning of the war.  The old Stockade district includes almost a square mile that in the 1650s and 1660s was enclosed in a wooden stockade built to protect the settlement from the Esopus Indians. Many buildings from the early settlement and the boom years of the 1870s still stand and are home to a vibrant community of homes, shops, and public offices. Although this area was almost an hour uphill from the boat, we spent about three hours wandering the streets, shops and museums. The reconstructed Persen’s house was interesting because this restoration has been done to show the phases of construction from 1661 to 1920 that the building underwent according to the needs of the occupants. In another historic building, the Senate House,  the constitution for the state of New York was drafted, and it hosted the first government. We found a bakery, Deisling’s, to sustain us and a butcher, Fleischer’s, that bragged on their weekly shipments of “whole animals”.  The shopkeeper wanted us to hang around another hour to see the week’s shipment arrive – we opted for a couple sausage links and headed downhill to the boat for lunch at the Ship & Shore. There is an abundance of culinary talent in the Hudson Valley rumored to be the result of the excellent training at the Culinary Institute of America in nearby Hyde Park. The chef of Ship & Shore is a good example of a graduate who settled not far from the school.  It might also be that these culinary masters seek to remain close to sources of fresh and wholesome (i.e. organic) ingredients that seem readily available in this area. Needless to say, we are delighted to partake of their creations when the opportunity presents itself. Once again, it is tough but someone must suffer…. Oh, just to keep in touch with reality, we did spend a few hours doing laundry plus Steve scrubbed the swim platform – and let’s not forget the hours and hours of walking!

 Henry Hudson and his Half Moon

Familiar Territory and Friends

Zooming through familiar territory

Down the Delaware – with a second stop in Delaware City Marina – where we reconnected with Dan and Jody via Thanks Dad’s John and Sue.  This is a story of strange coincidence.  Last year when we passed through Chesapeake City, Dan and Jody on Water Hog jumped out of their boat to grab our lines.  We ended up spending nearly a week traveling down the bay, a weather delay in Cape May and up to NYC with them.  Jody and Dan are a fun couple who had just returned from the Bahamas and generously shared tips and destinations for our future travel there.  We also learned about the DC TV we later bought from seeing theirs.  Most good mariners are familiar with their boats, but Water Hog is unique since Dan built it himself – it is beautiful and he knows every inch and system from the inside out – literally. When we left them last year the plan was for them to go back to work and boat closer to home on the east coast for a while. We hoped to see them on our down east loop in the future.  Imagine our surprise when we heard from our friends on Thanks Dad that they had met Water Hog in – Chesapeake City – the night before and could hear them calling us on the radio as we approached Delaware City! I immediately got Water Hog on the radio and we made plans to get together in Cape May which we did after a long day running down the bay – fortunately in fairly calm seas with favoring currents and winds. We dinked over to Miss Chris marina where Dan and Jody, now with a kitty and friend Craig, were docked.  It was delightful to catch up and very ironic that our paths again crossed in the same territory as last year.  Once again we ended up traveling up the Atlantic together – well we left early and they left late but we arrived together because they have speed while we don’t – anchoring again in Barnegat Bay on the way. It was pure torture for Steve to see their pictures of the lobster and fish caught in the Bahamas, but we did take notes for next spring on where to go and what to do i.e. good fishing spots. 

Even taking Monday off, this was a big mileage week for us – over 300 meant  long days – not our usual 5 to 6 hours of cruising.  But we now sit in Kingston, NY a little over half way up the Hudson to our Eire Canal goal.  We made a few stops along the way – but cruised a few extra hours since the tides were not in our favor.  The Hudson is known as the river that flows both ways since it is subject to tidal currents as well as river currents.  These can be significant for a slow boat like ours – running with the tide we got up to 10+ mph and against below 4 at one point.  The side benefit was a slow ride through scenic NYC – on a day with low clouds but interesting light. Further up the weather cleared and we had sun for our salute to West Point on Memorial Day weekend.  We stopped again at Croton-on-Hudson and took time for a walk in the park before leaving (to hopefully catch a better tide). At the Croton Point Nature center we met John, the naturalist, who is an avid artifact collector so we spent some time discussing arrowheads and other rocks we have both collected. We will be planning to visit again on our way south to share some of our finds since he doesn't have any Arabian specimens in his collection – a problem we can fix!

 Pete Seeger's Clearwater - replica to support a cleaner river