Sharing the Hudson River with Friends

Finally passed the last lock for this season and reached the tidal Hudson on our run south. This is our first trip south and surprisingly things do look different heading down river.  The traffic has mostly been interesting and not congested – probably because the mornings have cooled off to “boot” temps for anchor washing. 

In Croton on Hudson we welcomed Robbie and Brian for a day on the water.  They got up at the crack of dawn to train up for the ride back down into NYC.  This entailed a brisk walk from the train, a bumpy dink ride out to the boat and 5 hours floating down with increasing clouds developing into a persistent drizzle – ok downpour – about the time we pulled into the 79^th Street Boat Basin.  This handy location is close enough for our mutual friend Haven to join us as well – a special treat since we haven’t seen these young professionals for several years.  They are all contemporaries of our kids so it is especially invigorating and impressive to hear what they have been doing – making us feel rather lazy with their energy and creativity.  It is a privilege to spend time with such fine young adults, and we are grateful they made time for us. Thankfully even though the temps were “brisk” the rain stopped before they all had to leave us.

Sunday promised to be sunny if not warm and calm and brought another couple of longtime friends – Steve and Irene who also drove hours to spend a few minutes with us as we passed by their territory. Again, we are truly grateful to have friends who find time in their busy lives to meet us as we live this erratic and perpetual motion lifestyle. (Due to a promising but short weather window – we could not afford to linger in the Big Apple this trip….. so after lunch in the Boat Basin we headed out into the Atlantic!)

Kubota Fun at Chez Elving

Kubota Fun at Chez Elving

Good friends drive hours to pick us up and provide a few days off the boat.  Arch and Susan among many other services qualify as exceptional friends who have driven long hours many times to meet us on our boat journeys. This, however, was our first chance to get off the boat and visit their new USA based home.  Readers of the blog may remember Arch and Susan were on board recently and saved us last year with the installation of a new refrigerator which required several long trips and major stevedoring and carpentry by them. This time around they caught our new hot water heater plus assorted mail and delivered it all to the boat as they fetched us for a few days on land.  Their property has been on our radar since almost the time we all met – back in the late 1970s when Susan’s parents bought the acreage as their retirement paradise.  It has now morphed into the 21^st century version for the second generation.  We were honored to inspect the rebuilt and expanded homes on the property as well as the deluxe workshop which is nothing like my Daddy’s version! But, the Kubota tour of the property was probably the most fun and biggest contrast to our floating lifestyle.  (Steve might be thinking of how to get one on board next to his dinghy.) Good food, good fun, good friends!

Mechanicville

Mechanicville and the lower Champlain Canal

This is a story of PCBs.  One of the more recent economic engines in Fort Edward has been the GE plant which unfortunately also seems to have added some pollution to the river and canal.  As a result, the last few years GE has been dredging along the side of the Champlain Canal – in the area between locks 8 and 4.  This work has essentially closed many of the places that cruisers stop or in our case would like to have stopped.  As a result we blew passed the villages of Schuylerville and Stillwater and the Saratoga National Battlefield to land in Mechanicville. 

We missed the history for commercial access.  From the gap in posting it might be clear we have been in WIFI slim zones – but in Mechanicville there is a wired Laundromat a short block from the free dock – FREE -  with brand new restrooms and showers, plus water, power and pump out directly behind the police station so safe as well. While the town is short on historic forts and museums, it is long on shopping opportunities, restaurants, and handy post offices.  We used our stop to stock up and clean up…. and, deal with our latest crisis.    (Well Steve did the dealing while I did the laundry and blogging…..)

Our water heater dramatically failed – fortunately while Steve was doing the monthly check and clean out of the seawater intake screens….  We shudder to contemplate what would have been the result if it had failed either while we were off the boat or underway. (The hot water system is connected to the engine cooling system!) Clever and handy Steve – removed and ordered a replacement and installed a temporary bypass so we have cold water for the interim.  Well, we did until the water pump sprang a leak. (Now it might be clear why those showers on shore were so welcome!) The town website says they were named for all the mechanical businesses located here so it seemed appropriate (or ironic?) to have our latest mechanical problems in Mechanicville where mechanics and supplies are to hand.