Friday, October 3, 2008

Sailing Down My Dirty Stream


The Hudson River - our home for the next couple of days. Many years ago we learned a Pete Seeger song which laments the treatment this and other rivers has received

Sailing down my dirty stream

Still I love it and I'll keep the dream

That some day though maybe not this year

My Hudson River will once again run clear.


from Sailng down my Dirty Stream -P Seeger
Listen toPete singing this from an old LP - click on http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lsYlSxRCdT4


The stretch of river from the Catskills to New York City is really beautiful - in spite of the quality of the water. You would never know you were heading into one of the world's largest cities when you arrive by water like this.

This part of the journey also was time for us to try out our anchoring abilities. We anchored for the night (first time in this boat) by a little island in the river. It didn't provide much protection from the wind and current but it did keep the pesky freighters and barges from running us over. Being our first time doing this in a spot where the water goes up and down with the tide and the current reverses every six hours or so with a strong wind pushing in the opposite direction half of the time, we lumbered out of bed a number of times to see if we were still there. All was good. We'll catch up on this sleep later 'cause tomorrow we want to head out at sunrise to travel a long day to the Big Apple! The greatest part of this anchorage was that we were about 20 metres from shore and on the shore was a very active train track!

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