CHAPTER NINETY NINE: HEADING UP THE HUDSON RIVER TO OUR FIRST LOCK

CHAPTER NINETY NINE: HEADING UP THE HUDSON RIVER TO OUR FIRST LOCK

How could that “short” day of sightseeing produce such a lengthy blog (Chapter 98, Parts I and II)? And I didn’t even give you my observations of Woodstock. Suffice it to say, the hippie spirit is still alive and doing well all along Tinker Street in downtown Woodstock. Here are a few signs posted on the main street from the “Education Department”

ON THIS SITE STOOD AMERICAN PATRIOT ROB’T HASS WHO BELIEVED THAT A HEALTHY DEMOCRACY MUST DISCOURAGE APATHY AND RESPECT DISSENT.

And

ON THIS SITE STOOD A LOCAL MARKET BANKRUPTED BY THE MONOPOLISTIC, MAKE-IT-CHEAPER-IN-CHINA, ANTI-UNION BIG BOX STORE WHERE YOU SHOP.

“Ye Olde Hippie Shoppe of Woodstock” sells vinyl ecopaints. Its sign is in rainbow colors and R. Crumb comic book writing. I stopped in to see the exhibit at the Woodstock Artists Association. They’re having a huge auction September 1. Their offerings include some fairly skimpy drawings by Jerry Garcia, one Erte, and most of the rest a mix of media from acrylic landscapes to pottery to sculptures by local artists. There was no one in the gallery, but a querulous woman who claimed she wanted to bid on some items but found the website too confusing to figure out how to bid, if she and her husband were away September 1. But she wasn’t sure they would be away. I know these things because she repeated them at least 10 times. It could have been a bad acid trip – for her. So if you missed the Summer of Love in San Francisco in 1967 and you did not make it to Max Yasgur’s farm for the Woodstock Concert in 1969, and you want to experience the “New Age” at this late date, go to present day Woodstock. I must say that “Sunflower”, the grocery store, has a fantastic display of organic fruits and vegetables. That alone was worth the visit. We’re still enjoying the pluots.

Okay, that’s it for the land excursions on Wednesday, August 28. On Thursday morning the Admiral fired up Slow Motion’s engines and we cruised up river with the current toward New Baltimore, the home of an outstanding marina, Shady Harbor. We started around 6 a.m. and the river was dead calm. The sun was rising. It was a cool, crisp, almost-autumn morning. The Admiral and I kept taking photos of the Hudson River Valley – you have to see it from the water. We emailed some of the photos for friends to enjoy the moments with us. The combination of smooth river water, green islands and hillsides, and castles atop many of the hills, was very pleasing. At about 8 a.m. everything changed. Dense fog descended all around us, and for the next two and ½ hours, we navigated tensely with the use of radar and total concentration to avoid logs, other boats and the two shores. We were traveling on the narrowest part of the Hudson River. We knew that huge barges were using the river to get to Albany and back, and we prayed that we could see them, or they could see us, before a collision. Fog, next to lightning, has to be the biggest hazard on water. It creeps in on little cat’s feet – okay, not really – but it surrounds you without much notice, and then it just overstays its welcome by a few hours. When there is no wind, and when there is a difference between the water temp and the air temp, there is fog. The sun appeared to be burning through the fog, but then it disappeared again for another hour. When someone tells you they’re in a fog, feel sorry for them, because it’s not a good place to be, especially on water.

But the fog lifted a few hours before we arrived at Shady Harbor, and things were looking up. The folks at this marina sounded really accommodating on the telephone and we looked forward to our stay. As we pulled up to the dock, Sean and Cody, two very able dock hands greeted us and tied up all the necessary lines with dispatch. They also did the fancy coiling of the lines, which I love and which the Admiral doesn’t. Sean pointed to their swimming pool – it was sunny by now, in the 80’s and humid – bye, bye early taste of fall. I did not need a second invitation. I paid for the night and sped back to Slow Motion to put on my bathing suit to test the pool waters. People often ask us if we have been swimming in the rivers, bays, inlets and other waterways we have traversed. Are they nuts? Most of the water we cruise through is extremely polluted – the Caloosahatchee in Florida comes immediately to mind as the worst, the one that destroyed the Admiral’s polarized sunglasses in seconds. Some of the water contains alligators. The Chesapeake Bay has a banner crop of stinging sea nettles, or jellyfish ready to put red welts all over your body. Then there are the rivers, like the Hudson, with powerful currents, so if you jump off Slow Motion’s swim board in Albany, you’ll end up in the water in the New York Harbor – almost, anyway. You see my point? That’s why swimming pools are so coveted along our route.

Another great thing about swimming pools is that you meet folks there who have done a lot more traveling on water than you have, and you always learn something. At the Shady Harbor swimming pool, I met a couple with a 35 foot power boat based as Stony Point, New Jersey (or New York?). They were heading to Crescent for Labor Day. I had no idea where Crescent was, and they told me it was located on the shore of the Mohawk River shortly after you completed going through the Waterford series of locks. There’s a really big to-do in Crescent every Labor Day – a clam bash. This was important information, because the Admiral and I try to avoid any kind of bash, when we’re traveling every day and just want to sleep at night, starting at about 8:30 p.m. Bashes – with their drinking and music and loud talking – tend to interfere with sleep. This couple also told me that Superstorm Sandy had destroyed their home marina. Their boat (which was tied up on the water) and nine others survived with minimal damage, but the rest of the boats – dozens of them (many of them on land) – and the marina itself were destroyed. It’s up and running again, as are most of the northern New Jersey marinas. But it must have been devastating to drive to your marina right after Sandy wreaked her havoc to see only water in the space where your boat had been dry-docked for the winter and to realize that your boat had been smashed to smithereens or carried out into the ocean to be pulverized there.

When we arose the next morning, Friday, to leave, this couple from Stony Point came over from their boat, tied next to ours on the T head, and they released our last two lines for us. This is the part of boating that I really, really like. Everyone helps out on the dock where their boat is tied. Yes, it’s for self-preservation to make sure that some dunderhead doesn’t whack your boat, as he/she is leaving. But it is also a vital part of the boating community to help one another on the docks. And it never hurts to get a friendly sendoff by people who wish your fair weather and calm waters. It’s a really great way to start the day.

Our trip from Shady Harbor took us past more Hudson River Valley beauty and then to the more urbanized shores of Albany and Troy New York. Near the end of the day’s travel, we were going to pass through our first Hudson River lock, the federal lock at Troy. This is a direct quote from the Troy Lock’s website: “Opened in 1916 it was one of the first modern locks along the present day canal system. It contains a single chamber that is 520 feet long, 45 feet wide and 17 feet deep. At normal operating depths, it lifts boats 14 feet.” What a nice “lift” near the end of the day. We called ahead and spoke with the lock master, who told us to hail him on Channel 13 on the radio about 10 minutes before our arrival, and he would have the lock ready for us. We really thought we would see a lot more traffic on the Hudson, as we approached Albany, and that the lock could be crowded. But that wasn’t the case. When we had tied up at Shady Harbor the day before, and as I cooled myself in the clean, clear swimming pool water, a lot of very large boats and barges kept chugging by on the River. It was a veritable parade of Big Boats. The Admiral posited that the captains had pulled off somewhere on the river to wait out the morning fog, and now they were making up time to get to Albany that afternoon. When I say “big boats”, I mean really, really big, the kind you expect to see on the ocean, not in the narrowest part of the Hudson River. They were an impressive array of vessels. We saw a number of the barges the next day, as we cruised through Albany and Troy. They were being unloaded next to construction sites or manufacturing plants. Their tugs had moved on to the next job.

You don’t want to be reading while you’re cruising on the Hudson River for the first time. I’m 2/3 of the way through a Kingsolver novel, and I want to finish it. But I would miss too much. One of the Hudson River School artists, Frederic Church, built Olana, a 19^th century structure near Catskill on the top of Church Hill. I scanned the horizon for ten minutes looking for it. I think I saw it, but maybe on our trip south I can confirm the sighting. Before you get to this building, you have to keep your eyes pointed to the hills near Saugerties to find the rebuilt mansion of Robert Livingston, called Clermont. The original was burned down by the British in 1777, as part of their burning through the Catskills tour, which included the leveling of Kingston as well. Next to the castles and estates there are amazing lighthouses that look like mini-mansions built on an attractive base of rocks. I’m a sucker for lighthouses and have taken almost as many pictures of them as I have of bridges. Fortunately, the Admiral also falls for about every lighthouse we see, so I don’t hear the refrain: “Not another lighthouse photo!” when I point my I Phone and shoot. Everywhere we cruise we see the influence of the Dutch settlers, following in the wake of Henry Hudson’s Half Moon (Halve Maen). Henry Hudson was English, but he explored and navigated the Hudson River on behalf of the Dutch East India Company. And many Dutch settlers came shortly after his early 17^th century explorations. As the second settlers, after the Native Americans, the Dutch started naming locations where they established villages and towns. For example, the word “Rondout”, which is the name of a creek, a former town, a marina and many other sites, is the Anglicized version of the Dutch word for fort, “reduyt”, which is similar to the English word for fort, “redoubt”. Indeed there was a fort (reduyt) built at the entrance to what is now Rondout Creek. “Reduyt” showed up on maps as “Ronduyt” as early as 1666, so it’s not a big leap to get to Rondout from there. There is a Dutch word, “ronduyt”, which means frankly or positively, but it’s pretty clear that Rondout was originally the Dutch word for fort. Mixed in with the Dutch names are Native American place names, like Esopus, a town and a creek. Esopus means “high banks” in the language of the Esopus tribe which lived there. I’m sure when I say “Esopus” out loud I butcher the pronunciation. But at least I know its roots.

You definitely don’t want to be reading when you enter the federal lock at Troy, especially if you’re tasked, as I was, to hold the 38,000 pound Slow Motion next to the lock’s wall, so it wouldn’t flop around in the lock, when the water came rushing in. In order to do this nearly impossible feat, I was given a very old line by the Admiral – one we can afford to get really slimy – and I was told to wrap it around the bottom of a cable affixed to the wall of the lock. Sound easy? You have one chance to do it right. Slow Motion may be slow, but she moves, and I had to get the line around the cable before she moved far enough away from the cable that my arms could no longer reach it. Pressure. Suddenly I was feeling what the Admiral feels every day, as he contemplates our navigation hurdles, the weather, the leak in the propeller, the bilge buzzer going off, the unpredictable boaters, and whether he can trust his co-captain – me, silly! – to get the line around the cable. Well, I’m here to tell you I did it on the first try. What a relief! Because there really isn’t a second try. We were the only boat inside the lock, so there were no major distractions. And the Admiral had given me training the day before on what I had to do. Preparation is the key, again.

This Troy Lock is way cool. It carried Slow Motion 14 feet higher than when we entered. And once we were at the new level, the gates opened at the north end, and we were released to head up the waterway leading to the Champlain Canal. At a juncture about 3 miles north of the Troy Lock, we saw the sign for the Erie Canal directing us to the left. Thank God for signs. Our charts ran out shortly after the Troy Lock, and we were navigating chartless for the first time. We made the left hand turn and before us lay the famous Waterford Welcome Center seawall. This is the seawall that will be entertaining tugboats from all over starting September 4, ending September 9. As we approached the wall, Rip van Winkle – I swear it was him, a guy with long white hair and 20 year old rumpled clothing – directed us to a spot right behind the Waterford historic tug, Buffalo. Only trouble with this direction was that the space looked to be about 48 feet long. Catch my drift? The Admiral was fit to be tied – but not in that small space. He politely suggested that we could tie up in a larger space just a few boats down the seawall. Rip would have none of that. This was HIS dock, and G-dammit, we were going to follow his instructions. The Admiral asked if the tight space he had directed us to had 50 amp power. Rip responded tersely: “Haven’t got a clue.” This really inspired confidence in his knowledge of the dock and his ability to judge the size of the space he wanted to jam us into. He was very insistent that we not go anywhere else. At the point of this standoff, the guys from the historic Tugboat and some fellows from other boats tied up along the seawall came over to help us squeeze into the designated spot. It was a miracle! We actually fit into the space without damaging the tug in front of us or the trawler behind us. AND, the space had 50 amp power. We were happy, right? Not exactly. The Admiral is not used to such rude treatment. However, a trip to Rip’s office/throne room, where he had developed a more conciliatory tone, started smoothing the Admiral’s ruffled feathers. It also helped that this place has no dockage fee, only a $10 fee for electricity, and you can stay tied up there free for 48 hours. It’s first come, first served, but we were fortunate that we arrived early enough in the day that there was plenty of room – well, sort of.  

And finally, at Waterford, we were at the gateway to the Erie Canal. This is where it all begins, at the Flight of Locks, E-2 through E-6. We literally ran up to the first lock from the seawall. As we got near the lock, we saw a rushing waterfall tumbling over concrete steps – this was the first lock built, so incredibly narrow. Now the original lock is used to allow the water to flow out of the modern lock, which is right next to it. As we got to the first lock, E-2, we saw the majestic gates open on the south end. Four boats entered. We watched as the crews grabbed for the cables or long hanging ropes with boat hooks. You have your choice to use either the fixed cable or long slimy ropes hanging all the way down the wall. Every boater seemed to be able to hold their boats next to the wall, as the water rose – get this – 33.55 feet. I am not kidding. By the time you get through the entire Flight of Locks, your boat has been raised 169 feet. You get through all of these five locks in less than half a mile. This means that the Flight of Locks provides the largest lift in the shortest distance on any canal system in the world! (Source: www.nycanals.com website). Boy, were we in for a treat when we went up this Flight in two days. We watched the four boats rise, and only one started floating off the wall – the guy had let go of the boat hook. But it only takes one to cause damage. Fortunately, there was not another boat nearby. And all four boats left E-2 in the same condition they had entered it. But the boaters’ lives had been transformed forever. Is that too dramatic? Well, just a tad. But you know what I mean. There we were beholding one of the manmade wonders of the world, and it was awesome. I can’t wait to tell you about our own lock experiences – in the next blog. We’re getting up tomorrow at 5 a.m. to head back through the locks, so I’ve already given away that today, Saturday, August 31, WE MADE IT THROUGH THE FLIGHT OF LOCKS! Hurray! Just how we accomplished that feat of derring-do will require that you read on – Chapter 100 – unbelievable.