After a couple of days at Port Jefferson, we needed to head towards Brooklyn where we had a reservation for the latter half of the week. Since David was still bedridden, we decided to reserve a mooring buoy with the City Island Yacht Club, which had a free pickup service that ran until midnight, allowing me to get off the boat and run to the pharmacy to pick up a few things. We had a short early morning cruise and while I had a quick break between meetings for lunch, I went ashore. While I was waiting to pick up some lunch for us, the sky opened up and started dumping rain. Luckily I didn’t have to walk far to get back to the dock, and managed to convince the shuttle driver to take me back to Highwind.
The next morning we again woke up early in order to give me time to make my way to Manhattan to spend the day at the office with my colleagues. It was a beautiful morning cruise down the East River.
I hopped on the subway and made my way into the office, which is just down the street from One World Trade Center and has an amazing view of the building from the window! At the end of the day we gathered for a Happy Hour. I’ve been working with these folks for over a year now and this was my first time meeting most of them face-to-face!
We were staying at the same marina where we had briefly stayed on our way south last year, and the views did not disappoint.
Since David was still unable to move, we ended up cancelling all our dinner reservations in the city. And due to his injury, we had made no other plans. On Friday after work (on this day, I commuted by ferry), I headed over to Body and Pole to catch a class, and ended up registering for a Saturday afternoon class as well to fill the time. On Saturday morning, I decided to explore the city on my own while David was recuperating. On a whim, I started walking north and ended up walking over the Brooklyn Bridge (something I do not recommend on Saturday in the midst of tourist-season!) and ended up walking all the way to Washington Square park (about 5 miles).
Walking over Brooklyn Bridge 
On Saturday evening, after my pole class, David was feeling barely mobile enough that we decided to try a walk to a nearby restaurant (our previous reservations would have taken us all the way into the city), and we ended up at a Yemeni restaurant and had an enjoyable evening.
The next morning, we set off for what would be the first new leg of our trip in a while – heading north up the Hudson, towards Canada (assuming the border opening happens on schedule). The weather was a bit overcast.
Our destination was Half-Moon Bay Marina at Croton-on-Hudson, which boasted several things to do in town, including a nearby scenic dam/waterfall. Once we’d secured the boat, we pulled out the scooters and headed the short distance to the Croton Dam, after a short detour up to a 9/11 memorial along the Hudson. There was a huge state park around the dam. Since David’s back still wasn’t good for long distances walking and I had worn myself out the previous day with a 5 mile walk and a pole class in the evening, we didn’t make it up the hill to the viewpoint over the dam, but we did enjoy from the park.
That evening, we installed the first of our new solar panels. They arrived over a month ago, but between David’s parents’ visit and then destroying his back, we hadn’t had a chance to put them on the roof yet. After some careful measuring, we decided to not try to push it to fit every last square inch of the roof with solar, and instead to go with a 15-panel setup, set up in 5 parallel groups of 3 panels. We are using the 170 watt SunPower flexible panels, which are a huge weight savings over rigid panels (6 lbs each instead of 40), and actually have higher efficiency (25% instead of 23%). When all is done, we’ll have 2550 watts of solar on the roof, but this time around we only put 1020 watts up before the rain came (two sets of 3).
The next morning, early, we headed further north up the Hudson – a beautiful stretch of water that reminded us a lot of PacNW boating. A little bit of fog and haze caused very flat lighting, so it was hard to get any good pictures, but it was a gorgeous morning. Among many other pretty sights, we passed by Bannerman Castle, which was created by an old arms dealer that apparently sold around 50% of the cannons still in US museums to this day.
Our destination was just south of Kingston, NY, where we would be leaving the boat for a couple weeks while we headed back to Seattle for another visit. Upon our arrival, we discovered that the one bridge that connects where our marina is to Kingston proper has been closed for maintenance for a while, basically shutting down our access to the town. So we ended up effectively holing up on the boat while David’s back slowly got better for the few days until our flight.