The first stretch of the Hudson is one of the more beautiful boating days on the East Coast. We had an early start since we wanted to make some good distance on the weekend day of cruising. This meant that I took the first shift driving while David napped. The Hudson Valley, blanketed in green trees rises sharply from the water and I found myself thinking that the landscape shared similarities with Pacific Northwest boating. Ironically, when I pulled up our blog post from 2 years ago for the same stretch of water, I said the same thing!

We made it all the way to Croton and rafted up with InQuest who had arrived a few minutes before us. We decided to chill on the boats for the afternoon rather than heading ashore — there’s not much close to the marina and we didn’t want to deal with dinghying with our scooters to ride out to the park and dam.

The next day, we had several ideas for our final destination, but ended up changing plans last minute as we were cruising by Poughkeepsie. We dropped anchor right on the Hudson just off the free dock at the park on the water. It was deeper than anything we’ve been anchoring in a while and we ended up letting out almost all our 300ft of chain. Russ and Jax tied up alongside us and we dropped in our dinghy for the short ride ashore. A short walk up the hill was Zeus Brewery where we had a beer and played a round of Hanabi.

Interestingly, while we had been at lunch, the tide had changed – meaning that the Hudson was flowing in the opposite direction when we returned to Highwind. Our anchor alarms were all going off since we had flipped around and dragged a little before re-catching. We knew this was going to happen and weren’t worried. David used this situation as an excuse to purchase a subscription to the Vesper service that gave him a remote anchor alarm on his phone so that we could keep an eye on the boat while we were ashore.

The wind had picked up while we were out and we decided not to remain for the rest of the day. We pulled anchor and headed a little further up the Hudson dropping anchor in Kingston. We were in a narrow river off the Hudson, so we decided to tie up bow-to-stern with Russ and Jax. This is where we both drop anchors and back into each other, tying up side-by-side and results in securing both boats such that we do not swing in a circle.

The next day was a work day and we stayed put in Kingston while Russ and Jax went to shore to explore. At the end of the day, I took advantage of the nice weather to set up my pole on the bow and had a little fun.

After that, we hopped in the dinghy and headed into town for a delicious dinner with Russ and Jax.

Next up, we did a short morning hop to Saugerties were we set up on another bow-to-stern anchor arrangement. At this point, the smoke from the Canadian fires had spread down the coast and the haze rolled in. We spent two days with our doors closed and everything smelling like smoke outside (thanks Jax for the photo!)

While everyone on the east coast has been shocked by this experience, it was really nothing new to us after spending several summers in the North West being hazed out on the boat by wildfires. Good ol’ global warming. Despite all this, we did manage to get on shore for one surprisingly FANTASTIC dinner at a restaurant that we walked by on our way to a different restaurant.

We did one more hop to an anchorage off Athens where we rafted again with Russ and Jax and they explored land while David and I stayed aboard Highwind and worked.

On Friday morning, we headed towards Shady Harbor, where we would be leaving Highwind for a week while we headed to Seattle. Our flight didn’t leave until Sunday, so on Saturday we completed several boat projects including replacing the guest toilet (a poopy job lol). While that was happening, Jax helped me take our excess wine, beer, and liquor to a local storage unit using the marina’s courtesy car. We’re doing this so that we don’t have to surrender any alcohol when we cross the Canadian border this time!

After a nice dinner at the marina restaurant, we headed to bed early, ready for a 4am taxi ride to the airport to head to Seattle!

[this post brought to you in part by me heavily referencing Ahoy! from Inquest, without which I never would have remembered the names of the places we stayed :)]