Day 266-267
We wound up staying an extra day at Great Kills Yacht Club because Sunday was predicted to have severe thunderstorms all day and high winds. Since we still had some large bodies of water to transit, either one would have kept us in place. As it turned out the day was windy, but the thunderstorms did not appear until later in the evening. Either way, we stayed on Sunday.
Monday we cast off our lines and began the trip to Manhatten and on up the Hudson River to Kingston, NY. There had been another PDQ named Azura at the dock near us for the last couple of days, and they left about an hour and a half before we were ready to go. They had told us that they were only going about half the distance we were planning for the day.
Leaving The Great Kill Yacht Club on Staten Island.
Navigating around the south side of Staten Island we soon approached the Verrazano Narrows Bridge and the entrance to New York Harbor.
We stayed to the east near Brooklyn to avoid the busiest part of the harbor and soon approached Governor's Island and Manhattan.
We navigated near the Statue of Liberty and Ellis Island.
We still had to contend with dodging numerous ferries and other commercial boat traffic on our way up the Hudson on the west side of Manhattan.
The New World Trade Center dominates the skyline of lower Manhattan.
We were passing Yonkers when we came up behind Diva Di, another PDQ 34. They had purchased their boat about they same time we had last year and spent last summer doing the "Down East Loop" which goes up the Hudson to Lake Champlain and then on to the St. Lawerance River, and then east to Nova Scotia, then south down the coast of Maine. They had stored their boat in Massachusetts for the winter and had just picked it up a couple of weeks ago to begin the Great Loop. They were also headed to the PDQ meetup in Brewerton, NY as we were. They hailed us and we chatted on the VHF for a few minutes. I felt like I knew them even though I had never met them because I followed their blog last year while they were on the Down East Loop.
Diva Di has the 75 horsepower engines as opposed to our 100 horsepower engines, so their cruise is not as fast as ours. We soon left them behind. Shortly thereafter we also passed Azura who had left from Great Kills ahead of us. They also have the 75 horsepower engines.
We began to see some interesting lighthouses.
We passed West Point on the way up the river.
The scenery was amazing with the river running between huge granite mountains. The water was often over 100 feet deep.
We reached another interesting lighthouse that marked the entrance to the harbor at Kingston. We traveled 107 miles that day, averaging over 16 mph. We were able to get such a good average speed because we had reached lower Manhatten about 2 1/2 hours before high tide, so we were able to ride a boost from the river current as the tide moved up the river all the way up to Kingston.
When we pulled into the dock at Kingston and I brought the engines to idle and the port engine died. We could not restart it, so I had to dock with only one engine. This also happened when we pulled into Great Kills and one more time a few weeks ago. After the first incident, I changed all of the primary fuel filters, figuring that at low speed the engine was starving for fuel. After that, it ran fine until the last two stops. There is also a secondary fuel filter on each engine that filters to a smaller micron size than the primaries, so I figured that the secondary filter needed to be changed. I neither had a filter aboard nor did I know how to change it if I did, so I set about finding someone to come to the boat with a filter and change it.
With the help of the marina, I finally found a diesel mechanic who was willing to come that day, but did not have the filter, it would have to be ordered for the next day, so we were at Kingston for another day. He came and took the filter off of the engine and it was quite dirty, so he took it with him to order another one. Big mistake! Apparently since the filter was not in place, and even though the valve was shut off, one of the attached fuel lines apparently drained into the pan under the engine, filling the boat with diesel fumes. We spent the rest of the evening trying with limited success to air out the boat.
The next morning I called the mechanic and told him he had to come immediately and clean up, which he did. Later he found a filter, came back and installed it. Since the boat smelled of diesel Sharon decided to walk into Kingston and do some sightseeing while I stayed on the boat to air it out, deal with the mechanic, and defrost the refrigerator. She walked the town and took some photos.
To get to town from our marina she had to walk over a nearby suspension bridge. Sharon reports that the terrain in Kingston is all uphill, both ways!
There were two Catholic churches in town, St. Peter's and St. Mary's. Sharon took some pictures at both.
St. Peter's School.
This Celtic Cross was at St. Mary's. It was dedicated to the Irish people who died during the Potato Famine in the 1840's and 1850's.
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