7/10/18: We left Poughkeepsie early in the morning, saddened to see another set of friends go by, knowing that we may never see them again. It seemed like an ending to a story that started last fall, and now the final chapter has been written. But we know that our story is still being written, so we said our goodbyes, turned our bow south, and sailed onward.
We picked our next stop to be Haverstraw, about 35 miles south of Poughkeepsie and about 25 miles north of New York City. On our way, we entered perhaps the most stunning part of the Hudson River yet. We went through the Hudson Highlands with Storm King State Park and Bear Mountain State Park. These parks contain mountains 1400 feet high with towering cliffs and rocky escarpments. Breathtaking. We passed the remains of Bannerman’s Castle on Pollepel Island, an abandoned military surplus warehouse. And we went by West Point, the US Military Academy, where the US Army’s officers are trained. It was truly a sight to behold. We could not begin to describe just how impressive the buildings on this campus were.
We arrived in Haverstraw about noon, hoping to spend the day exploring the town. Sadly, this didn’t happen. There were a couple marinas we could get into there, but we chose on called Half Moon Bay. The guide books we had said the had a minimum of 9.5 feet of water in the marina basin, and 12 feet of water in the bay approaching the marina. We were told by our Erie Canal friends that there really wasn’t that much water in the marina, and that Brian and Jeanne (the two friends of ours with a similar boat) had grounded in the marina at low tide. We asked the marina if they had enough depth. They said yes. Three separate guide books also said as much. Well, maybe they had dredged the marina, or maybe our friends were mistaken? We pulled in to Half Moon Bay about 2 hours before low tide, and tied to a face dock to get a slip assignment. That dock showed 6.4 feet of water. Our draft is 6 feet, which gave us about 5 inches of water under our keep. The dockmaster said there would be more water in our assigned slip, and there was plenty of water throughout the marina to maneuver. As we went to our slip, our propeller was kicking op silt and mud behind us. We pulled into out slip and the depth showed 6.2. Not good, considering we had another foot of water to lose before low tide hit. We even pulled out our lead lind and measured the depth the “old fashioned way”, just to insure our instruments weren’t giving false readings. The lead line measured 6 feet. We told the dock master, and he couldn’t believe it, still claiming there was 9.5 feet throughout the marina. At this point we were getting pretty angry, and he offered to put us on the pump out dock, which he claimed was the deepest in the marina. At this point, we read 6.0 on the meter, but tried to back out of our slip anyway. We moved about 5 feet and were stuck hard. We were able to get back in the slip and tie off, but had to wait 2-1/2 hours before the water was deep enough for us to move (about 4:30 that afternoon). We watched as the meter dropped all the way to 5.2, which means we had about 8-10 inches of our keel in the mud. Later that afternoon, we managed to back out and get to the pump out dock, where we spent the night. Needless to say, we saw no town that day!
We were really upset at the fact that the guidebooks all confirmed there was ample water, and the marina also told us as much. We don’t know if there once WAS enough water but there no longer is or perhaps they are using high tide as the basis for their depths (which is a big no-no since we really want to know what the MINIMUM depth will be so we can maneuver regardless of tide). However, we think the most likely explanation is that this marina is simply misrepresenting themselves, telling the guidebooks something they just don’t have. And they are probably doing it to attract more boaters. In any case, we felt it a bit fraudulent, since EVERY marina we’ve been to knows their minimum depths without fail.
Anyway, that was our experience at Haverstraw. Tomorrow, we head to New York City to spend a night at Liberty Landing Marina, the most expensive marina on our journey so far.
Pics of Haverstraw
