On our way to the watery weary canal

Dawn at Nyack

We left Manhattan reluctantly but the sun was shining the current was in our favour and we had to get going. We learned too that part of the Erie Canal was to open soon.

We decided to make it to Nyack, home to our friends Judy and Steve on Bentana who we had met in the Bahamas.

We made it to Nyack and just caught a quick visit with Judy and Steve and took a mooring ball, as did our friends on Georgia E. We were just climbing into bed at about 10:30 p.m. and bang! we could see a mast and lights on our transom. We had either dragged on our mooring ball into Georgia E or we had just swung into each other when the current changed. Either way, we had to move, so in the black and strong winds the boys and Scott and I moved Messenger over to another mooring ball. The winds calmed and we were all up in the night thinking we had dragged to shore, it was that still.

We left the next day and headed to Kingston, about 70 miles up the Hudson River. It was spectacular. It was once called the River of the Mountains by the First Nations people and it's easy to see why with the sharp peaks of the Adirondacks. We also passed by West Point. Reg is just studying about Ulysses Grant and Robert E Lee for his world history course and both had attended the historic military academy.

We docked at the Hudson River Maritime Museum and thoroughly enjoyed the exhibits. It has a lovely reinvigorated small waterfront. Unfortunately that includes dance bars that played music from about 11 p.m. to about 4 a.m. Boom Boom Boom Boom One Two Three Four Oh My God will it ever stop. That's the synopsis of our evening there. Never again.

Scott and I dragged ourselves out of bed at 6 a.m. to catch the current and took turns at the wheel while Scott took the sails down in preparation of taking our mast down at Castleton-Upon-the-Hudson, a do-it-yourself mast stepping facility and boat club. It's also one of the friendliest clubs on the lake.

It took all five of the crew of Messenger to wrangle that 55-foot 500-lb stick into place on the cradle we had left there last fall. It was growing cold and windy and the rain threatened, finally starting to pour just after we had got the mast down. The boat club was having a striped bass tournament - amazing fish which swim all the way up the Hudson to spawn then swim back to the ocean later this month. The annual migration also attracts harbour seals at times. It's a beautiful area of the river with low lying mountains, green swampy trees and historic buildings peaking out of the forest.

We ended up staying at the club that night and then travelled up to Waterford, New York today to get into position to do a bit of the canal. It's a real frustration to be this close to home and to be facing delays because of the flooding here.

We're not sure of our passages here - the canal is to be fully open next week but the next 10 days call for rain, so it's hard to know what's going to happen. Georgia E had to get their mast down in the Catskills but are hoping to meet us here. The Oswego Canal to Lake Ontario is closed however, so it's not clear how far they'll get either.

We did get some laundry done today, a five-block walk away. Scott picked up some groceries and tomorrow it'll be cleanup, school and we'll pick up propane before heading out Tuesday. Likely again in this cold rain. Yuck. We're very grateful for our little ceramic heater which is chugging away to keep the chill at bay. The Gilligan's Island DVD is helping keep our spirits up too.