Wednesday, October 16, 2024

Another Grounding…and Shrimp Pesto Pasta


Haverstraw – 3 nautical miles in dinghy and 2 kilometers walked

We picked up Ben and Kate and the four of us dinghied up the river for a mile or so to the ship’s store in Haverstraw Marina. As promised, they had our replacement accumulator tank, a spare navigational bow light, a spare manual bilge pump then of course I found a few more things in the store that we needed  – cotter pins, rings, diesel fuel additive, spare in-line fuse holder. I am mentally and physically unable to leave a marine store empty handed.

 

Back at the boat I replaced the accumulator tank and we spend a bit more time troubleshooting the source of the water collecting in our shower room, then we had a quick lunch and dinghied into town. We stopped briefly at the children’s park because I wanted to see if I could still do a pull-up or if my muscular system had already turned to boater jelly.

 

We went to the town library and spent a glorious hour or two using the free wifi to update our various devices, but mainly sitting in comfy chairs reading books and Spanish beauty and fashion magazines. Though most of what they had on the shelves was in Spanish, I did find a few English ones of interest – the Dummy’s Guide to Samsung Tablets, a small book on the history of Puerto Rico, and a manga book with the story of Dracula. It was time very well spent.

 

From here, we stopped at the bakery for a quick snack and fresh bread, then we began our search for tortilla chips, as the avocados ripening on the counter had hit their peak so it was guacamole night. It was surprisingly difficult. We went into four bodegas and found about a hundred different brands of plantain chips but no regular tortillas, until I spotted a lonely and likely well-aged bag at the top of a shelf in the last one we tried, for the reasonable price of nearly ten bucks Canadian.

 


Ana stopped at the thrift store to find a new white shirt, as yesterday she had snagged her current well-loved white shirt on a fence and ripped half the arm off. I hung out on the sidewalk, next to some sort of addictions centre and watched the lively pedestrian and vehicular traffic in this crazy little Latino town. It’s fun being the guy loitering around, doing nothing, instead of my regular role rushing from place to place trying to get things done.

I was feeling pretty good after my first volley of pull ups so we stopped again on the way back to the dock for a few more. I’d been meaning on setting up a little pull up bar on the boat arch and doing fifty per day, but so far I hadn’t got to that project. Maybe tomorrow.

 


On the way back to the anchorage we saw our Jeff in our other buddy boat heading in. He’d had a bad couple of days. First he picked up some sort of 24 hour flu and had been barking his guts out. Then the mooring he was on back at Chelsea Yacht Club dragged in the 40 knot gusts the day before and in trying to recover he got a whole mess of rope and line and other underwater treats all wound up in his propeller, disabling the boat, and he had to get rescued by a frail, 75 year old club member after sounding his air horn to attract attention. He ended up taping a steak knife to the end of a boat hook and slicing his way blindly the mess and, miraculously, managed to cut it free…or at least enough of it to get the propellor spinning again. It’s that inspiring boater “can do” attitude.

 


Anyway, Jeff’s bad luck continued, as he had been looking at the Hudson tide tables instead of the Haverstraw ones and thought we were just off high tide but, in fact, we were at the lowest of the low tide and he grounded himself on the way in, then got off that patch and floated into a bunch of rocks, scraping against those, then motored over into another grounding. I zipped over in the dinghy, as watching his boat being used in a game of nautical pinball was gut wrenching, and as I motored over my dinghy engine smashed into a bunch of rocks and bounced up sickeningly as the dinghy stopped, stuck on some rocks just barely under the surface. I pulled myself off there then used my portable depth sounder to find a deeper path out and Jeff was able to get free. I tied my dinghy to his boat and jumped aboard to manage the anchor while he steered. I think it is simply incredible that he’s been able to mostly single-hand this 36 foot boat so far and for so long. Although he did admit later that he’s hit more shit and grounded himself more times in the past three days than in his entire boating career. I guess that’s river sailing for you.

 


After taking his dogs for a walk and squirt, Jeff joined us on SeaLight for an incredible meal of shrimp pesto pasta and garlic bread that Ana whipped up, then Ben and Kate came over shortly afterwards for guac and chips. It was nice to have all three buddy boats together again, and these guys are just so much fun and have so many interesting stories. We love this crew!

This was our third and final day in Haverstraw – tomorrow we leave for the final run to New York City.

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