Did Monday end on a sour note?

Monday started out as the perfect day, with sunny skies and calm seas. We left the Ossining Marina at 8 am knowing that we had a full 8 hours to get north on the Hudson River. If we could travel that far today, it meant that by Tuesday we could be travelling on the Erie Canal heading west and looking to get to Lake Ontario by the weekend.

The river was dead calm again. No waves, and little wind and we were looking at a low tide with expectations of it rising in the afternoon. The route was familiar to us as we travelled this way a week ago but we kept our eyes open for anything new. There were lots of homes on the water and we documented the better looking ones for our blog.

Moving northbound on the Hudson gave us a different view when compared to our southbound journey. This time I took a Time Lapse video of West Point Academy and it will give you a better idea just how large the property is. Enjoy this quick overview of West Point.

As we were heading up the river we passed a spot on the map called Sturgeon Point. Some of our friends know that Sturgeon Point is across from our cottage and our view is of this point. Well today we passed a very similar spot, with the same look and the same name. It was interesting to see something so similar and it made us feel like we were home. If you look closely on the Chart plotter you can see the name Sturgeon Point.

We passed a few working barges and some frieghters again but the waterway was very quiet. I guess everyone went home after the weekend.

We passed the Meadows Lighthouse again, but this time the water was like glass and it reflected like a mirror. The weather was perfect today and it was one of my favorite phots of our journey.

After passing the lighthouse we moved northbound, where the waterway is wider and simply full of algae and other floating green Lilypad's that was collecting small sticks, so we had to be careful to ensure there were no logs caught in the floating greenery. We went past Kingston, a town we stayed in on our way to NYC, and shortly afterwards our Port Engine overheated and I shut it down quickly. We limped on our Starboard engine for another hour and managed to get to the town of Catskills at 4 pm. I was pretty sure we had plugged our strainers with the "junk" floating and told Jan and Cynthia that I would look at it after dinner.

We docked and then walked into town and what a nice surprise. The town had over 75 Cats mounted on pedestals spread out in the downtown. It was a very cool sight and we tried to get a picture of as man as we could find. They have been making these for 15 years and mounting them in front of stores after which they auction them off annually as a fundraiser.

The town was old but quaint, and had a variety of buildings and stores. We stopped at the local Thai Restaurant for dinner and had enough extra to take out, and it will feed ourselves for at least another day. It was a good choice to stop here for the night.

After dinner we came back to the boat and Captain Paul took the time to check the strainers to see if they were plugged. They seemed OK. Then he checked the impellor in the Port Engine and it didn't want to spin............. Oh Oh. Now what is wrong?

He was very confused as to why we had an overheating problem. With a stroke of luck he took the pulley housing off only to find that the belt was frayed and no cooling water was getting pumped to the engine, so that made sense. And thinking ahead, we had a spare pulley on board as part of the spares we brought with us.

Captain proceeded to put on the new pulley and trouble again - It was the wrong belt, so here we, are with no answers tonight. We are hoping to find a spare belt tomorrow morning.

Like I said in last nights post, "wait and see if anything happens" and sure enough it did, Now you will have to wait and see what our solution will be.

The good news is we made it a long distance today - and the Catskills is a nice spot.

Here is our Nebo Log for today. We travelled 129.2 KM's in 8.4 hours and had an average speed of 15.6 km/hr.