PORT OF CALL - HAVERSTRAW

NORTH  TO THE HIGHLANDS

We bought the 38 Bayliner with money left to us by Aunt Helen's lover, Albert. It was because I sat for a couple of hours in the hospice listening to Albert tell me how much he loved Helen.  Too bad he didn't marry her until the Parkinson's stole his resolve. Don tells me I'm full of stuff about why he left us his pension money.  Whatever.

We've always had boats.  The one before Renaissance, l'Entre Acte, lawn tractor to French challenged friends, was burned by one of the Boys whose intention was to  burn a difficult ex-girlfriend's  boat in the slip next to ours.  Magnesium.  Goes up quick.  Even though our was diesel powered it burned to the water line in a half hour.  Small comfort, but the FBI agent said the arsonist was most probably whacked for bringing unwanted attention to the Family.

There was this boat, entry level yacht really, repo'ed by the bank and up for sale by Pete Napoli, a shady character in his own right.  We had no trade in; we had some money. With much fist banging and expletives for two hours the deal was made. 

We took a slip at  Haverstraw Marina as that is the most protected and deepest water marina on the Hudson.  It was carved out for the barges used to build the Tappan Zee bridge from March 1952 until the bridge was opened for traffic on December 15, 1955.  Second widest point in the river.  Go figure.  Made for a heck of a a bridge and marina.

The sea.  The smell of it.  Life and death smell.  You never forget.  Brackish to the Tappan Zee and sometimes as far up river to Poughkeepsie.  Salt from there down and out to the Sound, coating everything with white crystal. Silty mud brown to the north, turning deep marine blue to the south where the wake is whipped white like heavy cream.

We feel  Henry Hudson's Half Moon crew those first trips.  Each bend to the north is a new exploration.  Our home territory is from Croton's kitchen midden of the tribes that spill down the outcrop at Teller's Point headland. Teller bought the land from the Indians for a barrel of rum and twelve blankets.  The Sachems forever after chant in the light of full moons.  The place is now mostly tamed by breakwater dikes, the drums drowned out by Jet Ski voiceover.

 Still the weather can rage over Storm King Mountain to try even the best Fortress anchor money can buy.  One evening just after supper at anchor in Croton the front hit us out of nowhere like a wall.  Even with the rode payed out, windlass whining, red rode markers 10 feet apart flying out of the rode hold to more than 130', it was pitch, roll and fall off, pitch, roll and fall off with just enough power to keep the bow headed into the onslaught. Waves crash against the breakwater and plow into you. Huddle with the smart cat down in the fulcrum of the galley and watch the TV, books, dishes left to dry in the drainer smash around your head.  They say there's a little bulbous bottomed Dutch goblin, with a speaking-trumpet in this hand. He's heard speaking low Dutch in the wind and thunderclaps sometimes surrounded by imps in broad breeches gamboling and swarming in the storm like a swarm of flies. One captain of old said a Dutch hat could be seen on the top of his mainmast.  No one had the guts to climb up and get rid of the terrible hat.  It flew off at Pollipel Island, and the water went dead calm.  Apparently the jurisdiction of the Heer of the Donder Berg ends there.  The Croton storm would make a believer out of you.  We never passed Donderberg Mountain without giving the goblin a salute.

Quiet warm morning. Motor along at 12 knots across Haverstraw Bay looking like a Great Lake, twin Hino diesels thrumming.  Tan sudsy wake fanning out astern.  It's great to be alive.

First bend north:

Indian Point to starboard.  Used to be a meeting point for Indian tribes of the entire region- problems ironed out, marriage matches made, peace forged in the Mahican Nation.  Minsis, Lenni Lenapes, some westerners- Mohawks to see what was going on.  Henry Hudson wrote they had friendly attitudes, a complex social organization with a Sachem as leader, Hero to lead hunts, Owl with mighty voice and memory, and Runner-Messenger.  Hudson notes their ample food supplies and a peaceful lifestyle, and extensive territory. He couldn't have known their territory ranged from Albany to Long Island and on into Connecticut.  However, Hudson's crew took a dislike to them and started a fight.  The Dutch carried on a full-fledged war against the Indians for territory, and in the 1600s Small Pox finished them off.

In time, Indian Point was made into a lovely park on 320 acres, with a farm for the raising of vegetables for use on the steamers which plied the Hudson through the 1800s into the 1900'.  When the railroads were built on both sides the length of the river, the steamboat trade ceased. In 1960 Indian Point power plant was built smack dab over the Ramapo Fault and was doubled in size in 1978. 

Millions of Striped Bass fingerlings are regularly sucked into the intakes and killed.  And one hot summer the water temperature was so high the place had to be shut down for a time.  Human folly has no bounds.

Portside, World's End at West Point is a 219 foot swirling deepwater hole created from waters headed down, squeezed to narrow sharp turn.

History perfumes the air here.  Benedict Arnold had an unhappy 'vacation' at this place.  War raged all along here.  Bits of iron, clay pottery, tons of jettisoned brick ballast, can be scavenged all along the shores. 

All tamed now by cadets learning  high tech warfare here.  Cheers at the Army Navy games float over the water.  Long blast of our air horn when we see a cadet making out down by the water with his girl.  World's End. There's the sense that you are entering a new world now.  The river meanders and narrows.  You're heading for the Highlands.

Pollepel Island.  Native Americans told Hudson's crew it was haunted.  Dutch settlers called the place Polly Pell.  Poor Polly was washed ashore there, so the legend goes, when the sleigh she was riding in with her new husband wrecked and threw her in the icy waters.  She got her revenge: the Polypus Cactus took over. The haunting continued. Francis Bannerman built a castle on the island around 1900 as advertisement for his munitions business.  He stowed his surplus there and the whole shebang blew up in 1920 leaving magnificent ruins for Sic Transit Gloria Mundi moments for all who pass by.

Bannerman's Castle on Pollepel Island

Now on to the Highlands.