Cruising Around The Hudson River

Last weekend I finally went out for a spin in the river I’ve been living on a boat in for over a year. The harsh winter (and probably a lack of regularly starting the engines) left our starboard engine unable to start when we tried this summer. A friend of ours who is a mechanic and also owns a boat in the same Marina was kind enough to stop by, and within a few hours had made a lot of progress and was very close to starting up the broken engine.

We decided to celebrate the progress by taking his boat out for a loop around the Statue of Liberty. He has a small 20’ boat, which meant that we felt every wave and ripple, and got pretty wet. The ride was awesome though, and it was surreal cruising past downtown Manhattan, and then onto Liberty Island. We had to make sure to stay outside of the bouys that marked the federally restricted zone around the actual statue - no need to get the Homeland Security and the Coast Guard on our case.

After we got past the Statue of Liberty, we went to check out an abandoned boat that one of our friends was thinking of possessing and fixing up. We found the boat near the Liberty Science Center, just sitting by itself and anchored down. We successfully maneuvered our boat parallel to it, secured the two boats together, and then proceeded to board. It felt a little bit like we were Pirates of the Hudson, but in full disclosure we did have the permission of the boat’s former owner to do all this. After a few minutes it became clear that this boat was in rough shape, and restoring it would take far too much time. We untied our boat, turned around and went back to the marina - soaking in the view again.

When we got back, we decided to take one last shot at starting up our boat, and to our shock it worked! Rushing with adrenaline, and the uncertainty of the engines ever starting again, we decided that we had to go back out, but this time with our boat.

Our boat is twice the length of our friend’s, and it made a huge difference. The ride was smooth and comfortable, although extremely smokey we think due to some oil being inadvertently burned by one of our engines.

By the time we got out the sun had set and we got to see the New York skyline at night this time. We made the same trip as before, but this time stopped at another marina to refuel. As we were getting back I received a call from my brother that went along the lines of “have you had eaten dinner yet, and oh by the way where is the boat?”. He was pretty shocked to find that the place he called home was gone when he came back that night. Within a few minutes we were back, and just high on life. We tied up the boat to our dock, cleaned up things, and proceeded to eat dinner at an incredible Indian restaurant while the boat cleared out of smoke.

It's nights like this that make living on a boat worth it.