Sailing on a Windless Day in the Hudson Valley (NY)

We headed to our sailboat yesterday, which is moored at Chelsea Yacht Club on the Hudson River in NY. 

My husband has a 33 foot sailboat that has been in various stages of renovations during the last few years.  A leak in the cabin top necessitated the entire gutting of the cabin ceiling, and after that was finished, well, it only made sense to fix the trim, paint the interior, etc.  The job is just about finished, and our goal yesterday was simply to finish the painting, and check on a few things. 

So we got to the club, and motored out to the boat (we’re on our way per the picture above).

As we got close to the boat (the right hand boat in the picture on the right), we saw there was once again a clump of seaweed and other plant life attached to the mooring ball and boat.  So we knew the first thing we would need to do was to clear the plant life away so it wouldn’t put stress on the mooring.  Earlier this week, we had to do this as well and it had taken us an hour to remove it.  As there is a lot of plant life, trees, and debris floating in the Hudson as a result of the recent hurricane, more of it had attached itself so we expected another long chore to add to our agenda yesterday. 

We were lucky and we removed the seaweed within a few minutes.  Then we managed to finish all the painting in record time, cleaned up the cabin, checked some mechanical stuff and put the Genoa sail back on since we had removed it prior to Hurricane Irene.  And we had plenty of afternoon left.

So all the sails were on (but not open), our work was done, and we had a bit of time left. 

Hmmmm, what to do, what to do.

We just HAD to take the sailboat out on the Hudson River, didn’t we?  Wouldn’t you? 

Was there wind?  Nah, not really, but we went anyway.

It’s very difficult to get a picture of a sailboat when you’re sailing in it, but following is proof we were able to sail.   We managed to go back and forth across the Hudson River a few times before calling it a day.  We were moving very slowly as the wind was barely there, but the boat performed marvelously and we answered the call of the water.

In the following picture, you can see the reflection of the sail in the water.  That’s us!

And here are the sails – slowly moving us across the river.