September 2 -- Closing The Loop; Croton Bay Back To The Harlem -- 47 NM

The Hudson, being a river, is relatively narrow compared to Long Island Sound. It's wider at it's southern mouth -- the Battery -- and much narrower north of the furthest we get on this cruise, but still narrow. Our chart plotter draws a pink line in our wake which it calls our "track". This is useful in tricky narrow passages because if we got ourselves in, then, subject to lower tidal height, we can get ourselves back out by following the trail of the pink breadcrumbs. This is not to suggest, however, that there is nothing new to see on the return trip. In fact, nature presents an ever changing view. It had rained during the night and we dried off the cockpit as best we could and left at noon in light drizzle, which cleared shortly, leaving things a bit foggy. The fog rolled over the edge of the Palisades.

Due to my distraction while outbound I failed to capture pictures of the architecturally interesting "new" twin Tappan Zee Bridges which were built only a few years ago to replace -- not supplement -- the "old" bridge of the same name which had been built recently, in the 1960's.

Manhattan's Upper West Side with the tall.skinny 57th Street residential spindles.

Barge with tug, but on anchor.

Classic large cruiser under Riverside Drive.

Motor vessel "Lionesse V" anchored mid-river in about 45 feet of water. she is available for charter and can be yours, for a group of up to twelve friends, for a week of luxury; only $450K to $750K, depending on the season. For you perhaps; not me.

Battery Park City, residential, built on land fill from the excavation of the World Trade Center with the Freedom Tower looming above.

Tide timing was perfect today. If we had left an hour later, we would have arrived only half an hour later, but at 7:30 it was getting dusky and it was a pleasant cool ride, with foulie tops and bottoms keeping off the cold at first until it warmed and dried up. With the Yanmar constantly at 2000 RPMs almost the whole way and no sails up into the southerly winds, the only variable factor in our speed over ground was tidal flow. We started at just under six knots sped up to more than eight, declined a bit before the Battery and then started up the East River at 4.8. But this quickly built to 5.5 until. at about 34th Street, on a lark, I put up the small jib which shot us up to 6.1 and climbing to more than 8 through Hells Gate and between the Brothers and under the two Bronx-Long Island bridges. Approaching our mooring field we greeted the Wednesday Night Racers who were coming out to do their thing for the last race of the series..

I love cruising, but it is always great to get home safely.

We plan to live aboard for the next few days before transporting our crew to their land base and reverting to day sailing for the remainder of the 2020 sailing season.