Labor Day Weekend

What a quiet weekend it was here in Tarrytown. Everyone that we met here told us that this past weekend was the quietest it has been in years. They blame it on the economy....oh well , so is life.
Even the guy working the fuel dock brought in some extra help, and they sat around all day pumping fuel in only a handful of boats. Monday morning there were a total of 6 cars in the marina parking lot.....it kind of reminded me of Oak Park Resort Marina.... LOL



My father, who passed in 1968 at the age of 50, is entombed in an underground vault in  St. Raymond's Cemetery, in the Bronx
(Click on the picture for a larger image)

 On Saturday, we drove to the Bronx, stopped at St. Raymonds Cemetery to check on my dad's grave, and then on to visiting some of Dottie's family at Askov Hall in the old neighborhood of Throgs Neck. Sunday and Monday was spent driving around the Hudson Valley looking at different marinas in which to keep our boat. It is still up in the air.
We hit upon some very nice marinas in this area, so now it really just becomes a matter of cost.

We made plans to drive to Connecticut to see a few more marinas then meet our friends, the Parisis' for dinner on Tuesday, and we will be returning to Clyde on Thursday.

Final Post to this Trip

It was an uneventful 5 hour car ride back to Syracuse, picked up my Chrysler Sebring Convertible and followed Dottie to the Spaghetti Warehouse Restaurant for dinner then onward to the Enterprise Car Rental at Hancock Airport.

We arrived back in Clyde at about 9PM......however, the memories of this trip will last a lifetime!!

3 Days of Classes

Today was the offical end of the 2012 NYSFDA Convention.
It finished up at 01:00 PM AFTER a two hour embalming class presented by Jack Adams, who is a licensed funeral director and representative of the Dodge Corp.
Last night was the closing banquet, a semi formal event held at the Grand View Catering facility.....and what a facility it is.

Cocktail hour went from 6PM to 7:30 PM......raw bar and all. It reminded me of a NY C style wedding.....I have never seen so much food, properly presented, and excellently prepared.

The Casket Cake

Venetian Hour

Dinner was choice of 4....and then came their Venetian hour, complete with demi-tasse, canolis, sfogliatella (my favorite pastry in the world....) and any other desert  you could ask for.

My best friend, Jim Parisi, attended the last day of the convention also. When it was done, we went back to the boat, picked up Dottie and went to lunch at Shadows Restaurant. This restaurant sits high above the marina and is an excellent choice. It is owned by the Bonura Family, who also owns the Grand Hotel, the Grand View Catering Facility, Shadows Marina 3  area country clubs and 9 other restaurants or hospitality venues in the Beacon, Newburgh, Poughkeepsie area. They know how to 'Run a hospitality" business like no other that I have seen.




View looking South into Westchester and NYC



View looking North



Lunch at Shadows

View from Shadows overlooking marina

Kingston to Poughkeepsie

Well, we did it....we made it to Poughkeepsie!!!!

We left Kingston this morning at 11AM and arrived in Poughkeepsie at 01:15PM......a bit over two hours, two huge rain storms and the wind at 25 MPH on our nose all the way, however it was a great trip.



Shadows Marina with the M/V Lucky Find III in the foreground

Shadows Marina has got to be the nicest place we have stopped so far.....all that is missing is a swimming pool. This marina has it all, a beautiful restaurant with dockside service till 2AM, indoor and outdoor dining, indoor and outdoor bars, Free WiFi, great bathhouses. When you come into the marina, you are greeted by their consirege (Captain Keith Gee and Miltie, the restaurant manager ) and two other dockhands that take your lines, and tie you up where they want you. Everything here is brand new including all docks, electrical and water service utilties. Reservations here are tough to get because they are at 100% capacity with a two year waiting period.....but I made mine back in January, and sure enough, they had me etched in.....It is definitely a world-class marina.

New docks and cleats. All cleats are on tracks that allow them to be moved to wherever you need them

Connected to Shadows Restaurantm is the Grand View Ballroom, which bills itself as "Elegant Banquets"....they do 2 weddings each weenekend day, 2 on Friday evenings, 2 Saturdays and 2 on Sundays....However, they are booked solid for the next 4 years.

Anway, dinner tonight was aboard the boat with a chicken ceasar salad and corn on the cob. Dottie also made a fresh tomato salsa and peaches ala mode was the desert of the evening.......excellent!!!

 

The NYSFDA Convention begins tomorrow.....this coming weeks blogs will be about the convention and our future plans. As of right now, we have no plan in place, however we would like to continue southward to NYC and Da Bronx. We'll let you know first.......and on here!

Coeymans to Kingston

When I woke up this morning at 4....I realizied that I never made a reservation for a marina in Kingston.

Called the Rondout Yacht Basin at 8:30AM, and they had a spot available, so we took off at 9AM.....It rained all the way to Kingston and we arrived there at 1PM. Visibility was less than 2,000 feet all day, but it still was a great ride down the Hudson.We both forgot how nice it is to see freighters, tugs, barges and tour boats on the water.
It is two dollars a foot plus 5 for electric here, however their WiFi works great, they have a nice in-ground swimming pool and the staff is very friendly.
We met 4 other "Looper" couples here and sat with them to chew the fat. Dottie grabbed a cab and went into the town to do some grocery shopping at the local Shop-Rite. If you should ever need a taxi in the Kingston area, call Dial-A-Ride Taxi  (AKA- Big John's Cab service), at 845-532-8887. The service is fantastic, and Big John is a riot and just a real nice guy.
With rain and all, it was a great day anyway.....LOL

Tomorrow is the last day of traveling (and updating this blog)  for a while. We'll go from Kingston to Poughkeepsie, check in at the NEW SHADOWS MARINA, register for convention and be in the Poughkeepsie area till Thursday, 16th of August.

The Majestic Hudson River - Waterford to Coeymans



Today was a day that I have been looking forward to for a while now. We finally entered the tidal waters of the Hudson River.

In the Hudson River, with the cities of Troy and Albany coming into view.

There was a 7 foot tide and a 8 mph current. We had been fighting the current for a while, but we finally arrived at Coeyman's Landing Marina at about 12:15 PM. Coeymans is located about 15 miles south of Albany, NY.



City of Albany, NY with the capitol buildings in foreground



Thank God they have floating docks here too....did not have to worry about the tide with those docks. By the time we finished lunch at 1:00PM, the tide was out a full 8 feet. We have not boated in tidal waters since moving to Clyde in 1981....a full 31.5 years ago!. Needless to say we were anxious, but after about 10 minutes, it wore off.







   Nice, little restaurant on the premises here called Yanni's Two....nothing spectacular, but they did have raw clams, and I need not say more!!

Tomorrow we head another 50 miles south to Kingston.




The kind of traffic we encountered on the Hudson...LOL

    


Large freighter filling up with oil



  



NYS Capital building

 





The End is Near

Today we completed the Erie Canal leg of this trip. Thank God for that, as after a week, it really gets boring. How many green trees can you look at.....constantly?

We left the Schenectady Yacht Club at 08:00AM and arrived in Waterford, NY at 11:00AM. The Flight of Locks, which are locks 6, 5,4,3,&2 went real good. We were the only boat on that portion of the canal at that time, and once begun, you cannot stop. The locks were all open and waiting for us.
It was another hot and humid day on the canal......

As we pulled out of Lock #2 in Waterford, we spotted some friends of ours just getting ready to enter Lock 2 and begin their Erie Canal leg of the Loop.


Rolfe and Harriet Wall...in front of the Waterford Visitors Center dock.


Rolfe and Harriett Wall, aboard their Endeavor Cat 44, TIME-OUT, have been on the loop now for the past year and a half.
We met them the first time at the Joe Wheeler State Park in Huntsville Alabama. They, along with us, were there attending the Fall 2010 Rendezvous of the American Great Loop Cruisers Assoc. in October 2010. We had become good e-mail friends from that day on.
They swung back into their place on the wall, and we docked directly behind them.....after tying up, we sat and chatted with them aboard our boat enjoying some Gentleman Jack on the rocks and talking of our plans and theirs.

We went to lunch at a place in Waterford called Don and Pauls....a small locally owned diner noted for their homemade deserts. I had a hot open faced turkey and a strawberry short cake....mmmm....mmmmmmmmmmmmm
After lunch, we all went back to our boats for a quick clean up and nap.

Rolfe and Harriett deceded to spend an extra night, so we readied all our bicycles and at 6:00 PM we took off for dinner at a place called McGreivey's....and what a great place it was. Excellent food, and staff!! A short peddle along Broad St and there we were.

After today, we will begin our Hudson River portion of this trip to NYC.....and will keep you informed.

A month has passed....

This past month at Ess-Kay was fantastic....Dottie got caught up on the re-finishing of teak, and I caught up with the old timer's that come and go out of Ess-Kay Yards.
However, the summer being as short at it is in upstate, NY, it is now time to move on to our slip at the Lake Shore Yacht and Country Club in Cicero, NY.

Entrance to Clubhouse at Lake Shore Y & CC

It was a short ride to LSY&CC, distance of less than 10 miles and about 45 minutes. Yesterday, the weather cooperated fully, and we left Ess-Kay at around 11AM and arrived here in time for a nice lunch in their clubhouse. Jerry Puma, the club manager, welcomed us back and offered us the hospitality and "whatever you need" that you would expect from a private yacht club.

We decided that we would stay here about month, and the continue eastward to the Mariner's Landing Marina in Sylvan Beach. We have planned a few side trips, that I will let you know about in upcoming posts to this blog.

Clubhouse at Lake Shore Yacht and Country Club