A weekend on the Hudson...

[Jay H]

Another fine weekend spent moseying north and south on the Hudson, I scooted off of work midday on friday so I could meet up with Warren up in Coxsackie, NY to do some hudson river paddling. A couple of plan changes and even thoughts of the Norwalk Islands came to mind but once again, the permit system and misinformed people there rears it's ugly head. So orginal plan was to launch from the state boat launch in Coxsackie and paddle south about 1.5 miles to an island in the middle of the hudson, part of the Hudson River Island's State Park. Launch around 4pm and take about 45 minutes with a strong ebb tide and some nice winds at our back and cross some whitecaped shipping channel to get to the east shore where the campsite is.

Saturday, still windy, we ride the ebb tide and NWestery winds about 10-15mph with gusts up to 20mph south all the way to the town of Catskill (Hi MoonRay!). We land at Catskill Point and wander in around the little history thing there and eat lunch and talk to a boater all docked up to the docks working on his sailboat. After lunch and some sightseeing, we launch and try to go up Catskill Creek as far as we could, go under the bridge that was once the Otis Railway to the Catskill Mountain House til we couldn't go no more. A low tide prevented us from going as far as we wished so we turned around and started paddling back up, now that it was about 3pm and the flood tide coming in again. However, that pesky NW wind would hamper us all the way back the 10 milesish to our campsite.

Lighthouse at Hudson-Athens is really pretty, nice, not much boat traffic, one huge-ass barge would grace us per day.

Sunday, we paddled north, against the tide for a bit but calmer waters up to Mill Creek which is by Stuyvesant and a bit north of Coxsackie and Rattlesnake Islands to check out another campsite at Bronk Island (which is not an island). After that short trip north, we went south and checked out stockton Station launch and Stockton Creek and kind of hung out at a sandbar caused by the low tide for a bit while I dug for Coal (found alot of coal!). We paddled into Gay's Point where we saw a huge snapping turtle and a bunch of herons... and a ton of bricks as you will find on the hudson all over the place.

Pictures:
http://picasaweb.google.com/cycleslug/CoxsackiePaddle52308

Jay

 

[adkayaker]

this is favorite section of the Hudson for me, usually launching from Stockport Creek. I usually see at least three bald eagles during just a two hour paddle, along with kingfisher, bank swallows, and other birds. Stockport Middle Ground is a nice island to stretch our legs. The advantage of a Stockport or Nutten hook luanch on the east side is that wind conditions are often more benign that at the Coxsackie luanch with more protected coves on the east side.

 

[Jay H]

There were restricted access signs on the cove at Gay's Point but we didn't see any bald eagles while there or nesting at the island. The huge turtle that we saw, which I thought was a rock at first, was in the cove at Gay's Point.

Stockport Creek launch though is really shallow at low tide. Some of the east hudson launch areas on the HRW seem to be more affected by low tides than the western hudson launches. Oscawanna island launch is a complete mud flat at low tide, but that's further south by the town of Ossinning.

Nutten Hook becomes party central from what we could tell, thankfully we got the designated campsite on SMG. However, it's in full blastzone of the Amtrak trains on the weekends...

We paddled north on sunday and there was literally, tent city on the Nutten Hook side and they were lighting fireworks and stuff saturday night, providing us with endless entertainment.

Have you ever paddled eastside of Houghtaling island? My friend, from Brooklyn was interested in the "Hell Gate" that is listed there since there is a more notorious Hell Gate on the east river in NYC.... We didn't feel like another 3 hours paddling when we got to Mill Creek and decided to turn around and simply explore some of the creeks by our campsite..

Jay

 

[Trudy]

Have you ever paddled eastside of Houghtaling island? My friend, from Brooklyn was interested in the "Hell Gate" that is listed there since there is a more notorious Hell Gate on the east river in NYC....Jay

The name persists, but I believe it no longer exists.

Here is what Arthur G. Adams, author of 'The Hudson River Guidebook' has to say about Hell Gate: "Now filled in, this was a narrow channel between Upper and Lower Schodack Islands."

The tides caused a lot of turmoil by rushing in and out.

There is another fearsome sounding oddity, 'The Maelstrom' near Malden-on-Hudson (north of Saugerties.)

Adams writes: " Slightly to the east of the western vessel channel, is a narrow but rather deeper channel (eleven to sixteen foot depths)...During the change of tide, the waters rush through here in eddies and whirlpools."
Whatever terrors the maelstrom might have held for former mariners, it is judged by the Hudson River Water Trail Guide to be "not dangerous, in our experience." I have looked for it without success.

Paddling up the east side of Schodack Island is quite nice, since there is little boat traffic; it's too shallow at low tide.

Jay, did you check out the tent platforms and privy at Bronck? The privy= 5 stars. The extensive handicapped-accessible ramp up to it was put in last fall.

 

[Jay H]

Hi Trudy, one of our original ideals was camping on Bronck but on our paddle back from Mill Creek, we crossed the hudson by Green marker 171 knowing the campsite is just south of it but didn't see a HWA marker. Lots of possible landings but no marking. There was a couple of ATV'rs and dirt bikers hanging out on the shoreline, they might of covered it but I read on HRWA's website about the tent platforms and stuff on bronk. I also told them about the outhouse on Stockton Middle Grounds is halfway washed out and also unbelievable close to the water for some strange reason. Don't know why they would put the outhouse so close to the water...

We saw the Maelstrom in the guidebook and it's description of not being dangerous...

Jay