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Local Knowledge
By Ben Ellison — Spring 2006
Maneuvering a boat around the island of Manhattan is thankfully quite unlike driving a car on it. There's enough room to relax and see the city from a really interesting vantage point in normal daytime conditions, though there's enough commercial traffic that I would avoid this area at night or in fog. Your boat may never seem so quiet and self contained as when it's gliding beside the beehive of the Big Apple.
Working your way up the Hudson is straightforward, even linear. In fact, various guides refer to places in distances of miles from the Battery. Thus, say, Westerly Marina (914-941-2203) in Ossining, New York, on the east side of the river, is said to be at "Mile 29E."
I mention Westerly because, though Ossining is not a waterfront destination just yet, this is a notably well-managed marina. The kindly manager stayed late one evening to help tie up Office Ours, whose skipper had not managed his dock reservations well.
The Hudson doesn't have many anchorages, but it does have tidal currents all the way up to Troy. They mix with variable river currents in ways hard to predict. And while big sea swells do not get upriver, big wakes do, which is why you'll see locals using massive numbers of fenders at exposed docks, and why you'll get yelled at if you're the source of offense.
Bareboat charters are rare in these parts, but Capt. John Cutten of North River Cruises (845-679-8205, www.northrivercruises.com) in Kingston has a 40-foot Sea Ray for private, skippered charters-either multiday or by the hour-and he'll even pick you up in Manhattan. There are, of course, many sightseeing boats on the River (www.hudsonriver.com has a good list), and, frankly, even a three-hour circumnavigation of Manhattan on an old Circle Line (www.circleline.com) boat sounds good to me.
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