Tides and Currents

The Hudson River is the strangest place to experience – and to try to predict – and react to – tides and currents.  And winds.

Most important - we NEVER want to get stuck at high tide, or we will never get off.  Any other tide and, at worst, the tide will eventually lift the boat if we wait long enough.  We made sure we were in the deep, well-bu0yed channel before peak high tide.

We left Croton-on-Hudson this morning at dawn.  We were (according to the tables) just before high tide there, so we expected slack current (the theory, anyway).  Meanwhile, in New York City, the high tide was supposed to be EARLIER (logical, since it is closer to the ocean).  I expected some sort of linear progression, so we would get our high water and then tail current earlier.  Here's what we got:

First, slight upriver current (bad for us, but only ½ knot or so).  The wind was low – couple of knots – on our nose (of course).  So, we had the current and the wind coming from the same direction. Therefore fairly smooth seas. Beautiful.

We kept waiting for the tide to start ebbing (really, waiting for the current to give us a push, not slow us down), but it just didn't happen!

Until we got to the George Washington Bridge.  Now, suddenly, we got our 1 to 2 knot tail current, with winds of around 8 knots from whatever direction they decided to come from to mess up the river with waves.  But we were really flying – 6 knots through the water (under motor), slowed down with the headwind, but over 7 knots over-the-ground, thanks to the now-favorable tail current.

And, just to add to the fun, we got all sorts of heavy boat traffic – ferries, tugs, sailboats! – from midtown all the way down to lower Manhattan and into the Liberty Landing Marina.

Beautiful trip.  Auto did most of the steering, until he gave up at the G W Bridge and I took over the helm.

Punch line:  Bought a good Tide and Pilot Book, to plan our "Escape from New York".  We will have a couple of knots current as we traverse the lower N.Y. harbor, favorable if we time it right, but also have to factor in that we are going offshore around New Jersey and want to time landfalls for daylight hours.

Learning something every day. So it goes …