Half Moon

On Saturday morning, Ken and I ate breakfast at the Four Corners Luncheonette in Delmar. Ken had crab cakes with 2 eggs, potatoes, and white toast, and I had a mushroom omelette with bacon and pumpernickel toast. It was delicious!

Next it was on to Indian Ladder Farms to buy apples, then we drove up to Thacher Park in the Helderberg Mountains for views of the Mohawk and Hudson valleys. The fall colors are starting to look very nice.

The leaves are changing! This view is from Thacher Park.

We ended up walking around downtown Albany in the afternoon and made our way to the waterfront on the Hudson River where we found the ship Half Moon tied up. This is a replica of the ship sailed from the Netherlands by Henry Hudson in 1609 when he "discovered" New York Harbor and the river that bears his name.

The Half Moon docked at Albany on the Hudson River.

He sailed as far inland as Albany (about 150 miles), met the native people, and claimed the region for the Dutch.

The bow of the Half Moon and the forecastle.

The ship is a working ship and it goes out with crews of students who learn to sail it and find out what life may have been like on an exploration vessel nearly 400 years ago. We took a tour and saw just how tiny this little ship was, and how Hudson and his crew were either very brave or very stupid for sailing it across the Atlantic.

Half Moon's main mast (there are three upright masts), crow's nest, and rigging.

Later in the evening we met some old friends of mine for dinner in a downtown brew-pub and had a great meal and a fun time.

The main deck, called the weather deck, is less than 18 feet across. You can see a person standing in the doorway of the forecastle for some scale. This was one tiny boat!

Half Moon on the Hudson; view of the stern.