How to Swim FROM a Tugboat

You may have seen this foto sequence yesterday of Orlando Duque diving from a helicopter near the Statue of Liberty?  Well . .  more on the foto below later in this post, but the diver here is in fact she who inspired my post today by her instructions on how to swim from a schooner . . . a few years back.

If you’ve looked at bowsprite’s link above, you’ll notice that my instructions begin differently.

1.  Choose your location, and few locations are as enticing to me as the Hudson north of the Bear Mountain Bridge, where I hiked a few months back.

2.  Select a tugboat.  Buchanan 12, here managing eight stone scows just below Breakneck Ridge,  is photogenic but absolutely the wrong choice for this.

Nor should you choose Kimberly Poling, here headed southbound on the Hudson in the same bends.

Patty Nolan, however, fits the specs perfectly.  You may remember Patty here  from a few years back looking just a little different and facing a dilemma.

3.  Here’s where I concur with bowsprite’s first item:  find a captain who will let you off the boat.    We did.  The dock worker here belongs to the blue-hatted union.

And off we go in search of an anchorage.  Now I know that since contemporary life comes with an infinite lists of troubles and limitations,  to relax . . . and celebrate life  . . . you gotta do it!

The mature days of summer demand celebration.

4.  Anchor in a safe location.  Bannerman, haunting in springtime, seems more welcoming in late summer.

5.  Check the equipment.  Will Patty the figure figure be enticed to come up out of her cabin by this gold lamé?

6.  Set up the sturgeoncam

and deploy

the crane.

7.  Swim . . . without the strap or

or with, in a variety of entrance styles.

8.  Board the boat when the day is done . . . if you can figure out how.  I need to work on that one.  Or sturgeoncam here might have to swim down the Hudson . . . .  In late summer, that’s not a bad option.

Would you believe this waterspotted lens proves I followed Patty and crew all the way back to Bear Mountain?

Do you think I’d conclude this post without a video of tugster swinging from the crane?  Click on the foto to see.

Don’t let Labor Day find you without a Hudson River dip in your experience.

By the way, from the local paper, one of my favorite weekly columns,  twelve places you should also visit in the Hudson Valley.