All you boat owners planning to travel up or down the Hudson River as part of your summer cruises should have a copy of the Hudson River Guide. It is free. That is: FREE! The Hudson River forms a part of every Great Loop trip. Even if you can't do the entire loop, a trip up the Hudson, though the Erie Canal to Lake Ontario, past the 1000 islands of the St. Lawrence to the Rideau Canal and thence to the pristine waters of Lake Champlain, the Champlain Canal and back to the Hudson makes a marvelous summer voyage. It will give you every maritime experience you desire except pirates and hurricanes. This "Triangle Loop" contains many of the more interesting parts of the Great Loop. If a visit to Canada is not in your plans, a trip up the Hudson to Lake Champlain or through the Erie Canal to the Fingerlakes, both wonderful cruising destinations in themselves, will make a delightful summer vacation. The Fingerlakes wine tour, accessible from Lake Cayuga or Lake Seneca, will give you the best tasting experience east of Napa Valley and west of France. The Hudson River Guide includes a catalog of interesting places to visit, listings of riverside restaurants, marinas and fuel stops, and recommended anchorages. It also offers my personal opinion of the sights and tastes of a Hudson River cruise based on 50 years of sailing the waterway. The Hudson River Guide gets updated annually. The latest edition of the Hudson River Guide is downloadable from Scribd (www.scribd.com). Just search for publications on Scribed by Lawrence Zeitlin. If you find it difficult to download I will be happy to send you a PDF copy of the guide. It should be readable on any computer, tablet, or smartphone that supports PDF files. You can also download Hudson River charts and a collection of paintings by Hudson River artists. Several of you have asked why I don't recommend the Hudson River Guide Complete as a primary source of Hudson River information. It reads well and has a lot of pretty pictures and detailed charts of the river. The main reason is that it is 55 MB instead of the 319 KB of the current guide. Many ISPs will choke on suck long files. In addition, most of the URLs that were included have changed and a few things are out of date. Rather that rework the old version I decided to write a new one containing the updated information. I didn't have time to include the pictures and charts. The easiest thing to do, if you have a fast internet connection, is to download both versions. Read the old one for entertainment and trip planning and use the information in the new one for the actual cruise. Maybe I'll revise the full guide for next year. Here are the URLs to make it easier. HUDSON RIVER GUIDE 2014 (latest revision) http://www.scribd.com/doc/222906023/Hudson-River-Guide-2014-Latest-Edition HUDSON RIVER GUIDE COMPLETE (2008 Illustrated Guide) http://www.scribd.com/doc/18683012/Huds ... e-Complete HUDSON RIVER CHARTS http://www.scribd.com/doc/18651678/Hudson-River-Charts HUDSON RIVER SCHOOL ART http://www.scribd.com/doc/18645609/Hudson-River-School-Art OTHER RELATED MATERIAL http://www.scribd.com/search?cat=google ... ce+Zeitlin Larry Z