After a few days waiting out foul weather in Wildwood, New Jersey, the skies finally relented and allowed us a decent weather window to pop up to New York City on the ocean. We left the morning of the 19th and had a rather uncomfortable. It was dreary and damp with light winds, but a week of strong wind before had made for monstrous swells. Thanks to Bonine, I survived all of this quite fine, though my poor mom got quite sick. We motored the whole way, all 24 hours. It was really a hit on my dad’s ego as a sailor and all, but if we had decided to sail it would have taken twice as long.
The day went by uneventfully, and as night fell we began to see lightning dancing across the horizon to the east. We stayed far away from these storm cells and it was never an issue, fortunately. At about 2:30 AM (right after I ended a two and a half hour steering watch), the fog set in. The thick, deceptively bright fog banks closed in on us several different times that night and the next morning, but it never put us in any real danger.
After about two hours of sleep, my mom woke me up at 6:00 AM. We were entering the Ambrose Channel in New York harbor in the fog and I was needed as a lookout. I managed to crawl out of my cocoon and on deck and we picked our way from mark to mark, keeping just outside of the channel to avoid confrontation with the commercial shipping traffic. As the morning wore on, slowly the fog lifted and the skyline of New York came into focus. Let me tell you, after a night at sea, there is no cooler feeling than coming into New York Harbor.
The 20th was spent recovering from the overnight. It’s SO exhausting to do overnight passages and quite frankly, I am very glad that this last little excursion was the last one. We got a mooring at 79th Street Boat Basin and slept.
The next two days we walked all over the city. Manhattan is just plain cool. We had a picnic in Central Park. We rode the Subway to downtown and walked along Park Avenue. We often stumbled upon well-known attractions by accident, such as Lincoln Center and St. Patrick’s Cathedral. We walked and walked and walked. We scoped out the Highline, an old elevated railway that has been turned into a very interesting park. I sipped on a Starbucks coffee in Times Square, feeling delightfully and uncharacteristically cosmopolitan. I bought some clothes on 5th Avenue.
By far the biggest excitement came on Sunday afternoon. We sought out and acquired (drum roll, please) tickets to see a BROADWAY SHOW! The only play even remotely in our budget at that time appeared to be Priscilla, an award winning musical about three drag queens driving across the Australian Outback in an old bus named Priscilla. It was absolutely hilarious. The play was so incredibly well done and the special lighting effects on the bus were mind-blowing. Both of my parents loved it also, (although I think that my dad felt a bit squeamish during some rather raunchy scenes.)
I could have stayed in Manhattan indefinitely, if it had been up to me. Unfortunately however, time marches on and we need to get home soon. We left midday and anchored in the middle of nowhere. Today we are motoring up the Hudson in the light rain, enjoying the feeling of being back in the beautiful, lush, mountainous Northeast. We’re really on the home stretch!
P.S. I’m currently stealing WiFi from a random marina we’re passing by to upload this blog!
No comments:
Post a Comment