I’m giving you all notice up front… this edition is going to be heavy on the photographs! We’ve seen so much this past week, I’m having a hard time figuring out which of the many pictures make the cut, so consider yourself warned!
We had just arrived in New York City at the end of last week’s update. What a great city the Big Apple is!! Karen had been there once before at a younger age, and I had lived outside the City for awhile, but this visit was special and unusual and altogether tantalizing! I think we were starved for eye candy, after leaving Mystic a week previously. We hadn’t seen much in the way of people and buildings as we made our way west through Long Island Sound. That was about to change!
It all started when we befriended another boat with kids, a catamaran named ‘Aries’. The Jeffries family had three kids onboard and we had heard about them in Mystic from my friend Sean. I overheard them talking to the Coast Guard on the radio, and it ended up that they were headed for the 79th St Marina in NY as well. Karen and I could tell pretty quickly that our kids were starved for time with other kids, as they begged to head right over to Aries after we secured ourselves on the mooring. Aries is a 37′ catamaran and this was our first experience seeing how others cruised onboard such a boat. While you don’t have the typical length of a monohull, your life aboard is spent nearly level all of the time and you have lots of wide lounging areas both below and on deck. They proudly showed us a potted plant that had been onboard without tipping over since they started in June from Pt. Charlotte, FL! We enjoying sharing a superb Thai dinner together with them onboard Thalia.
But, that was our last night in New York, and I’m getting ahead of myself. When we were settled in the marina, we raced off to the subway to get to the UPS store on lower Broadway before they closed. We had shipped an order of books from Barnes and Noble to ourselves there. I also picked up a shipment containing a new stereo. Our old stereo was two years old, and when you multiply that by about 10, you get it’s age in boat years… still doesn’t make me feel good about the darn thing failing on me, but we are trying to get used to it. The knotmeter, which had a sum total of 6 months of use since I installed it this past spring, went bad on us too. It’s made by Navman. Depending on how good they are about fixing it quickly and under warranty, I’ll let you know if I recommend them. I’ve already sent two other Navman instruments in for warranty repair so this was a real concern of mine when I saw the third instrument stop working. I could go on for a whole update on the failure of various electrical equipment onboard, but I don’t have pictures of this exciting topic and I promised you all pictures…
On our first full day in New York, we enjoyed a morning stroll through Central Park and a few reflective moments in this oasis from all of the noise of a big city.
Afterward, we ventured down to the tip of Manhattan – the Battery – in hopes of getting on a tour boat for the Statue of Liberty, but everyone else had the same idea, even though it was mid-week in September, and the National Park Service issues timed tickets to further limit the crowds. So, we booked the tour for the next day and instead went for a walk through downtown, including Wall Street, but more importantly the World Trade Center site. They were still doing a lot of work to the below street level area, but they had a good outdoor exhibit with photographs and timeline of the events of that day. Thankfully, they prohibited anyone from selling anything anywhere in the vicinity, a welcome break from the vendors throughout other touristy parts of the City selling cheesy looking photographs of the skyline before 9/11. Karen and I felt it was important for us to spend time at the site and talk the days events through with the kids. I can only say that it was startling to recall all of the emotions that came forth on the fateful morning.
In the afternoon, we had a great time walking around Times Square, Rockefeller Center (with a stop at one of the many vendors selling great fresh roasted peanuts) and also the Empire State Building. I had this quaint image in my mind about going up the Empire State Building.. one where you buy your ticket at a little window and a helpful man with a proper looking hat showing you to the correct elevator. But the reality is that you feel more like a visitor to Disney World. The owners of the building have capitalized handsomely on the tourist trade. First, the quaintness fades quickly when you pay $52 for a family of four to ride to the 86th floor. This was only if you chose not to pay another $14/person to go to the very top, and also somehow avoiding vendor after vendor hawking things that seemed really important at the bottom, like photographs of you overlaid on a fake NY city background, handheld audio tours in 36 languages, and many other things that I have chosen to block out of my mind. Then there’s the spacious souvenir shop at the top. But, like everyone else there, pushing shoulder to shoulder to get a view over the edge, we felt that when in NYC we couldn’t skip the Empire State Building. If you managed to look beyond the commercialism, the many switchbacks of lines and the huddled masses of your fellow travelers, it was a really great view. I can recommend a book or an iPod to pass the time until you get to the top. Speaking of which, I am of the strong opinion that Apple has made 98% of their sales to the New York city subway patron. In my estimation, at least half of the regular patrons were bedecked with those fancy looking shiny new iPods in one hand or pocket, and in the other the proverbial cellphone. That’s all I would need if I worked in the City… but I once again apologize for this tangent as I promised you all pictures. Here’s a view from the Empire State Building looking out over the East River where we travelled through the previous day. In the distance you can see several bridges that we navigated past.
On our second full day, we headed off to see the Statue of Liberty in accordance with our designated time slot. After passing through security checkpoints at the Battery, then two on the island itself, we were finally able to experience the wonderful job the National Park Service does to help educate the visitor to sites such as these. We were fortunate to have two separate rangers guide us through (and yes, they do wear those goofy ranger hats despite the fact that you are not in the backwaters of Yosemite!). From Manhattan, the Statue is a small, distant object, but when you are approaching Liberty Island or standing under her, she’s one massive piece of art. Hats off to the National Park Service for a job well done. I sure wish they would take over at the Empire State Building…
The ferry boat stops at Ellis Island on the way back and I can whole-heartedly recommend a stop here. Again, we experienced great National Park Service efforts, including an educational discussion by one ranger on the island’s history and immigration issues in general. If you decide to go, allow a full day for the two islands. We were rushed at the end and I would have liked to see much more of Ellis Island. In 1986 they finished restoring the building and it is chock full of educational museum type information plus several short movies and live plays. We were rushed out of there so fast on the ferry and our hands were so cold, that this blurry shot is the best we could do!
While strolling the streets of Manhattan in the evening, we came upon a very familiar named restaurant… unfortunately they balked at giving us a discount!
Finally, a trip to New York wouldn’t seem complete until we took in a Broadway show. We chose a relatively new show called ‘Spelling Bee’, a musical comedy about actors and audience members playing the role of grade schoolers in a spelling bee contest. It was hilarious! The kids were very lukewarm about the idea of a show, but they ended up laughing it up as much as Karen and I and have been quoting lines ever since.
Before I clog our website with too many photos, I should move on to the rest of our week’s events. We left NY on the fourth day at the crazy hour of 4am. This was the best time to get the help of the current running down the Hudson and through NY harbor. At it’s narrowest at the appropriately named Verrazano Narrows bridge, we got a boost of 2+ knots. This was a tricky time, though, as the harbor, even before sunrise, was full of commercial traffic, the most troublesome being the high speed cat ferries. Like “The Cat” up in Maine, these ferry’s lights would go from dim to blindingly bright in the wink of an eye. At one point we were nearly run down by a tug pushing a very low-to-the-water barge of sand around one side of an anchored freighter while we came around the other side of the freighter. Out past Sandy Hook, the point that marks the entrance into the harbor, the brightening sky was a welcome sight after steady rains earlier. We were being blessed with a generous 15 knot west wind, just the right ticket to run down the New Jersey coastline to our destination at Cape May. And what a ride it was. We were attaining speeds of 8 knots at times. This was a good thing as there’s nothing spectacular to look at along this coastline. It is a low-lying sanding shoreline with ubiquitous green water towers evenly spaced the whole way. There are a number of inlets all of the way along, but their shallowness keeps all but the sportfishing boats away. With the steady breezes, we only had to motor the last 2 hours of the trip, once the sun and therefore wind left us. We arrived and anchored in Cape May harbor at 11pm. My dad and I had done this same trip 19 years ago on Two if by Sea, struggling throughout the night under a nasty gale to make it to Cape May. I wrote a story about it afterwards titled ‘The Grim Reaper Plays with Two if by Sea’. This time, it was exceedingly more pleasant, and graciously devoid of enough events to warrant a separate story.
Our original plan had called for taking the boat up to Philadelphia. However, Karen and I put our heads together and came up with a better plan of renting a car from Cape may and driving up there. On short notice, my dad had decided to come join us for a week and his flight to Philadelphia perfectly coincided with this plan. We spent a welcome night off the boat and on a pillow top mattress courtesy of Sheraton Four Points. Today, we spent the day as tourists of Philadelphia. What a great city this is and particularly if you have kids with you so that you have an excuse to relearn the story about the founding of our country and our struggle for independence. Here we are at Independence Hall. That is my dad on the right.
I can tell you that standing in the courtyard of Independence Hall and recalling how this was the site where the Declaration of Independence was drafted, signed and several days later read to a crowd of several thousands, and how a few years later the Constitution was conceived here, makes you feel proud to be part of this great democratic nation. Once again, we were recipients of the great works of the National Park Service. Our tour guide of Independence Hall was equally funny, informative and thought provoking. Philadelphia was a welcome stop on the family’s year long educational journey!
We plan to leave Cape May tomorrow and with my Dad’s help, find our way to the Chesapeake Bay for what I’m sure will be many more history lessons to fill our brains!