We arrived in the early afternoon. The town offers free mooring balls for 48 hours and they are easily distinguishable in the mooring field as they line the channel and are bright yellow. After a quick lunch, Ken launched the dinghy. It had been so long since we had used it we were attempting to recollect the last occasion. We decided to go explore...well explore would be a grave exaggeration since there wasn't much to see. We had gone to the original city dock that was a popular fishing pier. A second dock is positioned where the bulk of the retail (Grocery Stores, West Marine, Home Goods, etc) are located.
The next day, we decided to take the LIRR into Penn Station and walk around the city. We had hoped to go to the Top of the Roc but the wait was prohibitive. I got to spend a few minutes in the Macy's Shoe Clearance area and showed great restraint leaving empty handed as a pair of Cole Haan loafers cried out after me to be taken home.
We did Time Square and saw patriotically painted young women parading about and the Naked Cowboy along with Elmo, Cookie Monster, the Statue of Liberty, Batman, Sponge Bob Square Pants and a host of others.
We lunched at Carnegie Deli. They should pass out defib machines at the entrance. I wanted to share but someone wanted the whole heart attack on a plate to himself. I took more than half home and had a hard time eating what I did...and I'm no slouch!
We visited St. Patrick's Cathedral after lunch. The beauty of the architecture and statuary rivals some of the churches we saw in Italy.
On our last day in Port Washington, we couldn't leave until early afternoon to make the passage through Hell Gate so we took advantage of the morning to go to a Farmer's Market at the City Dock. My sweetie picked me up a nosegay of zinnias from one of the vendors so now the boat has some colour. I purchased a lobster, some scallops, petit herricot vert, cherry tomatoes of all colours, a few shallots and some garlic.
After stowing our purchases on the boat we headed into the retail town dock. There were several plazas and I did some shopping and picked up a few groceries. Laden with our purchases, we headed back to the dinghy and again stowed our purchases.
Sitting in the cockpit whiling away some time before we needed to leave we noticed large areas of disturbed water nearby. One such disturbance moved closer to the boat so that we could see that it was a roiling school of fish just below the surface with dorsal and tail fins breaking the surface of the water. Occasionally one would jump but they circled and moved as a mass along the surface of the water of the bay. Fascinating…we had never seen that before.