IMAGE: James & Patti with Liberty
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We arrived within commuting distance of New York at Port Washington on the north shore of Long Island Sound on Friday 11th October. Port Washington is the second largest boating centre in the Manhasset Bay. Here the North Hempstead Town offers great complimentary services and moorings for yachts just like us - passing through and stopping a few days to visit New York.
On checking out the town over the weekend we found a lovely, family friendly New England town with a pleasant small-village atmosphere. The major streets leading away from the harbour were full of a wide variety of shops , coffee shops and restaurants. Importantly for us the dingy dock was safe and very central to the town - and found a dingy dock right by the supermarket - very convenient. The impressive local library was great for us- me doing our tourist research for New York and James getting our entertainment downloads via a fast and strong library WiFi.
At Sunday lunchtime the Canadian enterogue of 3 yachts whom we have been with recently in Maine and Newport arrived into the Harbour. It was good to see 'Cristata' - they came over for coffee and a chat, comparing our journeys down Long Island Sound and discussing our NY tourist activities.
Monday 14th was a Public Holiday - Columbus Day - and a great opportunity to see an all American 5th Avenue Street Parade. The Long Island Railway runs direct from Port Washington into Penn Street Station - and is just an hour journey, so we set off into for our 1st full tourist day into the Big Apple. We watched the 3 hour parade from Saks Corner (5th Avenue & 50th St). The parade was big on an American/Italian theme, and all the public services ie - NYPD police, fire department ,corrections department, sanitation department etc, etc marched and/or displayed their 'might' and proud Italian staff. Many of the colourful school marching bands were led by fancy female cheerleaders. All in all a great chance to see a New York street parade lasting 3 hours. Whilst on 5th Avenue we visited St Patricks Cathedral - all very grand and undergoing a huge refurbishment. We had a wander to Time Square and the Rockefeller Centre - today was the 1st day the ice skating rink was open to the public for the season - so the whole area was very busy. We decided to make the most of the beautiful warm & sunny afternoon to walk the HighLine - what a great chance to walk through this extensive urban renewal parkway opened to the public in 2009, and now one of New Yorks star attractions.. The HighLine is an elevated 3 mile walk from 30th Street to Chelsea Market along the disused rail lines past some amazing informal public art, beautiful green planting and various stand-alone sculptures. Finally we had a late afternoon coffee in the Chelsea Market area and then back to Penn Station for the train journey back to Port Washington - a big day out. It was tiring on the feet - as us sailors don't do a lot of pavement walking - and we walked miles and miles today. It was wonderful to New York City again and we remember it from our visit over 20 years ago.

Tuesday 15th - was another full-on tourist day again. We caught the 1st off-peak train at 9.40am into Penn Station and then the subway to Grand Central Station - very grand indeed with all its marble, chandeliers and historic bars and restaurants - more than just a train station, a reminder of the era of truly glamorous train travel. In lovely warm autumn sunshine we took a walk down to the East River to the UN Building, sadly the whole area was closed with no sign of any activity or any national flags on display. The only flags we could see on display were outside the various overseas missions in the various nearby streets. Next stop was to see the impressive Rose Reading Room in the New York Public Library, interestingly the two enormous marble lions protecting the building are named Patience and Fortitude! We enjoyed our picnic lunch watching the skating at the Rockefeller Centre, and came across our fellow French sailors doing the same - what a small world. We headed to Central Park to be nearly runover by the many horse drawn carriages touting for the tourist trade to ride the park. Instead of the buggy ride we chose to walk through the impressive shopping mall at Columbus Circle and on to the Lincoln Centre to investigate music and entertainment opportunities on this week. We visited the nearby historical Carnegie Hall to visit their museum and get their events schedule. After lots of walking again, our tired feet helped us decide to get the last off-peak train back to Port Washington, get some supermarket shopping done and get to the library.

On Wednesday 16th we decided to move the boat from Port Washington to Great Kills Harbour on Staten Island. Our own private harbour cruise started at 5.30am. We set off down Long Island Sound to the East River - the key to transiting the East River is to time the current correctly. The most important factor for us was not to encounter an opposing current , especially in the vicinity of Hells Gate, where the currently can be dangerous for small boats- with velocities of more than 4 knots in this sections of the river. As we were travelling westward, our aim was to be at Hells Gate on slack water, we passed through at 8.37am - 6 minutes after slack - YES we are very proud of ourselves and all our planning had paid off. We had 1 other local New York registered yacht just ahead of us throughout the journey- so that was a extra confirmation that we had the timings right. The lower reaches of the river are dominated by big commercial ships - thankfully we didn't have too many to worry about - but along with the high speed ferries, water taxis and tourist boats we had more than enough to contend with. The East River of New York is a 14-nautical-mile-long body of water that separates the boroughs of Manhattan and the Bronx from Brooklyn and Queens. The river passes under 8 high-level bridges that are set against the spectacular backdrop of the Manhatten skyline. The buildings of Lower Manhattan rise up right from The Battery waterfront and Wall Street runs right down to the water at Pier 15 at the South Street Seaport. Just on daylight we passed under Throgs Neck Bridge into the East River, past Rikers Island Prison with Queens and Brooklyn on our left and Manhattan on our right, and then out into New York Harbour. The 1st iconic building we passed was the waterfronted United Nations building , and then just before passing under the Brooklyn Bridge the Status of Liberty started to appear. There is a strict water security boundary around Liberty - so not too close - but we could come within a few hundred yards, close enough to enjoy the sight and achievement of us being here 'under our own steam' and doing our own New York Harbour cruise! Our planning paid off and we were able to safely anchor the boat amongst the moorings in Great Kills Harbour on Staten Island- just off the Great Kills Yacht Club. We met John - the Yacht Club Fleet Captain and he gave us the run down - yes anchoring off the club was at no charge - use of the clubs secure dingy dock, clubhouse facilities- ie bar, showers and toilets, a strong WiFi signal from their dock which would reach the boat - all for the charge of $10 per day. This spot worked out just fine for us to further explore New York City, with efficient public transport - bus and train network running directly to the Staten Island Ferry dock - then a very enjoyable ferry ride past Liberty, and embarking us at the New York subway system. Wanting to make the most of the day we set off just after lunch and had a lovely afternoon in and around Lower Manhattan and the Financial District - just a short walk from the ferry dock. Our 1st stop was a photo opportunity with the Bull of Wall Street. Our walk up Wall Street, past the New York Stock Exchange was made more interesting with all the TV reporters and associated film crews milling around the area reporting on the current US government shut down. The World Trade Centre site , where the Twin Towers stood before September 2001 were close by. We made a visit to the area, now renamed the 9/11 Memorial Centre. This 8 acre site, when rebuilding is finished will house an extensive park, visitors centre, memorial and museum. The 9/11 Memorial opened on the 10th anniversary of the attacks. It consists of two pools set in the footprint of the original Twin Towers .These are where the original, 1,360ft towers use to stand centre. Now there are waterfalls that cascade into the pools, each then descending into a centre void. The names of the victims are inscribed in bronze parapets around the pools. It is a lovely, but spine chilling spot. Our final tourist stop for the day was a visit to Trinity Church. This magnificent little church has an excellent musical reputation, and we were checking into their weekly concert and recital events for this coming week. So after a long, successful and very enjoyable day it was back on the Ferry and bus to Staten Island and to our floating home -La Aventura.

On Thursday 17th we had a latish start as we managed to get standby tickets for tonight's taping of the Late Show TV programme, and planned to attend the 'Concerts at One' musical recital at Trinity Church. Today's recital was to be a tribute to music written by the composer Benjamin Brittten, performed by a Canadian cellist accompanied by the churches Director of Music on the piano. The acoustics in the church were amazing - making the solo cello music a very enjoyable 1 hour entertainment. We wanted to try out the food trucks that have classed up the meals-on-wheels culture in NYC, many of which are parked around the Union Square area. There two type of street vendors -those referred to as 'hot tin carts' have long been a NYC staple on the sidewalk of busy intersections everywhere - a lot of them selling halal food and bagels and huge pretzels - most of them looking like the health inspector had not visited them in a long, long time - but the specific ones we were looking for are trucks parked in special bays on the street and come into town each day just to serve their lunch specials. From my research some of these trucks have a real cult following serving high-end treats and unique fusion fare - we did see a Trinidad truck selling goat strew and a Caribbean Roti truck - all the West Indians were lined up at both so it must be good. Nothing took our fancy so instead we opted for a true New York delight - classic pastrami on rye deli sandwich -which tasted fantastic. James has always been a Late Show fan- so this was a special, unexpected treat at our good luck at getting tickets to be part of the live studio audience for the TV taping of the David Letterman and Late Show. I telephoned the show ticket hot-line at 11am and were issued with standby tickets numbers 11 &, and told to come along to the famous Ed Sullivan Theatre at 2.30pm for the recording starting at 3.30pm. We had rear seats up in the 2nd tier - just great to see and hear the production. The guests on today show were Donald Trump and young female singer Selena Gomez, and the house band the CBS orchestra were very good indeed. The programme is actually shown at 11.35pm at night on CBS and we were able to download it to watch the actual aired programme. Before heading back to the boat we wanted to try out an East Village ale house - so popped into McSorleys. It was just as the book said - an unkept 1854 premises with more dust and cobwebs than necessary, sawdust floors(why?) and a 2 for 1 offer on pints of beer.

An afternoon of Art and then dinner out on Friday 18th. The MoMA - Museum of Modern Art was on our must-see list - but at $25 per ticket it is by far the most expensive Museum in New York.... but on Fridays - and only Friday afternoons from 4pm to 8pm it offers free entry to those who have been queuing outside. Well, the queuing commenced from about 2.30pm - so our strategy was from one of us to get into the queue whilst the other wandered the museum gift shop and local area - all worked out well and we were in the first group to get in at 4pm and had a wonderful few hours admiring and enjoying the miles and miles of corroders and rooms of exhibitions. We really enjoyed seeing the many Andy Warhol pieces, famous Van Goughs and the special exhibition featured the surreal and cubist art by the French painter Magritte -The Mystery of the Ordinary'.The experience was enjoyed even more with the free headsets explaining all the most famous and iconic pieces. The museum building itself is a beautiful living piece of art - with a lovely small park-like space with trees and fountains and sculpture in the centre and this area gave light into the rest of the building via various cut-outs in the outer and inner walls. After we were museumed out we headed to ChinaTown for dinner out - a selection of fried and steamed dumplings followed by Peking Duck with Hoi Sin Sauce and fresh steamed soft white buns was excellent prepared and served in a very, back street family restaurant. It was a late night by the time we caught the ferry and bus back to the boat - but another great day out in New York City.

We were still enjoying lovely autumn weather - so decided that on Saturday 19th we would have a picnic in Central Park. Our 1st stop was the foodie area around Union Square. Italy in New York is the truly amazing Eataly food emporium - a food-filled wonderland of everything Italian - cold meat, cheese, wine etc, etc - just the atmosphere and smells sent you into sensory overload. We then headed to the weekly farmers market - called 'greenmarket' in the heart of downtown Manhattan. It was a very good market, with heaps of various stalls and excellent locally grown and produced goods, mainly from upstate NY. After wandering around the stalls, we purchased our picnic lunch supplies - bread, cold meat, cheese and pate. Union Square is also home to dozens of pieces of art, the most fascinating being the Metronome - this digital time piece is a symbolic representation of the passage of time. By the time we worked out the various sequences from left to right was could watch it count to 2pm. We caught the subway the bus to Central Park , then walked into the Park to Strawberry Fields to pay homage to John Lennon and then found a spot nearby to enjoy our picnic lunch. During a further wander of the park we came across various entertainments from street artists, sail boats on the lake and the odd bride wandering around and having photo sessions. We walked up to the top east side of central park to view the Guggenheim museum - the outside is a huge sculpture in its own right of white swishing spirals. Admission is free on Saturday after 5.45pm - but we didn't wait around to queue up again for another art museum.

Sunday 20th was to be our last day in New York City - and again we had lovely clear blue skies day - a bit on the chilly side - but there is warmth in the sunshine. After our now familiar Staten Ferry ride and wave to Liberty we walked through South Street Seaport area looking for the New Amsterdam market - a Sunday morning food market - but sadly it was not on! We wandered on into Greenwich Village, where we found a spare bench in the heart of the Village in Washington Square to read the Sunday papers and watch the chess players - they were more like touting card sharps. A small crowd was starting to get-together for a local Street Basketball comp that was underway in the infamous 'Cage'. Our regular Sunday morning breakfast is James style - cooked eggs and bacon - but this weekend because we were in New York we treated ourselves to the 12.30pm Sunday Bruch at the Blue Note Jazz Club. The Blue Note is a VERY famous NY Jazz Club - so this was a special treat. In this small, dark , crammed venue we enjoyed a brunch of Bloody Marys, Mimosa and Eggs Benedict and 2 hours of excellent entertainment from the 6 piece jazz group of young performers from the Juilliard School of Music. To walk off our brunch we headed for Brooklyn Bridge - along with everyone else our from a Sunday afternoon walk. The views back into Manhattan were just great - I have decided my favourite building is the 77 floor, 80 year old Chrysler Building. Afternoon coffee was now required so we headed one more time to Chelsea Market - it was so busy with Sunday afternoon visitors it was too crowded and busy to enjoy. Chelsea Market is a very successful urban renewal project - the huge building was once the Nabisco biscuit factory, and the 800ft long concourse is now a real foodie heaven.

After so much time here in New York it was time to think about moving on again. So Monday21st was domestic jobs day - no more touristing. We did our now usual 2 minute ride in the dingy from where we are anchored into the Great Kills Yacht Club, where most days a friendly member has acknowledged us and said hello. We caught the now very familiar 78 bus into the nearest Laundromat to do our clothes washing and then back to the boat to do some 'get ready to move on' boat jobs. We decided to go into the Club House to have a lovely long hot shower and use the strong internet connection to make a Skype call to Mum.

On Tuesday 22nd with good following north winds forecast we finally headed out of New York Harbour with the tide, heading to New Jersey. We stopped for fuel at Sandy Hook and then carried on to commence our passage south along the New Jersey Coast - 150 miles to our next stop somewhere in the Chesapeake.