NYC

Good morning all,

White Seal is moored at the 79th Street Boat Basin and the noise of the traffic on Riverside Drive is unrelenting. Who knows where folks are going at 3 AM, but they are. This is a crazy place, and the residents likely constitute a different species, but it is pretty cool to a country lad like myself.

What is very cool is coming to the city by small boat, as I did yesterday morning, creeping in at daybreak after a 24 hour run up the coast. There was a good weather window, with poor weather after, so I decided to just keep going past the 2 or 3 potential harbors of refuge. I arrived in the vicinity of Sandy Hook, NJ around 2AM and the entrance to the lower New York harbor was thick with boat traffic, mainly ships, and tugs with barges. So I decided to just jog back and forth under mainsail only till dawn. The boat will sail herself like this and it gives me a chance for some shuteye. This I did, until about 4 AM, when I began nosing my way over to the Ambrose Channel, the main entrance into New York. As I alluded earlier, coming into New York Harbor, is just an amazing experience. The wind had died, so I was motoring over a gentle, murky sea as the sun tried to make an appearance thru the haze. Earlier, in the night, with the benefit of the full moon, the Verrazano Bridge had looked almost toy like, at a distance of 20 miles or more, resembling a necklace decorated with tiny lights
 Now, as I drew closer, you could really see how big it was, and how spectacular. Low, thick rain clouds swirled around, and I was sharing the approach with a large ship. But with a good 4000 feet of space between the two towers, there was no concern about room. The rain came down in sheets as I passed under the bridge. It does not have the beauty of a Golden Gate, or the nearby Brooklyn Bridge, but it is really something special. As I proceeded up the harbor, I realized that the vessel traffic was not quite as crazy as usual, given that it was Sunday morning. So I was able to spend less time avoiding collisions and more time taking it all in. The rain had decided to stop, and I actually started to warm up a bit. I had taken on the look of the proverbial Michelin man with thermal underwear, long pants, rain pants, t shirt, flannel shirt, heavy sweater, fleece pullover, rain jacket, safety harness, and life jacket. So these items started to come off. Went by the Statue of Liberty, merci beaucoup France, Ellis Island, and the lower tip of Manhattan. Once again, I was on the Hudson, a wonderful river. Need to check the weather and decide whether to head further north this morning, or stay another day on the mooring. The current turns soon.

Best to all, Charlie