City of Water Day report

July 24th was City of Water Day in New York Harbor, sponsored by the Metropolitan Waterfront Alliance. This year’s event expanded beyond last year’s single venue of Governors Island to also include Atlantic Basin and Brooklyn Bridge Park in Brooklyn and Liberty State Park in Jersey City. Last year we made City of Water Day history by being the only non-human-powered recreational vessel to participate and dock at Governors Island (read about it here and here). This year we again took part, only we were not allowed to dock at Governors Island. (We didn’t take it personally. Well… not too personally.) We did get permission to tie up to the seawall at Liberty State Park, though, and that helped us feel like we were really participating. And we did get to visit some of the other venues, at least in passing.

First stop was Atlantic Basin, where PortSide NewYork‘s HQ, the Mary A. Whalen, is now berthed. Visiting for the day from its usual home on Manhattan’s west side was the steamship Lilac. Here’s Lilac tied up alongside the Whalen in an empty and quiet Atlantic Basin:

The m/v Cape Race was also visiting Brooklyn:

Cape Race was originally a deep sea trawler, built in 1963, and is now being converted into a “go anywhere in comfort expedition yacht.” The Cape Race website has lots of information and some amazing video of her in heavy seas.

Leaving Atlantic Basin, we passed north of Governors Island and caught a glimpse of the activity on shore. A quick trip across the harbor brought us between Ellis and Liberty islands on our way to Liberty State Park. Here’s the view back toward city:

And here’s Puffin tied up to the seawall at Liberty State Park:

The Hudson River sloop Clearwater took part in City of Water Day, too. Here she is making Puffin look tiny:

We had a lovely view of Lady Liberty’s backside from the park, a side of her not often seen by New Yorkers:

After the day’s activities wrapped up, we took Louis, one of the organizers from MWA, and George, a volunteer, for a quick circumnavigation of Liberty Island, which gave us another great view of Liberty’s aft section:

After dropping our passengers back at the park, we headed to the anchorage just beyond the park’s embayments for the night. This anchorage is quiet with good holding ground, and it’s well protected from wakes and most winds. We had it almost to ourselves:

We also had the unique opportunity to sleep within sight of both the Verrazano-Narrows Bridge and the Willis Avenue Bridge, but more on that in another post.

The moon was very nearly full, and the night was hot and clear (until a quick-moving thunderstorm passed through around 1 in the morning):

Photos 1, 2, 3, and 7 by Karen; all others by Brian

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World’s End: A brief book review

World’s End is the third novel by T. Coraghessan (now T.C.) Boyle, published in 1987. The title refers to a point on the Hudson River just above West Point, which we passed on our trip last July. Very briefly (because it’s hard to do justice to the plot in a short space) it’s the story of three families — the Van Brunts, the Van Warts, and the Mohonks — in the late 1600s, 1949, and 1968. Most of the action takes place in the Hudson Valley, near the fictitious town of Peterskill (which bears a remarkable resemblance to the actual town of Peekskill). Boyle assembled his book non-chronologically, jumping back and forth in history, which allows us to experience New York when it was a Dutch (and then English) colony, to be there for the riots at the Paul Robeson concert, and to enjoy the parallel histories the characters experience.

There’s just enough magic (or magical, if you prefer) realism to make you grin when you come across it (if you like that kind of stuff), but not so much that you groan and wonder if you’re reading Gabriel García Márquez by accident. I don’t want to call World’s End a sprawling epic, because I don’t want to frighten potential readers, but it is a sprawling epic (well, epic in scope, not in size). It has everything: the weight of history, fate and destiny, familial expectations and obligations, murky moral choices, tragedy, and even a literary version of the Hudson River sloop Clearwater.

Let the first sentence be your invitation:

On the day he lost his right foot, Walter Van Brunt had been haunted, however haphazardly, by ghosts of the past.

Open the door and enter this world that is both familiar and exotic.

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