Sailing To New York City
Motoring Through New York Harbor (continued)
Now that we have passed under the bridge and through the Narrows, we're officially in the Upper Bay, which is the busiest part of New York Harbor. This is also where you get great views of Manhattan, the Statue of Liberty, Ellis Island, etc. Jerome was at the helm so I had time to take lots of pictures, which are spread over the next few pages.
The harbor itself was a complete extravaganza, a first-class spectacle. Boats and ships of all sizes and types were plying the waters, amid barges, tugs, and big ships anchored here and there. A pair of orange Staten Island ferries were shuttling back and forth between Staten Island and Lower Manhattan. A trawler-style fishing boat passed nearby, heading outbound through the Narrows, while an overly large megayacht came zooming inbound. There were cheap and simple fisherman's boats wallowing drunkenly in the chop and the mishmash of boat wakes, along with headboats crowded with eager and expectant anglers (in the Lower Bay). We saw a Coast Guard orange inflatable zipping along, plus patrol boats, tour boats, work boats, tugboats, etc. We even saw a recreational sailboat serenely sailing through all this nautical near-mayhem at an unhurried pace, looking very much out of place. Meanwhile, overhead, jet airplanes soared and helicopters clattered, adding to the spectacle.
Once we got closer to Lower Manhattan, we took in the magnificent panoply of tall buildings, which gave the slim island the appearance of a dense and indefatigable fortress of commerce and industry. From the water, Lower Manhattan looked all healed from the 9/11 attacks, but to me, the absence of the twin towers of the World Trade Center was still very obvious. Every time I looked toward Manhattan, my eyes were invariably drawn to the empty space where they formerly dominated the skyline, to re-notice their absence again and again.
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| Tugs and fuel barges anchored in the Upper Bay, with Lower Manhattan in the background. The vessels are in a charted anchorage, since I'm sure you're not allowed to anchor willy-nilly. Although you can't tell from this picture, I can make out the names of the closest tug/barge in another picture: the tug is Calusa Coast, hailing from Chesapeake City, MD (a city we passed on the C&D Canal); the barge is Energy 8701. The tug is 110 feet long, 30 feet wide, displaces 186 tons, and was built in 1978. The barge is 360 feet long, 64 feet wide, displaces 11,627 tons, can carry up to 85,000 barrels of petroleum products, and was built in 1976. |
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| Our old friend, Seastreak Wall Street, this time heading back to New Jersey. |
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| The fishing trawler Tammy Gale passing us, heading outbound just north of the Narrows. The boat is 41 feet long, 15.1 feet wide, displaces 28 tons, and hails from New York, NY. Click on the picture to see a bigger version; use your browser's "back" command to return here. |
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In the Narrows, we hugged the Brooklyn shoreline, and this is what it looked like. The highway is the Belt Parkway, in the Bay Ridge neighborhood, in the vicinity of 80th Street and Shore Road. |
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| We saw a big fire way over on the New Jersey waterfront near Bayonne, and a smallish fireboat went speeding past us heading towards the fire. |
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