Manhattan

We did a whirlwind tour of Manhattan while we were here. An all-day pass on the subway costs only $8.50, so we hopped on and off all day, and walked everywhere in between. We hit Times Square, Chinatown, Little Italy (with waiters such as this one below practically pulling you in off of the street for a delicious yet inexpensive lunch), Wall Street and the financial district, South Street Seaport, Grand Central Station (beautiful, with a terrific open market inside), the Public Library, and Bryant Park. We ended the day with a show at the Stand-Up Comedy Club only a few blocks from the boat basin. We were tired but happy when we got back to the boat, which is all anyone can ask for.

Central Park

Central Park was terrific. It’s a beautiful park with a variety of ecosystems (ponds, forests, fields, and a reservoir) and intended uses (ball parks, open grassy areas, paved and unpaved paths, bridle trails), and sometimes on the little paths you don’t even know you’re in the middle of a huge city. It was designed by Fredrick Law Olmstead , who also designed some of the public parks in Boston, with which Anne is familiar, as she walked every day by the Fenway (not the ball park) during college. We spent a day and a half wandering through the park, and still didn’t see it all. The weather was a bit rainy the first day, but we had an umbrella. The second day, the weather was picture perfect: sunny and warm. We picked up some fresh focaccia, garlic- and pepper-stuffed olives, marinated giant white beans, cheese, and beautifully sweet strawberries and had a picnic. It was great to see all the people out enjoying nature, which can be hard to find in other Manhattan neighborhoods.

American Museum of Natural History

It’s curious that most practitioners of biology, the study of life (bio=life, logy=study), are fascinated by all things dead. In fact, in Biology 101, the first equipment you are required to purchase for lab class is a dissecting kit. Go figure. Anyway, for dead stuff, the American Museum of Natural History is great. They’ve got bones of dinosaurs (like this T. rex) and Ice Age mammals, stuffed modern mammals, ancient hominid artifacts, and more. We enjoyed the non-dead stuff, too.

Manhattan, Here We Come!

We now know what it feels like to be a little, little fish in a big, big pond. Coming into New York Harbor was quite a rush, adrenaline-wise. There were ships, there were barges, there were ferries, ferries, ferries, all over the place, and all big enough to squash us handily. Needless to say, we kept well out of their way, even while being distracted by sites such as the Manhattan skyline, the Statue of Liberty, and Ellis Island. It’s one thing to see these things on-screen or in a picture, and quite another to sail by Lady Liberty in your own boat-we both had tears in our eyes. After running the gauntlet, we made our way up the Hudson River to the 79^th Street Boat Basin. We’d been trying to get a mooring there for a few days, but they were booked due to the upcoming 4^th of July holiday. So we anchored outside the mooring field and used the boat basin facilities-dinghy dock, showers, laundry, free ice-for the incredible price of $25 per day. Not bad for accommodations in Manhattan. The boat basin is in a pretty river-side park, about a fifteen-minute walk to the Museum of Natural History and Central Park, and only ten minutes to a subway stop. You can see the view from our boat below. Of course, we could have paid up to $6 PER FOOT (boat length) PER DAY for other, fancier, marinas in the city, but who wants to spend time at the marina when you’ve got Manhattan laid out before you?!

Signs of Home

There are certain things that instantly remind you of home. These are especially welcome when you’ve been away for a long time. So you can imagine Anne’s nostalgia when we came upon a display of Drakes snack foods in a market in Atlantic Highlands, New Jersey (not yet New England, but we're getting there!). You don’t get Drakes in the south. Yodels, Ring Dings, Devil Dogs, Yankee Doodles, and Funny Bones. I love them all, but limited myself to a box of Funny Bones. I savored one with a cup of tea that evening. Chris just doesn’t appreciate them in the same way, but that just leaves more for me.

Atlantic Highlands, New Jersey

We arrived in Atlantic Highlands, New Jersey, after an overnight trip from Cape May, and got our first taste of big-city ship and boat traffic. Offshore wasn’t bad; there were a few large ships, and they were easy to keep track of. But coming around Sandy Hook we came head-on to the outgoing fishing boats, both commercial and recreational, and played dodge until we were halfway down the bay. Atlantic Highlands has a nice breakwater that we anchored behind, and a dinghy dock at the town marina. We walked along the nice waterside trail, did some provisioning, used wi-fi at the library, and waited out some thunderstorms. All in all, it was a quiet visit, as we rested up for our next destination, New York City, which we could see across the bay.

Cape May, New Jersey

Cape May is a bay length and a world away from Salem, New Jersey. Cape May is one of the oldest beach resorts in this area, and it’s full of beautiful Victorian homes, many of which are available as vacation rentals or B&Bs. There are also old hotels and inns that are throwbacks to earlier times. We stayed here several days, exploring the town by foot, and the creeks behind the town by dinghy.





We treated ourselves to dinner at The Lobster House, near the commercial docks. Lots of large (~80’) fishing boats berth here, and we were told that this is a big scallop-harvesting area, so we had scallops at dinner—delicious. Also timely, because the day we left Cape May, we heard an announcement on the NOAA weather radio that the scallop season was to be closed, so we got them in the nick of time.





If you were relocating to Cape May and looking to buy a home, there’s quite a variety of styles, which made sightseeing really interesting. There were the


formal Victorian houses,










eclectic waterside houses,





close-to-nature marsh houses, and, of course,



roughing it on a pole.