Welcome back Boatbloggers,
Yes, we left Norfolk Virginia and have arrived in New York City!
To leave Norfolk we had to go past the biggest naval base in America, and they have a lot of ships! It took about two hours of motoring to go past them all.
From the photo it’s hard to get an idea of the sheer size of these boats. To give you some inkling, that little dot on the back of the middle ship is an aeroplane.
It was a fairly uneventful two day sail up the east coast, and we finally anchored in the middle off the night off Sandy Hook which is a few miles south of New York in New Jersey. Or Noo Joizey as they say out here. It’s the usual place to wait for the tides and currents (which are pretty ferocious) to turn in your favour before entering New York Harbour itself.
Note the jumper. It’s starting to get quite a lot colder as we get further north.
Rory, who is currently an intern in New York with the legendary photographic agency Ray Brown Productions (www.raybrownpro.com), came over to see us with his girlfriend Zoe.
Rory & Zoe – not sure Ju’s photo will get him a job with Ray Brown, with all that shadow over their faces.
After a couple of days at anchor, we set off for Manhattan. It’s a pretty busy harbour and we spent a lot of the time dodging tankers and cruise ships, which can be quite hairy.
As we got closer, a storm appeared out of nowhere, and it started to thunder and lightening like crazy as we made our way up the Hudson River to Manhattan Island. It was all pretty impressive. We tried to get a photo of the forked lightening over Manhattan, but kept on clicking the camera just a moment too late.
We half expected to see King Kong climbing up the Empire State Building.
Almost got the lightening flash behind the Statue of Liberty.
Just past the Statue is a marina called Liberty Landing where we moored up for the week. It’s fabulously expensive but we do have great views of Manhattan.
That is the One World Trade Center in the centre (center) of the picture, which is the one that was built right next to Ground Zero to replace the twin towers.
And here it is in the day.
For the last week or so, we have just been typical tourists, traipsing round the sights…
Grand Central
View from The Highline, which is the old overhead subway track converted into a garden path.
We’ve been to shows..
.
On Broadway…
And off.
And no trip to New York would be complete without a jazz bar or two.
The Village Vanguard
The standard of performance art in the city is incredible. Not only have we have seen some great shows and heard some wonderful music, but even the buskers on the tube (subway) are amazing. Not just a sad old bloke with an accordion here. They have full dance troupes, bands and even acrobats doing their stuff.
Underground Dancing
Of course we have met up with Rory a few times…
.
Rory’s flat in Williamsburg, Brooklyn.
It’s called The Big Apple for a reason. Everything is HUGE in New York. Especially the food. This, for example, is a salt beef sandwich…
..which is called a “Reuben.”
And here we are in Chinatown.
Big Soup
And we think this might be why we’ve both put on about half a stone.
Fortunately Ju seems to have the opposite of anorexia and when he looks in the mirror thinks, “Hmmm..not too bad really.” Then complains that his T-shirts have shrunk.
Hold your stomach in Ju.
THE DIET STARTS TOMORROW.
The only downside has been the weather. It has rained pretty much every day. Now we know you are used to this back home, but we’ve been in the Caribbean for goodness knows how long. It just doesn’t seem right.
We went out to a place called Flushing.
And this is…
Wait for it…
A Flushing toilet. (Boom! Tisch!)
Yes my friends, sad to say, we went all the way to the end of Line 7 for that gag.
And now just time for one arty fart photo. Sunset over Chadwick Beach (Chadwick being Lyn’s maiden name of course.)
That’s all folks!
Bye for now.
Ju & Lyn
Domini 