Atlantic Highlands - 2 miles in dinghy, 4 kilometres walked
After a truthfully pleasant ocean voyage with no collisions, sinkings, or issues of any type, besides trying to stay awake overnight as we passed over abnormally calm seas, we sailed into the New York harbour at 7 am and were the only boat there. As we worked our way up the channel and around the Sandy Hook pensinsula then south across the bay, we met just two fishing boats heading out to sea. Strangely quiet.
It was around 8 am when we finally reached the anchorage behind the breakwall at the south end of Raritan Bay and dropped the hook then crashed out for a couple of hours to catch up on sleep lost from the overnight passage.
By early afternoon we'd taken the dinghy into town and had a look around. I was completely unfamiliar with the geography of this area but learned that Sandy Hook refers to the 6-mile-long sand spit that runs south to north and creates a large, moderately sheltered bay. And it is not the same Sandy Hook where the horrible school shooting happened - this is in Newtown, Connecticut, which is a couple of hours away from here. In the nook of the hook are a series of smaller towns, the closest of which is Atlantic Highlands - where we spent the afternoon exploring.
Atlantic Highlands is a cute town, with an interesting high street, but not much was open on a Monday, particularly the Monday after Easter. We did find a grocery store and picked up a lovely little basil plant, which was the same price as buying a small clump of basil. I was also intrigued when Ana walked up to me carrying scruffy-looking egg salad sandwich, hermetically sealed with a triple layer of plastic over the plastic casing and a plastic sticker announcing the price of $5.99 in strengthy US dollars, translating into a ten dollar snack.
"Want to split this?" Ana asked me, as she fluttered her lengthy and luscious eyelashes and smiled.
"Didn't we just leave the boat?" I asked her. "I had lunch before we left and thought you did too?"
"All I had was toast."
"Why didn't you eat more? Man, you're meal planning is atrocious," I said, realizing these overnight passages tend to flatten my kindness.
"That's all I wanted for breakfast. Fine, I won't get it," she said, flinging the sandwich down the toilet paper aisle where it slid like a curling rock, slowly turning and coming to rest right on the button and, ironically, right beside where a teenage worker was sweeping the floor. He was clearly not a curler; if he was he would have been Hurrying Hard instead of watching it just slide down the floor.
"Damn, don't be so hasty! You can get the sandwich, I just don't want any," I said, trying to dig myself out of the hole I'd slipped into. But by that time she'd already moved on and found a couple of freshly baked rolls and an apple for half the price. Disaster averted.
After a stop at an antique/junktique store where they had a lovely collection of knick-knackery, but sadly no vintage Playboys or Hustlers like you often find in these places (and are rarely shielded from viewing in plastic packaging), we returned to SeaLight to chill out for the rest of the day as neither of us were feeling at the top of our game. Yet, we were relieved and pleased to have made it to NYC and finished our final overnight passage.
I scanned the FM radio, looking for a good Latino station and made an astounding discovery. You know the radio voice that comes on saying station's call letters, slogans, promos, and that sort of thing. After scanning a dozen stations, and recalling all previous Spanish FM radio stations I've listened to over the years, I realized it's the SAME GUY. It's the same guy on every station. The voice is identical, with it's baritone texture, frantic, yet understandable delivery, animated inflections, hoppity rhythm, and rolling those double r's like a motherfucker. That dude must have nailed his first radio job in his teens and cornered the entire market.
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