Sandy Hook to Brooklyn, New York – 13 nautical miles sailed, 6 kilometres walked
Ana and I sat in the Sheepshead Bay Yacht Club bar, perched on wooden stools, drinking Corona beer. Several of the dozen or so club members hanging out there on a Friday night stopped by to say hello (using intriguing, thick Brooklyn accents) and provide recommendations on what to do in the area, focused exclusively around food: where to get the best steak, the best fish, the best bagels, the best sandwiches, and where not to get coffee. Three screens hung from the walls, one playing football, one basketball, one baseball. Children of the members kicked around a soccer ball in the large adjoining hall. The classic pool table behind us remained dark and unused. It had been a busy day and we were tired, but chatting with the locals, in this place, feel like we were in the opening scene of a fantastic movie.
The day began early, with a fill up of diesel and water at the Atlantic Highlands fuel dock then a quick spray down of the boat to rinse off the accumulated yellow pollen dust, which flowed like thinned mustard in a stream down the boat and into the water. The 13-mile trip north to Brooklyn was easy and there were few boats around, other than a massive container ship that crossed ahead of us in one of the two main channels leading into New York City.
We scanned the charts closely as we made the approach to the shallow channel leading into Sheepshead Bay, which sits at the south end of Brooklyn. At low tide the suggested route provided for six feet of water. We were an hour away from low tide, providing additional depth. I slowed the boat and entered the channel and almost immediately felt her grind to a halt as the keel imbedded itself into a shoal of sand, probably built up over the winter as the depths did not match what was shown on the chart. I slammed the boat in hard reverse, nothing. Ana took the helm while I pushed out the boom to the port side then hung off the end of it, trying to tip the boat and free the keel. No dice. We weren’t excited at the thought of remaining here for several hours for the tide change as a large wind was expected to develop, which would probably stick us in even further. So I dropped the dinghy and we attached the spinnaker line to the bow towing ring then I motored in reverse as hard as she would go, applying sideways pull to the top of the mast, leaning the boat and lifting the keel ever so slowly while Ana gunned the engine in reverse. Finally, she popped off and SeaLight was free. I hollered at Ana to take her to deeper water while I used our portable depth sounder to find the best route in through the channel. I was able to find just barely six feet of depth using a S-shaped path, winding through the shoals in the channel, but with the tide still falling it was simply too risky. I turned the dinghy to return to SeaLight and saw Ana waving her arms and yelling something. The boat had drifted in the building wind as Ana was adjusting the spinnaker line and was grounded again, this time in even shallower water.
We repeated the technique, but this time it did not work and the boat wouldn’t budge. I then used the dinghy as a battering ram and pushed into the side of the heavy boat, with no results…at first, but finally she started to move and I managed to get the bow pointed into deeper water, which stuck in the rudder even more as the stern was pushed into the sand. I quickly moved the dinghy to the stern and gave it full power as Ana did the same in forward gear on the boat. Slowly, ever so slowly, she started to move, but not before the dinghy reared up and the towing ring put a new smash mark into SeaLight’s stern. But alas, we were free! Ana took her further into deeper water while I reattached the dinghy in the davits then we tossed the anchor and had naps in the cockpit while we waited for the ever dependable tide to come in.
It was 3 pm when we finally made it into Sheepshead Bay and picked up a mooring at the yacht club where we’d made a reservation for four nights. Ana was down to her precious last few days of the trip so wanted to get into shore as soon as possible to take advantage of the remaining hours of the day. We took the dinghy into the club, tied up at their dock, then were immediately met by several of the members – Michael, Jordy, and Kevin who gave us a rundown of club protocols then Jordy took us on a tour of the clubhouse, along the way telling us his interesting back story as a lifelong local resident of the neighbourhood.
Then, we walked, as we love to do. We walked west along the length of Sheepshead Bay, passing a string of restaurants – Randazzo’s Clam Bar, Opera Café Lounge, Rocca Café and Lounge, Momo Hibachi Steakhouse and Bar and many others before finding the Cherry Hill Gourmet which we walked into and were instantly stunned. Everybody spoke Russian. Hundreds or maybe thousands of wicker baskets hung upside-down from the ceiling as decoration. Products we’d never seen before packed the shelves, from fancy cheeses, to imported beers, to exotic tea to jams and wrapped candies. The bakery section had a mouth-watering presentation of desserts and fresh bread. The fish counter had smoked sturgeon, thousand-dollar tins of caviar, and canned fish of every variety while the meat counter had all the standard cuts plus more interesting ones such as trays of marinated beef tongues, skewered chicken livers, and broiled Peking ducks. Some of the customers looked Asian, some European, some black, all spoke Russian. One glamorous Russian lady with expensive sunglasses and more expensive facial enhancements bought a basket of caviar, croissants, wine, and gorgonzola then stepped outside and into her fiery yellow Lamborghini Urus SUV with license plate “JUSTMILA” and peeled away. It was an extraordinary place, but I was too foodstruck to even buy anything.
From there we walked north on Ocean Avenue and found yet another grocery, this one called Sheepshead Bay Marketplace. After spending nearly an hour inside I now know what it feels like to be a heroin addict. We browsed, in increasing hunger pain, through the endless, artfully curated aisles and were mesmerized by the sheer abundance and quality of foods. A bread counter with baking from dozens of local bakeries. A deli with counter with smoked meats, every kind of sausage every made, bulging tubes of proteins. A coffee counter making lattes and Turkish coffee. Fruits and vegetables of every variety. Imported foods. Local foods. Flowers. A bank of dozens of drawers full of nuts and bulk cooking ingredients. Coolers with frozen dumplings, six varieties of. A prepared foods section with olives, salads, herbed vegetables, roasted meat, and soups, the smells of which brought painful cramping to my stomach as I swallowed back saliva. I moved from aisle to aisle, section to section, frantically, eyes darting from items to item, barely noticing the other customers jostling for space as I pushed through them. But I was paralyzed by choice, stunned by variety, incapacitated by abundance. In a haze I grabbed a jar and went to find Ana.
“Look at this!” I said, holding up my discovery to her, trying to pull her attention from her own hypnotic browsing. “Peas in brine, only a dollar-fifty!”
“Canned peas? Are you serious?”
“In brine. And in a jar. Really nice jar too, don’t you think?”
“We never eat peas. There’s two cans of peas in the boat that have been there since Haverstraw, six months ago.”
“But they’re dollar-fifty! In brine…” I said wistfully with vacant eyes.
“I think I need to get you out of here,” she said as she pried the jar of peas from my hand then led me out of the store. I watched the beautiful food passing behind us, salty tears rolled down my cheeks and a stubborn lump in my throat.
Fortunately, Ana had bought one large crusty roll, a latte, and an apple Danish. We found a sizeable rock protruding from the ground on a boulevard, sat on it, and greedily devoured our purchases. They were delicious and brought instant relief to my ravenous body.
“Are you okay now?” Ana asked as she cupped my chin.
“I’m better,” I said with a dreamy look in my eye, drunk with my food fix. “I’ll remember this moment. Always.”
We continued our wandering, loving the grit and the busyness of the downtown area of Sheepshead Bay. It felt like a real neighbourhood, very much unlike Manhattan, which often comes across as staged and curated. And everybody was still speaking Russian.
Ana’s retail radar began pinging off a Marshall’s, so I was marshalled away down the street and deposited at a PetCo pet superstore to research hamsters while she dug for deals amongst the Russian value chasers. For a rodent hater, Ana has a curious love for hamsters. In fact, she has pledged to buy one as soon as she gets home, and this time there will be no illusions that it’s Stella’s hamster. It will be Ana’s. And she will love him. It does mean less attention for me, but that will be more than compensated for by the pleasure I receive from her enhanced level of joy, experienced every time she looks at the little fella running on his wheel, eating a freshly made salad, or lounging in his cushy cage furnishings.
After staking out the rodent section I left then sat myself outside the Marshall’s, on a flattened guardrail, and watched the Brooklynites passing by, spiritually lifted by the arrival of another glorious Friday.
Ana eventually returned (it took a looooong time) and we went to see the hamsters. She fell in love with a pack of four little Roborovskis, and had decide that would the sub-species of her next pet, but they started attacking each other and then three of them turned on the smallest one and beat the turd pebbles out of him. She decided to stick with the proven docility of the dwarf hamster variety.
On the way back to the yacht club we were drawn into the Roll-N-Roaster - a vintage fast food joint - and shared a Roast Beef ‘N Cheez sandwich, Disc Fries, actual real authentic pan drip Gravy, and a Lemonade. We considered a bottle of Moet champagne for sixty bucks to celebrate our first day in Brooklyn, but cheaped out and stuck with the lemonade, which was very good. The chicken breasts we’d left thawing and abandoned in SeaLight’s sink would have to wait until tomorrow.
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