Snake Attack, Wine and Sandwiches, Hobo Beers, and Laundry Difficulties

Haverstraw, New York - 4 miles in dinghy, 12 kilometres walked

After a blissfully quiet night at anchor, we began our first full day in Haverstraw with a dinghy ride across the glassy Hudson to the nearby Haverstraw Safe Harbor marina where I picked up a bunch of spare oil and fuel filters for the boat, then we had a long and enjoyable walk to the Aldi grocery store where we loaded up on provisions. It is such a pleasure finding an Aldi, as their prices are sometimes half of what you find in the big grocery chains. Even if you have to walk a few miles.

Dad and I had originally planned to go out for BBQ for dinner, but after returning to the boat and luxuriating in all of our beautiful food, we instead decided to make chicken curry for dinner later.

After ramming all the food into the two fridges and many storage lockers and discovering we now had an overstock of three full jugs of perishable lemonade and four jars of peanut butter, Dad pulled together two beautiful club sandwiches for lunch (I consider myself the Sandwich Man, but turns out he is the Sandwich King) which we enjoyed with wine. Quite a bit of wine. With the temperature now peaking at around 28 degrees, the shades of the cockpit with the gentle breeze drafting in made it a lovely place to drink wine and relax.

Alas, we could not lounge on the boat all day as we had laundry to do. Instead of using the locked up public dock, we dinghy'd into shore and locked it to a thick tree root. As Dad was on shore securing the chain I noticed something on the ground behind him and said, "Uh Dad, looks like you got a snake there behind you."

"What? Where?" he said as he looked down between his feet and saw the little sucker slithering by. I assumed Dad was terrified of snakes (like his father, who was scared by nothing in the world...except snakes), but he grabbed the rope from the dinghy and started poking the snake in the face. That sent him into a nearby hole and we never saw him again.

After short scramble up the steep bank, we reached where the grass levelled out and Dad made an incredible discovery. He spotted a US one dollar bill lying in the grass. I walked up to it cautiously and checked for any trip wires or evidence of a pit trap or one of those swinging balls of spikes that swoops down and takes your head off. We scanned the neighbouring houses and shops for anxious onlookers with cameras, waiting to capture their next viral Youtube video. After we confirmed no sign of foul play or trickery, I picked up the bill and handed it to Dad, then we both looked around for more money, maybe a big bag of it, but found nothing. So, Dad pocketed the dollar and we considered ourselves a little bit richer.

Our first stop was the laundromat, the best of the four in town. I loaded up a washer, poured in the soap, then jammed in four bucks worth of quarters. Everybody in the place was speaking Spanish. Dominican bachata was blasting on a stereo. A little Bolivian lady wearing a bowler hat and poncho sat, stone faced, waiting for her load of ponchos to dry as she watched the Latino lady dancers twerking their bodacious, bountiful backsides in the reggaeton videos playing on the television.

We were going stop at a neighbourhood bar to enjoy a cerveza while we waited for the laundry, but discovered there were only two bars, and neither were open. Travesty! So instead we walked through downtown and across town to the library where we got lost in the wifi for a while.

I left Dad there and speed walked back to the laundry. I lifted the clothes from the washer and wondered why they were so dry. I sniffed the underarm of my Misfits tshirt and wondered why it smelled of spicy apples. I looked at the grease dots on my pants then came to the realization that I had put the soap and money into the wrong washer. Dagnabbit! Damn lunch wine. I loaded the correct washer with coin and soap and returned to the library to admit to my sloppy mistake.

After a bit more library wifi we both returned to the laundromat and Dad spotted me while I transfered clothes to a dryer and he made sure I put the money in the correct one. Then we bought two Presidente beers from the bodega next door and the clerk carefully wrapped the bottles in paper bags to disguise the contents and we went to the park across the street to enjoy our icy cold hobo beers and the beautiful sunshine to the sounds of the Latino beats pulsing from the passing chachi-mobiles.

With our sack of laundered clothing we dinghy'd back to SeaLight, quickly put it away, then moved to the front deck of the boat to enjoy Hours of Happy in the glow of the day's remaining sunshine. We told stories. We blew the conch horn. We drank tequila and lemonade. We made chicken curry.

It was a damn fine day in Haverstraw.

Return to Haverstraw, Latino Capital of New York

Ellis Island to Haverstraw, New York - 33 nautical miles sailed, 2 miles in dinghy, 4 kilometres walked

As we watched the towers and hubub of Manhattan slowly disappear behind us, I did some morning stretching while Dad took the wheel, both of us packed full of the morning breakfast burritos we'd enjoyed before pulling anchor.

The sail north was nice and the heavy boat traffic cleared up almost immediately as we passed the north end of NYC. Having Dad at the wheel freed me to do some boat jobs. I first removed two of the cockpit enclosure panels and redid the snaps as the old ones had failed. As I was looking for the next task, I noticed a little mini-Ana sitting on my shoulder. At first I was startled as this had never happened before, but when it started to whisper into my ear I calmed down and paid attention.

"Boat's looking a little dirty, hey Captain?"

"What, really?" I said out loud.

"Whadja say?" asked my dad.

"Oh, nothing Dad," I deflected as I covered up the shoulder apparition with a People magazine. "But I have to head down into the cabin to do something."

"That was close. He's going to think you're crazy, talking to yourself like that," said mini-Ana.

"I don't think so. He's mostly deaf and I'm sure he gets old man hallucinations frequently, especially with all that boxed plonk he's been consuming. It's me I'm worried about."

"Why?"

"Cause I haven't had a drop today, never suffer from hallucinations, and I'm talking to a ghostly apparition on my shoulder."

"What you should really be worried about, Krissy-boy, is the state of this cabin. What's that smeared on the counter?"

"I think it's peanut butter. And there's a long chunk of your hair stuck in it. For your information, I have been cleaning, but your hair is still appearing everywhere like it's breeding."

"Have you been vaccuuming ten times a day like I do?" mini-Ana said as she fluffed her hair then swung it like she was in a Pantene commercial.

"Umm, well, not really. Maybe once a day."

"Ten times sailor. Get on it."

"I still don't know how your hair can be all over the place. This morning there was a long piece threaded around the bristles of my toothbrush and I didn't notice until I was halfway done and it had gotten all tangled in my teeth. Do you know how gross that feels?"

"Don't be a wimp. If you want to have a beautiful wife with long and luscious hair, it's the price you have to pay."

"I'd still love you with short hair."

"Not as much. OK, you need to clean this boat and I mean now. I know you are incapable of cleaning to the Portuguese standard on your own so I'm going to guide you through step by step."

"OK, what's first?"

"Put on an 80's playlist."

"Why do I need to do that? That music sucks."

The apparition made a mean face, gave me an evil stink eye and said, "Are we going to have a problem here?"

"Let's start with Tears for Fears," I said as cued up the 80's Hits, forever perverting my Spotify algorithm.

The apparition led me through the cleaning procedure, step by step as promised. I wiped down every hard surface in the cabins with disinfectant wipes. I removed the composting toilet and vinegar-scrubbed it. I shook the carpets, vaccuumed the floors, wiped the floors, then vaccumed again to be sure. I cleaned the windows. I scoured the sinks. I cleaned and defrosted the refrigerators. I cleaned the heads to Portuguese perfection, which required wipes, scrapers, brushes, detergents, a toothbrush for the fine work, and drying towels. I put on the white gloves and ran my finger everywhere. It came up clean.

"I think I'm done," I said to min-Ana, sweat driplets rolling down my cheeks. "Can I go back outside?"

"You have done well," said the apparition as it looked up from doing its toenails. "It's not exactly up to Portuguese standard, and my mom would not be at all impressed, but it's a good effort for you. Toodle-loo!"

And with that, the apparition was gone, the boat was sparking clean, and we had arrived in Haverstraw.

Haverstraw has the only large 360 degree anchorage on the Hudson and it is just a short dinghy ride to the free town dock. Unfortunately the dock was not yet open for the season, but we tied up anyway and jumped the fence beside the locked gate leading into the park. Dad managed to swing his leg up and over (thanks to his Urban Star stretchy Costco pants, great for scaling fences, doing yoga, and delivering devastation flying side-kicks during bar fights) and made it down the other side without injury. Goes to show the endurance of those teenage lessons he learned in Foam Lake, with his buddies, running away from the cops after stealing stuff and blowing things up.

Haverstraw was just like I'd last left it - a refuge of Latino culture nestled into New York state and the best place to go if you need a haircut or your clothes cleaned as they have more barber shops, hair dressers, and laundromats per capita than anywhere else in the world. And a lot of bodegas too.

Dad and I walked around town until we got bored then returned to Sealight for an extended happy hour, delicious dinner, then a second happy hour that took us way past Mariner's Midnight.

The Greatest View Of New York City, From Sailboat

Port Washington to Ellis Island - 21 nautical miles sailed, 3 miles in dinghy

Dad and I sat in the cockpit, the only sailboat in the anchorage, watching the kaleidoscope artwork in progress as the sun dipped down into the horizon, painting and re-painting the Manhattan skyscrapers with shiny hues of gold, silver, burgundy, jaune, chesnut, and emerald. It was a dazzling display and the glittering array of fanciful Lego towers changed by the second as day gave way to night and the reflected light was replaced with radiated light, of all colours, as the city changed again, putting on her evening clothes.

Our morning was one of leisure as we floated in Manhasset Bay. I spent several hours writing while Dad lounged, read a book, and slurped coffee in the growing warmth of the cockpit. Shortly after 11 we threw off the mooring and motored carefully into the town dock where we tied up and used the self-service pump-out machine to clear the holding tank then filled up the water tanks, all for free.

What was difficult, though, was getting off the dock as the strong winds had weakened but were still blowing hard enough on our beam to velcro SeaLight firmly in place. Dad and were not able to get her pushed off the dock. Fortunately there was a bored city worker there who had been leaning on a rail, watching us the entire time, and when I asked him to help he agreed. I first had him and Dad pushing on the boat, which was beginning to work, then the guy's cell phone rang and he abandoned the job to take the call from his wife, keeping his priorities straight. After he had assembled the list of grocery items required for home (loaf of bread, quart of milk, stick of butter, extra-absorbent pads), he rejoined the efforts and all three of us pushed to get her moving then Dad and the guy continued after I hopped aboard. We finally got the bow far enough off the dock for me to hit the gas and Dad managed to snag a shroud and yank himself up and onto the boat as we creeped out, skimming the dock posts by just a few inches, waving goodbye to our helper.

I gave Dad the helm and he piloted us south, following the same track as yesterday, and he did a great job navigating the tricky currents, now flowing southward, once again giving us a nice boost to over 12 knots. The thrill of sailing the length of Manhattan was just as intense as yesterday. I made us a little special lunch along the way to reward Dad for his excellent performance.

Liberty Island and Ellis Island are located just west from the lower end of Manhattan, across the Hudson River. We chose to anchor north of Ellis, giving us the best seat in the house for admiring the big city. Unfortunately, the wakes generated by the many passing boats, mixed with the tidal current, provided a rocky roll as SeaLight swang from side to side and we stabilized ourselves by grabbing her ample appendages without shame.

After dinner we went for a dinghy ride. As we rounded Ellis Island the Statue of Liberty came into view, brilliantly illuminated, with the torch flame a burning red. I thought about the power and cultural influence of American media as I was transfixed by the sight of her - an image I've seen a thousand times in movies, tv, magazines, adverts, eveything. The symbol of America. Justice. Liberty. Freedom. And here we were floating right in front of her, the real thing, in our ten foot dinghy. We remained for a long while, looking at her and taking photos, then powered up the dinghy to plane and circumnavigated the islands, ripping across the flat water, enjoying the thrill of speeding over unknown waters in a known place.

With that, our time in NYC was finished. Tomorrow we will begin the journey north on the Hudson River, riding the flooding tide from 9 am, headed for the town of Haverstraw.

And my dream of experiencing NYC by sailboat, our own sailboat, is now complete.