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 shade of the cockpit with the gentle breeze drafting in made it a lovely place to  consume vino 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 signs 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.

Port Washington, Hell Gate, Rikers Prison, and the Carpets of Dalton, Georgia

Sheepshead Bay to Port Washington - 32 nautical miles sailed, 2 miles in dinghy, 7 kilometres walked

After four nights on a mooring at Sheepshead Bay, it was time to move on, but instead of heading up the Hudson River towards our ultimate destination, we decided on a little side trip to Port Washington, in Long Island Sound.

By 6:30 am we were on the water and carefully snaked through the shallow channel using the GPS track we had saved from our tumultous, but ultimately successful passage into Sheepshead Bay. I put Dad on the helm and we sailed west and north around Brooklyn, winding around large anchored freighters, until we reached the south end of Manhattan and its imposing skyline. Here, we turned north east and traveled up the East River, passing the towers of Manhattan to our left, Brooklyn to our right, numerous massive bridges directly above, and raging but favourable tidal currents below. The ride was exciting as we were passed by high speed ferries, commercial vessels, a few private boats, and a small airplane on floats that we watched rip down the river and take flight just in time to soar over the Williamsburg bridge.

As we proceeded north and into the narrower passages of the East River, the current velocity increased and we hit a maximum speed of 13 knots as we blasted across bubbly, swirling water and watched the shoreline passing by at a speed never before experienced on SeaLight.

After putting up the headsail to take advantage of the building winds (and to go even faster), we passed through the treacherous Hell Gate, where East River splits off into the Harlem River which runs north and loops around the top of Manhattan. This geographical configurion makes a right old mess of the tidal currents, but SeaLight motored through the chaos admirably.

Soon afterwards we passed Rikers Island, notorious for the massive prison with its 10,000 inmates and reputation as one of the worst correction facilities in the USA. We did not stop for a tour.

We soon reached the end of the river and the start of Long Island Sound, which runs for 80 miles between the mainland and Long Island. It was only a few miles to Manhasset Bay where we picked up a mooring near the Port of Washington town site. Dad had his first experience with balancing at the bow of the boat with a flimsy boat hook trying to snag a mooring line and we nailed it on the second attempt.

Fun fact: Dalton, Georgia is known as the Carpet Capital of the World and is home to over 150 carpet plants which produce 90% of the world's carpets. Their carpet production uses up one-third of the Conasauga River's summer water flow and the river itself and city water supply is contaminated with carpet chemicals.

We took the dinghy into shore and went exploring, finding a cute town with an unusual abundance of Asian restaurants and barber shops. After walking the entire length of Main Street and accidentally stopping for coffee at a daycare center (and looking like a couple of creeps, especially after we asked to play in the Ikea-like ball room), we found the incredible town library and settled into comfy chairs with a stack of magazines and books. It was heavenly and we stayed for a long time, but Dad probably had no idea how long we were there as he faded in and out of consciousness, in the clutches of the nap-friendly chair.

After a stop at the grocery store to pick up a few things (but not the seven-dollar hot dog buns) we returned to SeaLight and fired up happy hour and had so much fun and had so many great ideas that we forgot to eat dinner until 10 pm, under the night beauty of the anchorage, ringed in by 360 degrees of sparkling lights from the houses, boats, and marinas. Dad pointed out the magnificence of our current situation in life. I hadn't noticed. I explained to him this was just a regular night for me in a long sequence of magical evenings in beautiful places.

When one's regular is incredible, you know you're doing something right.

The Admiral Goes Home

Manhattan, NYC - 12 kilometres walked

It was always going to come to an end for Ana before me.

I had arranged for a work gap of 10 months, but Ana just 7 as she wanted to be back at work in advance of Glenhyrst's huge annual fundraiser. So yesterday after traveling together for more than 4000 miles at sea, I said goodbye to my Admiral, my lover, my wife, and my best friend as we kissed on the platform of the Norstrand Avenue station then she stepped onto the train and didn't look back, eyes directed towards Canada. For the next month we would be on separate journeys; hers aclimatizing to regular life and mine returning SeaLight to her home in Newport Yacht Club. I am going to miss her. Yet I belive in the adage that absence makes the heart grow (even) fonder.

Dad and I left the station and began walking to a different station to catch a train into Manhattan. We were a bit sluggish and still full from our huge farewell breakfast of bacon, herbed hash browns, eggs, fruit, and toast, but the walking felt good. The ride here had been ridiculous as we hadn't entirely settled on the best route for Ana to take to the airport and as we rode the bus, the Google advice on when to get off and which bus or subway to take kept changing every time we looked at it, so we sat paralyzed as we moved northward, reviewing the persistently changing options, getting more and more frustrated. We finally got close to the station Dad had arrived at from the airport so took that option, which ended up being the most expensive and certainly not the fastest.

We arrived to the platform just as the subway we needed was about to leave so we jumped on, then didn't realize until we'd whizzed well past our intended stop that we were on the wrong train. No matter, we're walkers, so we got off and walked. Being in Manhattan was a shock - so many more people and tourists, the towering buildings, shading out the landscape, the enhanced noise, the closeness of everything.

We walked around Columbus Circle and the edge of Central Park then down Broadway until we found the cross street which lead us to New York's Museum of Modern Art - MOMA. Before going in we snagged a hot dog from one of the hundreds of sausage carts on the street as this one proclaimed "New York's BEST hot dog!" It was pretty good, but not sure if it lived up to that bold claim.

The MOMA was extraordinary. I was glad Dad had wanted to come as this had been on my list of things to see for our first stop in Manattan last fall but we hadn't found the time to visit. The four floors of exhibits had works from recognizable artists such as Salvador Dali, Andy Warhol, Jackson Pollock, and Henri Matisse, but most were from artists I'd never heard of. I enjoy modern art but never pretend to understand any of it, and I don't think it is meant to be understood; it's how it makes you feel. The stuffed animals sewn together, faces inward, arranged into large balls, suspended from the ceiling made me feel whimsical and a little disturbed that I couldn't see their furry faces. The 17 CRT televisions with identical images of a swaying palm tree made me feel Videodrome. The painting of a black man in a dark corner with jarring white specs of eyes made me feel like I was being watched. The chocolate brown image of a young girl holding a doll which struggled to pull itself out of artwork left me creeped. The spread open legs of a delimbed and mostly detorso'd woman, perched suggestively on a box of ammunition made me feel simultaneously eroticised and revolted.

But the most impactful experience were the thirty minutes between 1:30 and 2:00 where we watched The Clock, a film pieced together with snippets of other movies, all of which contain images of clocks and or mentions of time. For example, there is a scene from a black and white movie that zooms in on a clock showing 1:43, then a man calls to his wife. Paul Newman appears, looking at his watch, which reads 1:51. As a clock shows 1:53, Peter Parker shows up late for his shift at the pizzeria and is told to have an order delivered miles uptown by 2pm otherwise he will be fired.

We didn't know anything about this movie and I sat in the comfy couch seat, leaned way back, intrigued at the strange fluidity of storyline as it cut from movie scene to movie scene, with actors doing different things, but all focused on time. The soaring background music, which flowed through the abrupt scene changes somehow held the film together, creating a strange sort of narrative where none existed. When the movie reached 2pm then kept going onto 2:01, I checked the time on my phone, wondering how long this movie ran for and if we should leave. It was 2:01. I started to wonder. Dad and I left as we still had much of the MOMA yet to explore, and at the exit of the small screening room was a description of the work. It was indeed a 24-hour long film, synchronized to local time, made with 8,000 patched together snippets of one hundred years of television and cinema. It was an extraodinary artpiece and like nothing I've ever seen before. I hope to watch it in its entirety some day.

Dad and I left the MOMA, happy with our investment of time there and with perhaps a new perspective on time itself.

We walked southward, looking around and up, recognizing buildings, enjoying the spectacles, pathing through the crowds, until Dad was derailed by a sign for an Authentic German Beer House and an arrow pointed that way. We immediately turned left and found it a block down.

The beer hall was nearly empty but that didn't stop Oompas like us, despite paying twelve bucks per half litre of Germany's finest.

After our pints we walked down into a station and the B train that would take us all the way to Sheepshead Bay had just arrived, perfect timing, so we jumped on just as the doors were closing. It wasn't until about 30 minutes later that I noticed the giant "D" on the subway car's interior and looked at my Google maps to see we were well on our way to Coney Island. My navigation game has been so unbelievably off.

Alas, after an extended sightseeing tour of residential and gritty Brooklyn we arrived at Coney Island station, transferred to the Q line, which whisked us to Sheepshead in 8 minutes, passing the larger-than-expected Coney Island Amusement Park along the way.

I felt compelled to tour Dad through the two food markets we'd discovered the other day and he was suitably impressed. Our final, final stop was the giant Liquor Warehouse to pick up a box of cardBordeaux then we walked back to the Sheepshead Bay Yacht Club, returned to the boat, had a call with Ana and heard about her successful journey home, then made an amazing dinner of fresh garden salad (sprinkled with trail mix, Dad's innovation), fresh bread, rice, and ginger soy tuna steaks, then hung out chatting until we were tired.

Visiting the Middle East in Downtown Brooklyn

Sheepshead Bay, Brooklyn - 10 kilometres walked

When I was a kid there were many movies and shows set in New York City. And the city was typically portrayed (probably not unfairly) as a bleak, dangerous, and hopeless place where gangs ruled the streets, riding the subway was a deathwish, graffiti plastered every surface, and unbroken windows were a rarity. I don't know how much of that was true, but with my worldview limited to the few square miles between the 7-11, the big hill, the government grain elevators, the railroad tracks behind the apartment buildings, and St. Mark's Elementary (my Dear Watson...) school, all located around our home in Fairhaven, Saskatoon, I just had to go with what I saw on TV.

Well, the New York City of today is nothing like that. It is safe, clean, progressive, fun, and full of tourists. It is also very big. NYC is composed of five separately governed boroughs: Manhatten, Statten Island, Brooklyn, Queens, and the Bronx, with a combined population of 8 million people, making it by the largest city in US by far.

We had a light breakfast then got on the water and into the dock where we walked a few blocks to catch a bus headed north. For some reason we decided to get off the B44 bus we had correctly caught, thinking we needed the B44 SBS, which I think is actually the same bus. But it was all good - if you want to walk over 10 kilometres every day you can't be ass-surfing busses and subways all the time.

We walked until we found a bagel and coffee shop, and the stready stream of Jewish people coming and going confirmed it as a good bet. We enjoyed hot drinks and a snack then continued our walk to a subway station where we rode into downtown Brooklyn for Ana to hit the giant Marshall's store she had noticed the other day. While she was popping tags, Dad and I unsuccessfully attempted to break into the Barclay Center to see what we could find, but all we found were locked doors so we walked the surrounding Atlantic and Flatbush areas looking for food or beer or both.

At a corner Yemeni bodega we picked up a pudgy, sultry falafal wrap for pre-lunch and split it down the middle as we sat at their single outdoor customer table watching the world swirl around us. We then scoped out an Israeli restaurant called Miriam for proper lunch then wandered around aimlessly until Ana found us. We led her to Miriam, she approved of the menu, and we enjoyed a spectacular long lunch, nearly on our own as the packed lunch crowd had dispersed.

On the return trip Dad found a really nice seat on the subway and wondered why nobody had taken it. I snapped this photo as it contains a hidden clue to solve the mystery.

Back at the boat we were too full from lunch to eat a big meal, so instead we snacked-up in the cockpit, had several rounds of happy hour bevvies, and put our bets in for the results of tomorrow's Canadian election.

A New Crew Member Arrives

Brooklyn, New York – 12 kilometres walked

After exploring the local neighbourhood yesterday, it was time to go further afield. We were both up early and walked to the Sheepshead Bay Marketplace to start the day with a coffee. Along the way we passed a local Brooklyn swan who had made use of the harbour garbage to fashion a cozy nest on a partially submerged dock, and in the nest were four massive eggs, enough for at least fifteen omelettes. In the market Ana picked up a latte and I went for a super caffeinated, turbo-charged Turkish java, the small sludgy cup of which was sufficient to put me on a caffeine high for the entire day. It was delicious, as was the pistachio croissant we had for a post-breakfast snack.

We got onto the subway, going the wrong direction, so lost half an hour in the turnaround but finally got going in the right way. As the train sped northward we passed the enormous Green-Wood cemetery, at nearly 500 acres and containing more than 600,000 gravesites. Both Ana and I like visiting cemeteries, but this one would have to wait.

After 20 stops we arrived at the neighbourhood of Dumbo, which I learned is a Disneyish acronym for the clunky “Down Under the Manhattan Bridge Overpass” and is one of the most popular neighbourhoods in Brooklyn for visitors. It is located directly south of Manhattan so offers phenomenal views over the city which you simply can’t see when you are on the island.

We lucked out with our timing as the Saturday Dumbo flea market, located beneath one of the massive bridge supports, was in full swing and packed with hipsters, funksters, and groovesters digging through tables and racks of custom jewelry, vinyl albums, vintage clothing, ethical coffee, and flashy handbags. I found a cool vintage jacket with Ernie and Bert macrame artfully sewn into the back, but after seeing a price tag of $250 pinned to a nearby plain, boring jacket on a rack, I directed my interest elsewhere, as the Sesame Street jacket would likely set me back a thousand.

From here we wandered, exploring the streets and popping into shops, crowd-watching, and enjoying the vistas provided by the bridges and Manhattan skyline. Ana eyeballed a Shake Shack so we stopped for burgers and fries and an unbeatable vanilla milkshake. We then started walking towards Brooklyn downtown and walked and walked and walked until we reached the Nostrand Avenue Station. After five minutes, SeaLight’s newest crew member appeared on the station steps – my dad!

I’d had a call from my brother Curtis earlier in the day regarding a potential Mars Volta concert in Toronto in November and he told me that our dad had collected him and his family at the Saskatoon airport at 1am the previous night. They’d just returned from a spectacular two week European vacation and Dad wanted to see the grandkids before leaving for his trip…which began a few hours later with his 4 am taxi back to the same airport. My dad’s always been the master at the all-nighter, and seems to do them as frequently in his 70’s as he did in his 20’s.

We took a long bus ride back to Sheepshead, welcomed him aboard SeaLight, had a lengthy happy hour visit in the cockpit followed up with a nice chicken stir fry, some more visiting, then called it a relatively early night.