Long Island

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With the new company settled we eased off our Pier76 mooring early morning June 18 and motored down Hudson taking pictures of both shores. We dropped the anchor at the Statue of Liberty and took our time for a nice breakfast. Liberty island sits in NJ waters but belongs to NY and along with the statue has been the subject of many court battles between the two states. Meantime the Lady stands unmoved by the drama, showing her back to NJ. The freedom of refusing to take credit cards and charge everybody for access to public beaches is not the type of freedom she stands for, I am sure. After the breakfast we bid her adieu just in time for catching our ride up East river through the Hell's gate and onto Long Island sound. The current at Hell's Gate is up to 7 knots and one needs to time the traverse with respect to that. for a sail boat it's either a wild ride in the direction you need or conversely treading water or worse sliding back. We found the passage not as intimidating as have been described but at the Gate itself the race was pretty wild with numerous strong whirls that made Odessa swing her pretty rear end quite unpredictably. After passing under three imposing bridges - Brooklyn, Manhattan and Williamsburg on and on, past bleak Rikers island we go and finally into the calm waters of the sound. There our cruising destinations were as follows: City Island, Oyster Bay, (visiting Vanderbilt mansion and planetarium, reportedly one of the best in the country). In Oyster Bay we happened to be neighbors with Billy Joel's power yacht "Vendetta" overlooking the piano man's abode that occupies a promontory called Moses Point. We thought about paying a visit to the singer but found he had no landing for our dinghy. So instead we went to the Northport theatre to see The Producers - the worst play by the worst actors ever staged under the sun! and as it was all my idea I felt awful. The audience was pretty geriatric and well off and so the tickets were priced as if that was their last show. I'm sure now we should have visited Billy instead! The next day we sailed on, rounding Moses Point and on to Mount Sinai harbor (no doubt all these mames made our Israely guests feel right at home!)
June 26 found us berthed in Coecles Harbor Marina, Shelter Island. The beautiful Morris36 yacht next to us happened to be Jimmy Buffett's. And though Jimmy wasn't there, the yacht's captain and caretaker Chris was. We talked boats and discussed one at hand and I know Jimmy will be well pleased to learn that I have approved of his choice! Well, he acctually has several but this Morris is his favorite, being projected on the screen during his concerts. The next destination was Sag Harbor with East and South Hamptons where Alec Baldwin was performing at Guild Hall theatre in All My Sons. But after my miserable falure the other day I could not convince my party to pony up another few hundred dollars to Melpomene's altar. So Alec fell victim to lousy thespians of the latter day while I found consolation in a nice dinner our relatives treated us to. Our next playground was Lake Moutauk and Moutauk Point with its Lighthouse offering spectacular views of Long Island. On June 30 we said good bye to the South shore and crossed over to Mystic, CT - a very colorful town steeped in whaling hiistory. There we officially kicked off our lobster roll tasting campain!. The next day concluded our Long Island leg along with our relatives who disembarked there. To tell you the truth we had expected more from Long Island than a nice geriatric, well to-do seaside community it is and we felt it was a bit overrated by our travel guide. Maybe we should have hugged the CT shore instead which might have offered more activities and history or maybe we had to take our time to stay in one place for more than a couple of days to take it all in, who knows. But from that point on it went better and better!

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