AquaFennatic Great Loop Blog: Coney Island New York to Haverstraw New York

Jun 6^th – It was a cool and rainy day with moderate winds. We pulled up our anchor from Coney Island and travelled 11 miles to Staten Island New York and pulled into a slip in Mansion Marina. It looked like it was going to be a crappy day thus we decided to do some chores. Maria did some laundry while I washed the salt off the boat and flushed out the dingy motor with fresh water. We no longer have to venture out into the ocean thus we should see less salt on the boat from this point onward and soon we’ll be in fresh water … I can’t wait! I also walked into town to get my hair cut since I started to feel a little like Crusty the Clown! We met the New York AGLCA harbour host and picked his brain for our NYC visit which will start tomorrow with a visit to the Statue of Liberty. And to close the day we joined 6 other Looper boat couples for dinner at a place called Coles.

Jun 7^th – It was a cool day with a mix of sun and clouds and moderate winds. We are still in Staten Island and will be for a least a couple more nights while we explore NYC. We grabbed a cab this morning with Scott and Karen (“Last Call”) to go to Liberty State Park in New Jersey to take the ferry to the Statue of Liberty and to Ellis Island. We learned that we would have been better to take the ferry from New York since we could have used public transportation to get us there. After our island visits we headed back to New York and had to figure out where to get a MetroCard so we could use the X1 Express bus to get back … Once we had this figured out we walked down Wall Street and back and decided to head back to the boats and we were successful! Then Karen and Scott made us an Exxxcellent dinner including angel hair pasta with an amazing sauce loaded with fresh shrimp.

Jun 8^th – It was another cool day with a mix of sun and clouds and moderate winds at Mansion marina in Great Kills harbour. We caught the bus into Manhattan with Scott and Karen (“Last Call”) and had a great bus driver, Frank, that gave us some great tips/information for our 2^nd visit to the big apple. We took the bus directly to Central Park to meet up with Joe for a carriage ride around the park. Joe was knowledgeable about the area and his trusty horse, Dante, pulled the carriage around the park while Joe told us stories about the area. After the ride we walked to Time Square which was filled with people and enormous TV screens everywhere. We lined up for theatre tickets however it was going to be at least an hour before they opened and the shows we wanted to see weren’t on the list thus we decided to pass on this opportunity. We visited all kinds of places like Rockefeller Centre, St Patricks Cathedral, Radio City, Saks Fifth Avenue, etc. We then grabbed the subway to the 911 memorial which is quite amazing and sparked memories of that terrible day that’s still stuck in my head. Afterwards the girls grabbed the balls of a brass bull to get rich … Really??!! … Hopefully it works. We then walked into China town and Little Italy and stopped for an Italian dinner. We were all running out of steam thus we grabbed the X1 bus back to Staten Island however we missed our stop and had to walk a mile back to the boats. We definitely got more than our share of exercise today!
Jun 9^th – It was a warm mostly sunny day with light/moderate winds. We left Mansion marina with “Last Call” and headed 53.6 miles north up the Hudson River to West Haverstraw New York and anchored in Haverstraw Cove. On the way we stopped at the Statue of Liberty to take pictures of each other and then repeated the process in front of the Manhattan skyline. We rocked and rolled a bit as tour boats and ferries passed by us, however it’s one of those things you’ve got to do thus we just sucked it up while we made sure we had enough pictures of each other. 5 Loopers were behind us and repeated the process however they are heading into a marina tonight. We also found out that Cruising Odyssey just wrote an on-line article about our trip. You can find it here: http://cruisingodyssey.com/.