- 104.4 miles
- 10 hours 4 minutes (including time spent at the Statue of Liberty for photos with our buddy boats)
- 10.4 mph average speed
- 4-10 mph winds
We left early (about 6:00am) with buddy boats Happy Daze and Clean Cut and again traveled on the outside. It was pretty foggy when we first left Atlantic City. The fog soon dissipated but then reappeared and we could no longer see our buddy boats. Thank goodness for radar and AIS which enabled us to know exactly where they were as well as any other traffic we may have encountered. We also had to keep a keen watch out for crab pots. For a while, we could only see about an eighth of a mile in front of us.
We had planned to stop in Brielle, NJ which is about halfway between Atlantic City and New York but it turned out to be such a nice day that we all decided to make the full run to NYC. It was a long 10 hour day but we were happy to take advantage of the good weather and to have two other boats to travel with.
We stopped in front of the Statue of Liberty with our buddy boats and took photos of each other.
It was so exciting cruising up the harbor and into New York!
Once we were docked, we Ubered to White Star restaurant in Jersey City and had wonderful burgers. Later, we walked to the end of the marina for nighttime photos of the NY skyline before retiring after our long but magical day.
The border between New Jersey and New York actually runs down the center of the harbor and the marina is actually in New Jersey so we are able to see both the Statue of Liberty and the New York skyline from the boat. To top it all off, there was a full moon!
The marina has a ferry which takes passengers across the harbor to New York. On our first full day in New York we visited the World Trade Center Memorial, the Metropolitan Museum of Art and strolled through Central Park. Of course, we stopped at a street vendor in front of the museum for hot dogs!
The World Trade Center Memorial consists of two pools that sit on the footprints of the former North and South Towers. The pools are surrounded by bronze parapets that list the names of the 2,983 victims of the 9/11/2001 attacks as well as the 1993 World Trade Center bombing. The pools are the largest manmade waterfalls in North America.
The Metropolitan Museum of Art (The Met) first opened in 1871. It is the largest art museum in the Western Hemisphere and contains over two million works.
Of the collections that we saw, one of our favorites was the Egyptian Art collection and its focal point is the Temple of Dendur. The Temple of Dendur was built around 15 B.C. and was commissioned by the first Emperor of Rome, Augustus Caesar. The Temple was gifted to the US by the Egyptian government in 1965.
Some of the other collections we viewed were Musical Instruments (from 300 B.C. to the present), European Paintings, 1250-1800, and Greek and Roman Art. I’m sure we are leaving some things out and we did not come close to seeing all there is to see but what we did see was absolutely amazing!
Next, we strolled through Central Park and sat on a bench for a while to “people watch”.
The next day we had lunch with Kevin’s daughter, Emma, whose office is at 7 World Trade Center. After Lunch we took the subway to the Intrepid Sea, Air & Space Museum which is home to the aircraft carrier, USS Intrepid, the space shuttle, Enterprise, and the submarine, USS Growler. Later, we walked around Times Square and enjoyed a New York pizza for dinner on the boat.
The USS Intrepid was launched in 1943 and fought in World War II, the Cold War and the Vietnam War. During World War II it survived five kamikaze attacks and one torpedo strike. It also served as a NASA recovery vessel in the 1960’s.
The space shuttle Enterprise was NASA’s first space shuttle and was flown five times in 1977. It was built to be a test vehicle but not built to travel into space.
The USS Growler was launched in 1958 and is now the only American guided missile submarine open to the public. Its purpose was to be a nuclear deterrent off the coast of the Soviet Union during the Cold War.
Day three was spent doing some boat cleaning and planning for the next several legs of our trip. That evening we took the subway and had a delicious dinner at the Hourglass Tavern on Restaurant Row (46th Street) in Hell’s Kitchen before attending the fabulous Broadway show Wicked at the Gershwin Theatre.
In addition to becoming what we think are pretty good subway riders, we walked over 30,000 steps over those two days! We spent the next day taking it easy and doing some more cleaning before Kevin took off to spend the weekend with his daughter, Emma, son in law, Andrew, and precious granddaughter, Margaret in Brooklyn. Ellen stayed on the boat and went to visit them for several hours on Saturday. She was quite proud of herself for navigating from Jersey City to New York via the PATH train and then the subway to Brooklyn all by herself!
Brooklyn is a charming town with block after block of stunning Brownstones surrounded by beautiful trees. Emma and Andrew’s lovely apartment is in a Brownstone and they have a wonderful garden area in the back where they grow vegetables and flowers. While Ellen was visiting, we had delicious burgers and beer at Brooklyn Burgers and Beer and walked around the Park Slope neighborhood and through Prospect Park. We went back to the apartment so Margaret could take a nap and then went for an ice cream before Ellen headed back to the boat.
Our final day before departing New York was Father’s Day and Emma, Andrew and Margaret came back from Brooklyn with Kevin to see our boat. We had Father’s Day Brunch at one of the restaurants at the marina and then walked around Liberty State Park. We walked through the historic Central Railroad Station and viewed Ellis Island and the Statue of Liberty.
