NYC to Port Washington to Oyster Bay to Northport NY

This blog entry is a twofer.  Two movements, two days.  We didn't blog Saturday because we were with family and drove late to get to our location.   We didn't blog Sunday because.... We didn't move and I was tired.   

So today it is.    Pic below is actually Jersey City just north of Ellis Island.   The Colgate Clock is visible from Manhattan offices all over the island because it's across the river...

Saturday we started in Astoria at an Anchorage and cruised down to Brooklyn (Red Hook) to pick up Katie's sister, her husband Eric and their son Eli.   Ella (their daughter) apparently thought we weren't cool enough to hang with ... Even though we bought a ton of girlscout cookies from her.  :). (Ok not really ... But it's a good story). We will see her this coming Saturday when we return to the city.  

We cruised north of Governor's Island, around  the statue of Liberty, past Ellis Island, around the tip of Manhattan and up the east river past the upper east side (and the United Nations building),

through Astoria (again) and then out through where the Harlem River and East River merge.  This area is called HellGate and the name goes way back.  The current in here rips though when the tide is really moving.  

(At one point we were going 16mph over ground at 1200rpms, which normally gets us 8mph)

Finally we turned around once we reached Rikers Island (the infamous and likely most famous jail in New York as it's mentioned in police shows constantly)

Lunch was tasty fried chicken thanks to EE and E.    We don't often get fried chicken on the boat while traveling even though it's a staple when we are at our home marina.  

We then reversed our course all of the way back to Red Hook to drop off our crew ..  then drove all of the way back up through the East River past Hell Gate where we traveled through Throgs Neck, 

past LaGuardia Airport (and it's runway on a pier), and past/around two more points.  We ended our day in the protected bay of Port Washington.   We grabbed a mooring ball and settled in for the night.  This is not a poor neighborhood....

Sunday the rain was coming so we didn't want to travel that day so we wanted a place to tie up and not worry about pulling an anchor.  58.7 miles Saturday but alot of it was north and south on the east river (3x)

Manhasset Bay (Port Washington) is a really nice area.  I enjoyed it.   Katie enjoyed just getting off the boat after four days cooped up in a 40ish ft space...

We had a great stay here even though the weather wasn't great.  The mooring field was well protected and the wind wasn't bad.   The rain was cold though.  We ran the generator alot to keep the heat up....

Sunday did church then we went into town on the water taxi and settled up for the cost of mooring.  We had a great Mexican lunch and then did some grocery shopping at the Stop and Shop (not the stop and rob, that's a different chain).    Mooring fields here are everywhere and the only reasonable place to stay other than anchoring.  

Monday we arose, had breakfast on the boat and headed out of Port Washington for some tourist cruising.  

Our first bay to visit was Oyster Bay.   This bay is home to many a wealthy entrepreneur. 

The Bosch family has a house here...

As does Mr Bill Joel (better known as Billy Joel).   His house is going up for sale and it looks like crews are working all over the property to update it or get it ready for a new owner.. 

There are many structures on the property for various purposes.  

Here's the main house.  

This is their boat house....
The Alexa (his boat is named Alexa, as is his daughter) was not at the dock.   He also has a song Down Easter Alexa about a poor fisherman off Long Island ...  He likes the name.  Too bad Amazon had to go and ruin it...


Next door to Billy's estate is the Oyster Bay Community Center.   Not too shabby.  I wonder what a 'community organizer' does in the Oyster Bay Community Center.... Lol. 

We also traveled past the other houses on the same street including two houses owned by brothers that own a financial market trading company ..  the next time you pay a finance charge on a stock trade.... Be assured it's going to a good cause ...  


We left Oyster Bay because the notes on the marina and anchorage pages make it clear they really don't like "transients" and prefer locals only in their town.   So inclusive.  

So we motored on to Northport harbor.  This Northport is full of nice homes like the one in Michigan.  In fact it's a tad nicer and has a ton of moorings and boats.   

We looked at the building (below) and thought it was really out of place.... And then we were told it was the Vanderbilt's sea plane hangar (in the early-mid 1900s when people didn't own airplanes or seaplanes).   It's now on the grounds of the Vanderbilt Castle museum and planetarium.  

We didn't do the museum (kind of museum'd out) and it wasn't close by.... Walking these hills was out of the question.  (We tried a couple.)

Northport has been around 300+ years so there's tons of history.  There are cobblestones and street car rails in the streets downtown.    They don't build roads that last 100+ years anymore....


Some old businesses and churches here as well....  From the 1800s anyway.    We had homemade ice cream in a shoppe owned by the same family since 1929.   It was excellent... (And made Katie sick because sugar and dairy sometimes does that) 


Lots of the historical homes here are more 'normal' than the Uber elite homes on the shoreline elsewhere here..   They now feel like New England homes for a reason... We are only a short trip to Cape Cod or Martha's Vineyard down this sound....  (Although we won't be going that far)

38 miles today.  It started out fully cloudy and cold but turned into a nice almost 70 degrees day.

We are about half way down the south side of Long Island Sound.  Tomorrow we plan to cut across and east a ways to New Haven Connecticut.   We hope we can find a place to unload our bikes and explore.  (Oh and I found the latest issue with my bike which is similar to what we had before.... I burned up a connection on the motor/drive wire.  It got hot enough to melt plastic and short the metal on the connector against the controller.   This time, fortunately, it didn't fry the controller so I was able to splice the wires back together in a crimp on connection and double insulate it with some heat shrink tubing.  I don't know if it will last but I'm hoping it will work for me until my new bike arrives in a week or so.... Then I'll store this one on the bow until we are home and make it a project bike once I have my full set of tools and equipment at home....  Everything can be fixed on these things - even if it means replacing everything but the frame.  :). 

Til tomorrow!   Goodnight.  







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