A Tale of Two Chemists: Transit of the East River

Transit of the East River

Tuesday 28th to Wednesday 29th May, 2025

A passage up the East River of New York City is a memorable experience. If you time it right it can be a blast … if you don’t, I imagine it could be a miserable experience. When we arrived in Atlantic Highlands around 4.30 am on Tuesday, we saw another boat pulling up anchor, presumably to make the journey up to Long Island Sound. For us, departing on Wednesday morning, we figured we need to be up and on the move by 5 am.

After a few hours sleep on Tuesday morning we spent some time cleaning and tidying the boat (and ourselves!) before taking the dinghy into town. We wandered around, had a good lunch at a local Mexican restaurant, seated out in their garden, and did a little food shopping. Back on the boat we rested, ate a light dinner and had an early night as we were all still tired from the passage up from Norfolk. Getting up at 4.30 am the following morning seemed way too early, but we did have the anchor up by 5am and were motoring north across the Bay towards New York City.

The sunrise was colorful, but unfortunately a layer of low cloud made the rest of the day grey and uninspiring. The light was flat and poor for photography. Rod was at the helm as we passed under the huge Verrazano Narrows bridge and made our way towards the Battery. New York is a very busy harbor and he had to dodge countless tug-barge combos as well as ferries. At one point we had Staten Island ferries approaching us from in front of us and behind, as well as another smaller fast ferry on our side. I think it was a stressful experience for Rod! However, our timing was perfect and we arrived at the Battery just in time to catch a positive current northwards through the East River. We moved briskly past lower Manhattan, the United Nations building and under the Brooklyn Bridge. We saw the damaged Mexican tall ship Cuauhtemoc tied up just north of the bridge - such a tragedy that it crashed under the bridge. As we passed Roosevelt Island things started to get really exciting! We encountered a large tug-barge, thankfully before the Hells Gate S-bend, and our speed surged. The water was swirling all around us and we set a speed record for Cotinga recording 13.5 knots over the ground. Given that we were probably motoring at 6.5 knots it means we had up to 7 knots of positive current. Needless to say our passage through the East River was fast.

Once under Throgs Neck Bridge we turned north into Long Island Sound and motored through glassy waters up to Oyster Bay. The shore line in this area has some of the most incredible stately homes that you can imagine. We dropped anchor off the town, just as it started to rain. In the mid afternoon Rod and I took the dinghy ashore and wandered around whilst Gloria rested on board. Oyster Bay is a pleasant, well-to-do place; a wealthy rail commuter town for New York City. It seems more up-market than Atlantic Highlands, for reasons that aren’t entirely clear to us. It also has 8 foot tides and when we returned to the dinghy we found it half out of the water, rocking on the base of the outboard motor and keel … not great planning on our part, but no damage done.

p.s In the evening it felt so cold and damp that we ran the heating system (Espar diesel forced hot air) for the first time since leaving Morehead City in November 2023 !

Mike

40 52.884 N, 73 32.364 W

Tremendous cloud lighting at sunrise ... leaving Atlantic Highlands

Manhattan from across the bay, with the Verrazano Narrows bridge visible on the left

Lower Manhattan with numerous barges in the foreground

A tugboat in a hurry (to get to breakfast?)

Lower Manhattan

I love seeing all the buildings, but the light was poor for photography

The Brooklyn bridge with Manhattan behind and the Mexican tall ship Cuauhtemoc tied up on the north side of the bridge

A horrifying sight ... the ship was swept backwards into the bridge at night shortly after the ceremonial departure. There were more than 200 people on board, with sailors up the masts. At this point it's not public knowledge what went wrong, but two people died and many others were injured. A terrible tragedy that strikes fear into the heart of any boat captain.