Times Square, High Line, Twilight Clipper

Times Square has to be on everyone’s list when visiting New York and Joe was desperate to see it. We were running out of time on our final day now and there is so much to do in New York you could easily spend a fortnight there. We were finding it impossible to get everything we had planned done though as we were moving at a frenetic pace and getting too tired. The Museum of Fine Art lost out as we realised it just wasn’t possible.

Times Square is a bustling place full of tourists and really not particularly nice to be honest. Lots of people dressed up as film characters encouraging photographs and then hassling you, big time, for a tip. Helen gave them short shrift. The M&M store was massive with a humungous (no other word for it) pick and mix dispensing area.

We left via a brief stop over for lunch in one of Macy’s many cafes and walked over to the High Line. This disused raised train line has been re-purposed as a public park. We walked over several blocks from Broadway to 12th Avenue and found it closed. Fearing we had lost another must see we wandered to the nearest subway and stumbled across the current end of the line access point. The section we had aimed for was under construction still. The High Line is fabulous – you walk through several blocks (probably a couple of miles total) and see New York from a new perspective. The pathway meanders through planted grasses which vista points along the way and many benches.

Dropping back to the real world on street level we took a cab back to the hotel to get ready for our twilight boat tour. We had already booked at risk since there’s no refunds for cancellations and it was by now raining. A replica of the lumber-hauling schooners that drove America’s industry more than a century ago, Clipper City is 158′ long and was built in the mid-1980s using plans purchased from the Smithsonian. We were amongst probably 20 passengers including a 30th birthday celebration.

After motoring off the mooring the crew set to work hoisting her 120′ high topsail schooner rig which was impressive to see in action. And then, engines off, we sailed out to the Statue of Liberty and back for a couple of hours – very peaceful and great to see Manhattan as the evening took over (got to refresh my towing lights knowledge with all the river traffic). Getting ready to come back in, the skipper took her under Brooklyn Bridge and everyone gasped convinced the clearance wasn’t sufficient. Just as on a smaller yacht, the crew used a midships spring to moor onto the harbour wall – the warps were just much much thicker.