A week in New York

We were in Port Washington, NY for 6 days as we waited out the heavy winds along the coast of NJ. We had picked up a town mooring, which for $25/night gives you the security of a mooring and unlimited use of the local water taxi.

We spent our first day in port cleaning the boat and hanging out with our Buddy Boat friends from Anjulia Sue, both on land and on both of our boats. The kids got along great, playing games and doing kid stuff. The adults talked adventures, and boats and plans for the future. It was great to be with a like-minded family after a week of being mostly by ourselves.

Day 2 was devoted to self care, showers, laundry and provisioning.

On day 3 we went into New York City. We took the Long Island Rail Road from Port Washington to Penn Station, and then the metro to get to the museum of Natural History. We wandered through the African Animals, Birds of New York, Mammals of North America and South Pacific Islanders exhibits. Tristan was not too impressed with the inability to interact with anything and we decided to head to the Museum of Mathematics instead. Our friends from Anjulia Sue showed up around this time, so we did look through the dinosaur and reptile exhibits with them.

Then we all went outside to have our pre-packed lunch in Central Park. The kids really enjoyed chasing the squirrels and pigeons in the park. We walked in the park for a few blocks before reboarding the metro to get to the Math Museum.

The math museum was awesome! 100% interactive, and everyone loved it. 2 floors of math inspired activities kept us busy for hours! We were so busy mathing I didn’t even get any pictures!

We left around 4pm, leaving our friends behind as they weren’t done exploring, and they were staying in the city that night. We got ourselves some NYC pizza before catching the metro and the LIRR back to Port Washington and our home.

It was a great day in the city.

Days 4 & 5 were days we didn’t leave the boat. The winds had really picked up, and we stayed on board during the storms. We needed a couple days to catch up on naps(for Trixie) and School (for Tristan) anyway.

We did struggle on Wednesday morning in the pouring cold rain to add extra lines to our mooring. The 20+ knot winds made it necessary for us to use the engine to release the pressure on the mooring line, but after about 45 minutes of trying we finally got it configured how we wanted. We rocked much less after adding the ‘snubber’ to the mooring ball.

We also got a few projects done around th boat, including adding water to our batteries. I never knew batteries(at least lead acid ones) have to be watered about once a month to keep the acid levels above the lead plates. Apparently batteries ‘consume’ water by breaking it down into hydrogen oxygen, so it needs to be replenished from time to time. We learn new things about owning and maintaining our floating home everyday.

Day 6 we went to land one more time. We found a wonderful park across the bay that the water taxi took us to. This park was huge! It had 3 playgrounds, a beach a(closed for the season) pool with waterslides, 4 tennis courts, 4 basketball courts, 2 padleball courts and a roller hockey rink.

We brought the scooter and the skateboard and the kids had a blast all day.

Port Washington was a good place to wait out the strong winds and storms, and we plan to stop in again on our way North next Spring!