Alex's birthday in Manhattan
A year afloat: to the Caribbean and back
Sam and Alex Fortescue
Fri 1 Jul 2011 03:11
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41:02.13N
072:15.15W
Alex celebrated her 33rd birthday in the city of
her birth: New York. Marina reassembled the clan from her Manhattan days and we
went out, 12 strong, for supper in an Italian resto in the West Village.
Beforehand, a friend of Paul Romano's invited us to his 26th floor flat for
drinks on the roof terrace. Though we felt dizzingly high, with stunning views
east to the river and south and north to Wall Street and Midtown, the
Empire State Building still contrived to tower over us.
Later on that night, after the New Jersey crowd
were on the road home, Alex and I went for drinks with our Edinburgh friend
Charles de Segundo. Eschewing an establishment called the White Horse -
apparently famous for drunken antics on the part of Dylan Thomas - we
repaired to the Casa Segundo where another fabulous roof terrace lay in store.
Charles' block was lower, but surrounded by mere ankle-biting buildings, so the
views were panoramic in all directions. As we watched, a blanket of cloud
lowered around the tip of the Empire State, glowing like a halo from the
tower's lights. A half-hearted electrical storm wafted in to the north and
chucked some lightning bolts about. We got back to Ali's flat on 93rd Street at
3am after some shenanigans finding an open subway station.
Since then, it's been back to the more sedate pace
of the briny. We had a lazy departure yesterday afternoon from Port Washington,
where Summer Song had happily bobbed on a free mooring for two nights. We were
racing to the eastern end of Long Island to meet Marina and Paul for some
loafing around East Hampton. Long by name and nature, this run is about 85 miles
in total. We knocked off a work-shy 20 miles yesterday, anchoring in one of this
part of the world's rare deserted anchorages at Eaton's Neck. Then today, we had
a magnificent spinnaker run down the Sound, making well over six knots. We also
caught a fish - the first time we've deployed the trolling gear since arriving
in the US. I hauled in a four pound striped bass, which will make an excellent
supper.
We flew the fearsome spinakoo through a four-knot
tidal rip in the ominously named Plum Gut - a narrow channel between the
Atlantic and Long Island Sound, before stowing the kite for a final six mile run
under donk into Sag Harbour. Alex is excited because we returning to a part of
the Hamptons that she remembers from when she was five, when the family had a
holiday home in East Hampton. And I'm excited because the guide describes the
'fishtail' fork of Long Island as one of the east coat's top cruising
destinations, even though this phrase appears every ten pages. Also because I
have very fond memories of coming her before with my friend Poppy, who had
a gloriously old school house on Shelter Island.
St Patrick's
 The view that gave me vertigo at the Museum of
Modern Art
 The Rockefeller Tower
  Roof terrace #1: Alex, Marina, Miriam and
Paul
 Central Park
   SoHo streets
  Grand Central Station
 42nd St
  Times Square
 Change of pace: view from last night's
anchorage
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