Good-bye NYC. We had our last showers, last last-minute shopping and last coffee shop visit today in the Big Apple. At 1330 we left our mooring ball and headed towards an anchorage just behind the Statue of Liberty.

After playing Russian roulette with the ferries, water taxis, police boats, barges, ships, tourist boats and pleasure boats we arrived at our destination two hours later. The 10 knot winds and 2 knot current were both against us for the first hour and then we had a change in current to help us.

I think the general consensus is we are glad to be leaving 79th Street Marina. While it was only a short dinghy ride from the mooring balls to the marina and so convenient to the subway, Central Park and downtown Manhattan, it was a busy, bouncy mooring, totally exposed to all Hudson River traffic. When the wind was stronger then the current (and it was every night), the mooring ball would be right along side the boat, constantly hitting it just about where my head was in the v-berth. Many times I thought I would wake up in the morning to find an imprint of the mooring ball in the fiberglass! The marina served its purpose though, where else could you spend a week in NYC for $180.00.

We took a gazillion pictures this afternoon of the anchorage and the boats by dinghy (and its taking me forever to download the pictures - tomorrow!), had supper and then enjoyed the night lights of Manhattan from the cockpit. Totally awesome! The waters are a little calmer here and with no mooring ball to hit us tonight, hopefully we will get a full night's sleep. As I was finishing this entry, there was an incredible display of firewords over Ellis Island in front of Manhattan. Jorge figures NYC got his birth date wrong!