Leaving Manhattan...already??????????? Yes, these are the constraints of cruising. Weather conditions constantly affect your life! We had savoured our two days in Manhattan. For the first time, we spent time in central Park and its beautiful venues.

The oldest man-made object in Central Park is this Obelisk, located directly behind the Metropolitan Museum of Art. Nicknamed Cleopatra’s Needle soon after its installation, the stone shaft has nothing to do with the legendary Queen of the Nile. Thutmosis III, an Egyptian pharaoh who ruled from 1479-1425 B.C., had a pair of obelisks made to celebrate his third jubilee (30th year of reign). This is one of them, and the other stands on the bank of the Thames River in London.(...)The Obelisk’s trip from Egypt to New York was a complicated engineering feat. The delicate moving process required laborers to inch the monument on parallel beams, aided by roll boxes and a pile-driver engine. It took nineteen days just to cross the 86th Street transverse road, and it took another twenty days to move it from Fifth Avenue to its resting place on Greywacke Knoll due to a winter blizzard. All together, it took one hundred and twelve days from the time the Obelisk touched upon the banks of the Hudson River until it reached this place. A huge crowd was on hand for the turning of the obelisk upright on January 22, 1881. A crowd of thousands stood in the snow to watch the event. As reported in the New York World, “Bonfires had been built on each side and the scene was most picturesque as the huge mass of 220 tons swung majestically from the horizontal to the vertical position.”

We thought it was worth a picture!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

We walked on the 5th avenue, on the Avenue of the Americas, and made it to Times Square. We had lunch behind the Rockefeller Centre in a wonderful cafe with all those Manhattan office workers streaming in and out like ants...we went to a wonderful market type store and felt like in heaven. We bought great cheeses, salamis, sourdough bread...and went back to the boat although it had become quite breezy in the mean time. our boat was quite a way from the marina's dock and it took almost 30 minutes to go against wave and current. That night was going to be very turbulent with the bow of our boat hitting the mooring ball and forcing us to sleep in the salon setties.

At 5h15 in the morning, after a very short night, we were up and unhooking the boat from this devilish ball to ride across the New York harbour, in the darkness! Despite traffic of barges and ferries, we had the time to greet the Statue of Liberty, Ellis and Governor Islands and by sunrise, we had reached the Verrazano Bridge and had to sail another 2 hours to reach Staten Island's Great Kill Harbour.

NY harbour is immense and we positioned ourselves ready to take the ocean whenever a weather window comes up. Great Kill Harbour is only 4 miles from the ocean (always keep in mind here that our speed is 5mph...).