Nick Lobo was visiting New York from Miami.
I always said that Nick should come out in the Tide and Current Taxi,
ever since he lent me his boat to explore the Miami River.
So Nick and his friend Tom Healy came out for an early morning ride.
The city looked just beautiful in the morning light,
and the current was moving about 6 knots.
Nick and Tom remarked about how fast the tide was moving; they have both been around the water a lot.
In fact, this was not the first time that Nick had been out in the East River.
His first time through, he had a harrowing experience in Hell Gate.
We were about to reach that area, so I thought we would take a break and look around Socrates Sculpture Park.
It is one of my favorite places to land;
always filled with interesting things.
We walked around and talked about the sculptures.
We got back in the boat, and although the morning seemed clear and calm, I knew that the tide would be rushing through the narrow tidal strait of Hell Gate.
In just a few minutes we were in the strait and the water changed from calm to turbulent.
We were moving around 8 or 9 knots.
Huge flat boils apeard on the surface of the water, and Nick looked over into the spiraling current, inches from where he was sitting.
“I didn’t want to say anything at the time,” said Nick, “but it looked dangerous. And I know that when things happen in a boat, they happen fast.”
We waited on shore and thought about what to do. We had made it to Astoria in less than an hour.
We decided to keep going. We were already through the hard part,
but I asked Tom and Nick to sit next to eachother in the middle of the boat, to keep the bow up out of the water,
and so that we could all see what was coming up ahead.
In a few minutes we were through the tidal strait and into the relative calm of the Long Island Sound.
It was turning out to be a pretty day,
and there was plenty to see around the Harbor.
We had one more stop to make.
Since we seemed to be exploring sculptures that day,
we visited the Richard Serra sculpture rusting away in the Bronx.
We speculated about the odd placement of a ‘torqued ellipse” on the Bronx waterfront,
but then noticed how much it looked like the neighborhood architecture.
We passed North Brother Island.
It was dark and quiet and seemed waiting for adventure,
but everyone was hot, thirsty, and cut up from our adventures climbing around the rigging yard.
I knew just where to stop.
As we walked back to the subway,
Nick told us the story of his trip down the Hudson River.
It had started when he and a friend hopped a train from the Bronx, this very train-yard in fact!
Later on, Nick sent me these photos that he and his friend Dennis Palazzolo took on their trip down the Hudson.
They camped out and paddled for five days.
When they ran into trouble in Hells Gate, they were taken in by the a tugboat crew who fed them and let them stay aboard.
The whole trip sounded like a hobo fantasy.
Thanks Nick and Tom!
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