Wednesday 23rd July

[18:27 US]

Today we had the Manhattan Sailing booking to do. This was something that Linda had found and we'd booked it with little feedback as to what it was like.

Finding the place was a little adventure in the first place. The road we needed was blocked by the building access to Ground Zero, so we had to do a detour through the World Trade Centre (of which the Twin Towers were part of the complex) and out onto a peaceful waterfront area, with the marina.

The Shearwater, a yacht built in 1929, sat moored at the western end of the marina.

The crew of three were, in no particular order, Dave, Dave and, er, Dave so it was simple to ask someone for help!

The yacht was a beautifully build boat, the below-deck (if you forgive the pump action loo) was very luxurious with it's wooden panneling and built in copper hearth. Up on deck, there were ropes and wires all over the place. It was difficult to know what to hang on to when moving about the deck.

The cruise took around 90 minutes, and took us out along the Hudson river, out to Liberty Island and then circling back around the southern tip of Manhattan.

The weather was close and was all day. We didn't see rain, but it felt like it would rain any moment. The temperature was in the high 80's most of the day.

After the trip, we grabbed a bite to eat then did a small bit of shopping along 34th Street.

[00:18 US]

Tonight was the second GM concert. Back at Maddison Square Gardens. This time we were to the left of where we were on Monday, but this time we didn't have any tall people in front of us, so our view was better than Monday. The concert itself was much better too - the playlist was almost the same as Monday's but the atmosphere seemed more lively. I was speaking with a couple of Americans about this and that, they were impressed with my camcorder :)

As we left the stadium later, it was clear that there had been a heavy rain storm, there had been warnings of heavy rain and thunderstorms in our area. However, we seemed to be lucky in missing the actual rain. Temperature is still warm though!

The weather is expected to still be showery tomorrow so I think we'll change our plans for tomorrow (circle cuise, helicopter and Top of the Rock) on to Friday, as the weather looks much better then. I guess tomorrow will be a trip over to the New Jersey mall. sigh.