[Rhodes22-list] Sail for America

[Bill Berner]

I brought my boat back to Tarrytown, NY last week from Madison, Ct. 

3 days/2 nights averaging about 45nm each day.

Day 1 Madison to Fairfield
Day 2 Fairfield to City Island
Day 3 City Island to Tarrytown

Knocked a good chunk of a day and a night off the trip from last year.

But the great part of the trip was that I took part in the Sail for
America parade on Saturday.

For those of you who didn't hear about it, it was another 9/11
commemoration event.  Now I have been fairly (well actually extremely)
cynical about pretty much all of the various TV shows and general media
hype surrounding the anniversary.  I stopped watching TV and even to
listening to NPR around the 9th.  My preference was to reflect quietly
and internally and ignore the pundits and especially the politicos who,
loathe to take the risk of losing a point in the polls, decided to
parrot the eloquence of past statesman who make them look like the
midgets they are, instead of trying to come up with meaningful words of
their own.  But I rant.

Now I'm not exactly sure what gathering all of those boats, some of them
obscenely expensive, has to do with memorializing the people butchered a
year ago, but while it may not have been moving, it was an amazing
boating experience none the less.

According to the organizers after the event, over 1,000 boats took part.
I believe it given what the East river, Battery and Hudson looked like
that day.

I began with many others at the Throgs Neck Bridge and paraded down the
East River and around Governors Island in NY Harbor where we converged
with one huge parade that was coming up from the Verrazano Narrows
Bridge, and another that had come down the Hudson.  We all rounded a
mark and paraded up the Hudson to the Intrepid Air and Space museum at
42nd Street.  There was a forest of sails and masts as far as they eye
could see in all directions.

Most boats carried American flags and many also carried flags that had
been made for the event by the sponsors.  There were 3,00 of them each
with the name of one of the victims from the 9/11 attacks.

It was a fabulous experience and a sight of great beauty.  Perhaps the
beauty of all of those boats in the river was the point.  It certainly
was a contrast to the death and destruction of a year ago.

Bill Berner
191 South Broadway
Hastings on Hudson, NY  10706

v 914 478 2896
f 914 478 3856