City of Water Day!

Celebrating NYC's maritime heritage: Sailing aboard the Clipper City. Touch tank and science experiments on Pier 26. Tugboat ride aboard the Pegasus. What a great day!

City of Water Day, Part 3: Hidden Harbor Cruise and Fire on Pier 17

After enjoying the activities on Governors Island, we headed to the pier to catch our ride on a New York Waterways Ferry for a Hidden Harbor Cruise, which showed us New York Harbor as working seaport. We also got an awesome view of the Statue of Liberty. The bells on the harbor bouys ringing in the waves sounded almost like church bells, a strangely comforting sound. I would love to have a tape of it to fall asleep by.























Along the way, we had front row seats for a dramatic fire on Pier 17 and the efforts of the crew of The Shark, a tour boat berthed nearby, to control the fire until FDNY arrived on scene soon after. Watching the fireboat deploy her water cannon and knock down the fire made this one boat ride we will never forget.

Thankfully, the fire was quickly extinguished and no one was injured. It was eerie to watch clouds of smoke blanket lower Manhattan, and gave us the chills as we remembered another day when New York was not so fortunate...

City of Water Day, Part 2 -- Fireboat John J. Harvey

The Audubon Cruise ended at Governors Island, where, as we disembarked, we spied the line for standby tickets for ships tours (sailing and dockside.) We decided to stand on line and see if we could score tickets, and we did! We were able to take a free ride up the East River on a historic FDNY fireboat, the John J. Harvey, and enjoy watching them shoot off the water cannons that they use to put out fires.