Paul and I are happily at anchor in Port Washington, NY. This is our second year visiting this spot, after we stopped here going north and south in 2024.
Port Washington is a wonderful place for live-aboards on the north shore of Long Island. The town community is small and close knit, and there’s a lot of friendly people here. We can walk to a grocery store, a laundromat, a wonderful barber for Paul, an excellent pizza place, a Target, a Thai place, a dive bar, a Home Goods, and an urgent care (all places we have walked to). There is fresh water available, a pump out boat, a water taxi, and two dinghy docks. Also, we can take the shore boat in and walk 20 minutes to the Long Island Rail Road to go to the big city.
We are both avid readers, and because we travel so much, I like to read novels written about the places we are anchored. I was charmed to learn that The Great Gatsby was set here- we are anchored in between East Egg (Daisy and Tom’s house) and West Egg (Gatsby’s mansion ). Fictional West Egg is Great Neck (where Fitzgerald had a home) and East Egg is Port Washington/Sands Point. I meant to read it last year when we stopped, but it seems especially fitting to be here now, 100 years after the novel was published.
Gatsby takes place during the punishing heat of the summer, until the temperature begins to change toward fall, which is exactly the time it is for us now. The dripping sweat of summer, but some mornings we wake to the cold snap of autumn. We wear hoodies in the morning, and shorts during the day.
To add a touch of the Gatsby glamour, Port Washington has some local swans who cruise the anchorage. The swans are “Mute Swans” and they are not native to this area. They were brought here because they are glamorous and beautiful and they made the millionaires who built summer homes here feel fancier. There is a discussion about what to do with them (cull, relocate, captivity?). But they cut through the water in pairs and visit boats to beg for bread. I googled what food was OK to feed them, and we tried to tempt them with peas, and greens, and things that wouldn’t hurt them, but they seem dead set on carbs only. Sometimes we give them a few crumbs, and they hiss at us. Sometimes they just hiss at us and watch us until they swim away. Sometimes while I’m doing yoga in the morning I hear them swim up (they are so large and fast, the sound of rippling water warns me), but other times they take me by complete surprise, and suddenly there are two giant, white beauties hissing at me and making me laugh (usually I swear out of surprise and then Paul runs outside.)
Last note on the swans: we know bread is not good for them, so we don’t overdo it. Feeding bread to wild birds can cause deficiencies in their wing growth and make them incapable of flying. These swans are wild swans, but they are sort of communally tended. They are well known to boat people, instantly recognizable to this area. Anyway, it’s sort of a “let them eat cake” situation. But not TOO much cake.
Last last note on Gatsby: another bit of interesting coincidence is that Daisy and Jordan are both Louisville girls, a city that Paul (and sometimes me) travel to for work. How interesting to read the book here, and to fly to Louisville in a few weeks. We are on the trail of these vile and sometimes beautiful characters. We have named the swans after Jordan and Daisy (although sometimes we use their classic Long Islander names of Angie and Antony.)
So we’ve had a Gatsby late summer. We celebrated Paul’s birthday by taking the shore boat, to an uber, to the LIIR, to the subway, to a short walk to the Brooklyn Bridge. We ate at a wonderful restaurant with the unfortunate name Noodle Pudding. We window shopped on 5th avenue, and had lunch and martinis at Gallagher’s, followed later by a cocktail at the St Regis and a walk through Central Park. We rode bikes across the Brooklyn Bridge and walked in the drizzling rain and wore light coats and boots.
You might have noticed that our pace has slowed down, and some of that has to do with Paul’s full-time job. We can’t sail the boat every day, and while waiting for Paul’s days off, we’re also waiting for weather windows. In the same vein, our window to travel north was shortened because our boat was on the hard in Deltaville, VA for so long. So we are moving a bit more slowly, and enjoying the temperate weather, as well as the close proximity of Paul’s cousins in Long Island. Part of living on the boat means that we are very flexible with our schedule. We don’t know where we will be next month, but we have lots of room to dream and make many different plans, just to see which we will help bring to fruition.
WE are damn lucky. living on board gives us the opportunity to stay as long as we like and are able to. We have unlimited time together, and hours to cook and read and hang out. As the season changes toward fall, we turn a bit inward toward coziness, I bring out the duvets and slippers, and soon the fairy lights will go up to bring a warm glow to the lengthening nights.
“So we beat on, boats against the current, borne back ceaselessly into the past.”
Love,
Lindsay (and Paul)
An aside: so much of this blog is a travel blog, and a personal update. But I think some people might be interested to learn how we travel to specific cities ON THE BOAT. We have to plan and research in different ways, sail planning, weather planning, research on where we can anchor the boat, and research on ways we can access the cool stuff on land we want to see. Any interest on how we were able to visit Lady Liberty and four of the five boroughs? Or Philadelphia? Or Miami? Savannah? Charleston?
TIBURON MARINO 