Port Washington (Part 3) NY USA

Our wind generator in action before the
hub and blades decided to jump overboard!

The weather helped us by being uncomfortably windy to sail south until mid-week.  So, our enforced extra few days in Port Washington whilst we waited for the boatyard to re-open on Monday wasn’t too much of a problem for us; we had already decided to sit the windy weather out here anyway.

At anchor in a non-tidal environment boats turn to face into the wind, so being on board BV in the well-forecast Force 6 was a lot quieter than being pinned sideways onto a marina dock [Ed: and better for BV – no fenders scrubbing between the pontoon and the hull]. The only issue might have been getting ashore but we had no need for that because we had enough food in the fridge and the bits and pieces for our maintenance tasks were on board as well.

It did blow quite strongly though and our lazy start to Sunday was interrupted by a loud bang and clatter from the transom area.  Dashing up on deck we discovered that the wind generator mounting had sheered and the whole windmill attachment had leapt overboard.  So, we added a new task to our list for Sunday – track down spares from DuoGen, either from the UK or from a USA supplier, if there is one.

Nicky’s butternut squash soup (left) and my pulled pork

With maintenace tasks completed we set about doing some cooking.  Nicky produced an excellent butternut squash soup with croutons and toasted seeds, whilst I made a ‘slow cooked’ pulled pork [Ed: ‘slow cooked’ because, though it tastes as if it has been cooking forever, it’s actually done in the pressure cooker in about 45 minutes instead of in the barbecue in 10 hours].  In both cases, hearty food in response to the cooler weather that we are experiencing.

Oscar at work on the propeller shaft

On Monday morning we woke up early to call the boatyard.  They wanted us to come straight in, so we pulled up the anchor at 0715hrs and repositioned BV onto the dock.  Oscar arrived shortly thereafter on his golf buggy.  We fired up the engine and showed him the propshaft wobble we were concerned about.  Reassuringly he agreed that it was not right and set about checking the connections in all the sections of the drive train.  He loosened and then tightened up some, checked the alignment of the shaft, and then asked us to test run it again whilst still tied to the dock.  Halleluiah! The adjustments that he made seemed to have done the trick.  We had feared that BV would need to be hauled out again. Instead, we untied and set off into the bay for a test run.  At the full range of power settings the shaft ran as it should without any wobbles. That was a great relief to us and meant that we could move on as soon as the mid-week weather window opened up for us.

Manhasset Bay Yacht Club

Test runs complete, we picked up a mooring buoy close to the Manhasset Bay Yacht Club which was conveniently close to the town and supermarket quays.

Escapade, BV’s new neighbour [Ed: or should that be ‘Escapade, from her new neighbour, BV’?]

It was also right next to Escapade with Julie and Richard on board.  Cate and Murray on Coolchange had already left the bay and were now working their way south having spent a couple of days in and around the Statue of Liberty and Staten Island.  We had intended to be there with them, but our delayed departure had scuppered that plan. Instead though, we had the fun opportunity to see Richard and Julie again.  An impromptu coffee in the morning turned into a subsequent dinner invite. An excellent Thai curry, great company and conversation, and a severe bashing of their drinks cabinet all added up to a top evening.  We agreed that Wednesday still seemed like the best weather window for us both to move on but with slightly different plans.  We intended to jump straight to Chesapeake Bay, probably overtaking Coolchange on the way, with their stopping at various ports en route, whilst Escapade would go into the Delaware Bay and enter the Chesapeake Bay at the top through the Chesapeake and Delaware Canal.  With reports of flotsam and debris floating in the Delaware Bay, and not wishing to bump into another floating tree, sailing outside along the coastline suited us better right now.

Time Square, New York City

Whilst this was all going on, we had received a couple of messages from an old work colleague, Steve ‘Dinger’ Bell. He was holidaying in New York City with his family and suggested we meet up.  If we hadn’t hit the log we would have been a long way south by now; another silver lining to the collision cloud.  A Tuesday lunchtime meet-up changed to a Tuesday dinner with a rendezvous close to Time Square in New York City.  We’d visited Manhattan during the day but the dinner get-together also allowed us to see the city at night which is surprisingly different.  Illuminated skyscrapers towered above us and the multitude of huge advertising TV screens in Time Square pushed out enough light to virtually turn night to day.  It was an entirely different experience and one that we would otherwise not have had.

(L to R) Nicky, me, Julie, James and ‘Dinger’

‘Dinger’ had picked the dinner venue, Ruth’s Chris Steak House, which turned out to be an excellent choice.  The restaurant’s dress code got us scrabbling about to find something other than our normal rig of shorts, T-shirts and flip flops [Ed: or our cold weather equivalent], and our mooring close to Port Washington made it very easy to get the train into Penn Station to meet up.  The steaks were superb; Nicky had a huge fillet whilst I had a New York Strip (what else would you pick in New York City?).  There was also non-stop chat.  Julie, ‘Dinger’ and James (their elder son) were clearly interested in what we were up to and, through ‘Dinger,’ it was nice to get a bit of work-time gossip tracking who was doing what.  After eating between us what seemed to be half a cow, we waddled out of the restaurant and headed for a bar to carry on the fun.  We could have talked until dawn but the Bells had some tourism to do in the morning and we needed to think about sailing through New York City and out towards Chesapeake so it had to end at a ‘reasonable’ time.  It was a wonderful evening to round off our time in Port Washington/New York.

Cate and Murray on Coolchange, Julie and Richard on Escapade, and Julie, ‘Dinger’ and James, had all made our longer than expected stay in Port Washington extremely sociable.  Sailing is a great pastime but it’s also the people that you meet along the way that make this unusual liveaboard lifestyle so much fun.  Who would have thought just over a fortnight ago that running over a log would have made things better not worse?

Port Washington, New York, USA

Port Washington (Part 2) NY USA

Getting the propeller shaft straightened took longer than expected.  Not the boatyard’s fault as they had to wait for it to come back from the workshop before they could refit it.  Tuesday was supposed to be the refit day so we planned to stay at the yard and not travel into New York City.  However, the shaft was finally delivered so late in the day that refitting it had to be delayed until Wednesday.

The shaft, stern gland (L) and gearbox (R) back in position with
the Aquadrive shaft laid out ready to connect (R)

Work started early at 0715 on Wednesday.  First off they fitted the new cutlass bearing and then slid the propeller shaft back into the stern tube.  After that they refitted the gearbox along with the new stern gland that we carried on board as a spare.

The glass fibre repair on the bottom of the keel (L) completed earlier in the week.
The propeller and rope cutter refitted (R)

Once the middle bit of the driveshaft with the Aquadrive was installed, the team moved outside to reassemble the propeller and rope cutter.  It was great news for us that BV was all back together and that very soon we would be free to move on again.

The 77ft motoryacht ahead of us in the launch queue

The only slight brake on things now was the tide and a 77 ft motorboat.  It was neap tides so we could only be launched in a tiny 45 minute window at high water, first thing (0730hrs) on Thursday but the yard already had a 77 ft motorboat booked for launch during that period.  So, we got to stay an extra day and expected to be launched on Friday morning.

Instead of moping about in the boatyard we went out for lunch with Alan and Kate Richards, family friends from Guernsey who are visiting their daughter, Amy, in New York.  They very kindly drove out from the city to see us and we had an excellent lunch at Thyme, a bistro in Roslyn, the next town southeast from Port Washington.  It was lovely to see them and to hear of Alan’s trip home from Antigua (where we’d last seen him) in his yacht, Far Fetched, and also to catch up on the latest news from Guernsey too.

Talking to the yard staff when we got back from lunch, we discovered that the delaying in launching BV had actually proved fortuitous for us.  The strong overnight winds had pushed lots of water out of Long Island Sound and messed up the expected tidal depths.  The morning tide had been 2-3feet less than predicted and they had only just managed to launch the motoryacht; we would have been stuck in the mud.

Our turn to launch came on Friday morning when the tide was closer to the prediction, albeit it still a bit low.  Our original plan had been to complete afloat checks on everything that had been worked on before an early start on Saturday to sail through New York City.  Sadly, the weather forecasts are not playing ball and are predicting very strong winds for the period when we want to be at sea between New York and the Chesapeake Bay. We compared notes with Richard and Julie on Escapade who are also in Port Washington and both crews concluded that the best option is to stay in the relative shelter of Port Washington to sit out the strong winds before looking to move on mid-week.

So, when we launched we knew that we’d be moving out to the anchorage and had drawn up a list of maintenance chores to tackle.  The launch itself went okay although we both always find it tense.  There is so much that can go wrong, such as when the brakes failed on the travel hoist and it started rolling onto our rigging!

The shoal of fish surrounding BV

Once in the water we carried out some basic engine checks, temporarily picked up a mooring buoy to wait for the fuel dock to come free and then topped up with diesel.  Whilst we were waiting a huge shoal of fish appeared and almost totally surrounded BV.  They swam just below the surface with their fins sticking out of the water; it was quite a sight.

With the fuel tanks topped up we moved to the anchorage and set about our chores.

Back at anchor in Port Washington

Nicky winched me up the mast to carry out a rig check.  This wasn’t something we had planned to do here but having had the travel hoist push gently on the backstay it seemed a prudent move [Ed: and, anyway, we would have needed to do a rig check before the long passage south from Chesapeake Bay, so it just means that the check’s done a little early].  I inspected all the stays and their connections, including a full inspection of the backstay from top to bottom (never the easiest task).  Happily, I found nothing amiss.

Whilst I was up there I took the opportunity to check and remake the AIS aerial connection which has had a very beneficial effect on the number of ships we can pick up.  We’ve had this problem before and I really don’t like the solderless connection on the bottom of the aerial; easy to fit it may be but it just isn’t robust enough.  Time to look for a new AIS aerial with a better connection I think.

Extracting the old antifreeze/coolant

With the work on deck complete, we started work on engine servicing items.  We had already changed the impeller and the anode while BV was on the hard but we hadn’t carried out the antifreeze/coolant change.  Though this had also been due we wanted to use a coolant flush in the system, for which the engine needs to run for about 20mins, and it’s not easy to do that when the boat’s up on the hard.  So with the system suitably flushed and rinsed a few times, we added the new antifreeze/coolant and took the old (and the rinse water) ashore for disposal. Hopefully this winter we’ll be far enough south not to need the antifreeze properties of the coolant, but it needed changing and it does have the beneficial effect of helping to protect the engine from corrosion.

3D jigsaw puzzle fun

The only ‘pain the bum’ part of that job was getting out and re-stowing the Pela oil extractor in the corner of the aft lazarette.  I dug it out [Ed: no patience required] and Nicky replaced it, along with the pile of other yachtie gubbins stored in that lazarette [Ed: lots of patience required!].

With the engine fully functional again we took another look at the propeller shaft.  Straight after we’d launched, and whilst we were manoeuvring in the bay to get fuel and to move to the anchorage, we’d checked that the engine would produce full revs and that the propeller vibration had been cured.  However, I had spotted that there was some movement in the propeller shaft where it comes into the boat through the stern tube and the stern gland.  We’ve never previously had any movement in the shaft there, even after we had run over the log, so it’s a concern.  The slight wobble in the shaft suggests that the it is still not as straight as it should be. Whether that’s due to something not being connected up properly or because the front of the shaft has been bent during its refitting, eg when driving in the securing pin, we don’t know.  So, sadly, after the weekend we’ll be back at the boatyard getting the wobble checked out.  Let’s hope it’s something that can be corrected with the connections and that it doesn’t end up with BV having to be hauled out again or we’ll end up weeks behind our planned timeline.

Port Washington, New York, USA

New York City (Part 4) NY USA

New York Court House Buildings

After spending much of the morning of Sunday 14 October at ‘The Top of the Rock’ we decided to finish off our shore-based New York sightseeing with a walk out on Brooklyn Bridge, a wander through Wall Street and a visit to the Smithsonian’s National Museum of the American Indian.

Views from Brooklyn Bridge. (Left) back towards Manhattan; (top right) up the East River towards Manhattan Bridge; (bottom right) across towards Brooklyn

We had expected to have a nice quiet walk out along Brooklyn Bridge with good views back towards Manhattan and across to Brooklyn and up and down the east River.  With the latter half of that sentence in mind, we should have known better about the first half of it!  The bridge was heaving with pedestrians, not helped by the fact that the first few hundred metres of the pedestrian walkway are half blocked by stalls selling tourist tat: fridge magnets, ‘I love NYC’ hats, copies of pop art posters, dodgy paintings of views from the bridge and the like.  Getting through the melee was a major undertaking, and the 2 NYPD cops in mini golf buggies trying to drive through the crowds made matters even worse. We had assumed that they were trying to reach someone in crisis but, when we eventually caught up with them, they were having their pictures taken with the punters, so it’s obviously the NYPD means of walking the beat!

1 World Trade Centre

We took the time to press through the Sunday crowds to the first set of piers, which meant that we got to walk on the famous wooden planks of the bridge (stop too soon and the bridge’s footpath is all concrete and tarmac).  And we sharpened our elbows sufficiently to jostle for position to see the views too.  However, despite the reported attractions of Brooklyn, we weren’t minded to go the whole distance across only, presumably, to have to wade through the crowds at that end too and repeat the process at each end on the way back.

Despite the crowds it was a fun thing to do and, for us, a good recce of the landmarks because we hoped to sail under the Brooklyn Bridge in a few days’ time.

Federal Hall

Back in Manhattan we headed to Wall Street, which, of course, was closed for business as it was a Sunday.  We weren’t the only people out sightseeing though and we were pleased to find that the area around the New York Stock Exchange was pedestrianised (perhaps only for the day) so we didn’t have to run the gauntlet of traffic as well as the myriad other tourists.

The New York Stock Exchange

The New York Stock Exchange is certainly a very impressive building from the outside, though it would look better without the enormous fabric advertising hoarding covering its columns. Our guide book says that during the working week it is possible to go inside to watch the trading floor in action which could be fascinating but may no longer be the case.  Our guide book is so ancient that it references the events of 9/11 as a very recent occurrence!  Interestingly, the reason Wall Street is so named is because in the early days of the city of New Amsterdam, the citizens built a defensive wall from east to west across Manhattan Island on this line.  New Amsterdam was to the south of the wall; the feared natives (and Spaniards?) to the north.  When you look at a map of Manhattan today, the street layout south of Wall Street is conspicuously ‘olde worlde’, a rabbit warren of small streets on angles and curves presumably fitting the original shape of that tip of Manhattan (pre the reclamation schemes).  To the north, the street layout is a much more regular grid, except for Broadway which cuts through the island with a flourish on a sweeping diagonal.

The Alexander Hamilton US Custom House which houses the National Museum of the American Indian, George Gustav Heye Centre

The Alexander Hamilton US Custom House is an elegant and imposing building, quite close to Wall Street and the New York Stock Exchange.  It now houses the National Museum of the American Indian George Gustav Heye Centre, named after the man who founded the Museum of the American Indian in 1916 after gathering one of the world’s largest collections of indigenous objects from tribes across the Americas.  In 1989 the museum became part of the Smithsonian; the collections today total nearly one million objects.  The museum itself is in 3 parts: the George Gustav Heye Centre in NYC, a building on the National Mall in Washington DC and a separate research centre.

We were running short of time and could only visit one of the 3 galleries, so we decided on the permanent exhibition ‘The Infinity of Nations’.  However, en routeto the gallery through the impressive rotunda, we got side-tracked by a temporary display relating the involvement of American Indians in the country’s military from the Revolutionary War onwards.  We were somewhat surprised to see that a good number were prominently involved in the Civil War, rather expecting that they might have been happy to sit on the sidelines and watch the invaders of their country battle it out.  But by that stage they were too connected to people, groups and towns by trade and through other relationships to be able to take a totally disinterested or neutral role (and ancient tribal antipathies probably also came into play here too).  But 2 boards that we found of particular interest both related to WWII.  Firstly, Native Americans found important military roles in the arena of communications, with their spoken languages being considered better than using code on the radio – faster to send and translate and near enough unbreakable by the enemy of the time.  Secondly, in the iconic image of the US flag being raised at Iwo Jima, one of the marines in that picture was an American Indian.  That he was there at that time is entirely a coincidence – no-one was looking to put a positive media spin on that picture by carefully selecting the individuals involved.  Sadly, history relates that he found the media pressure related to his being in that picture too much of a strain to bear and he committed suicide shortly after the end of the war.

Ceremonial costumes and headdresses – a much greater variety than the movies would have you believe!

‘The Infinity of Nations’, is a large exhibit, comprising around 700 objects, all collected by George Gustav Heyes; an awful lot to take in in the hour or so we had available and we by no means did it justice.  The exhibition includes artefacts from all areas of the American continent, including items from S American and Inuit tribes, with the objects grouped into displays based on geographical regions.

A small sample of a huge and varied collection of artefacts from Native Americans
across the whole of the Americas

The displays focus on the collected artefacts, highlighting the beautiful artistic work in the majority of the items.  Though many of the objects were intended for ceremonial use and, as such, could be expected to be so highly decorative, a significant number of them were ‘just’ day to day items but still featured, for example, fabulous beadwork and stitching detail.

(Top left and bottom) peace pipes. Most of the peace pipes date from the 19^thcentury but the bottom 3 pipes in the top left picture are much older and, from left to right date from AD600-1100, AD100-600 and 200BC-AD400.  (Centre right) These Clovis arrowheads date from about 11,000BC

And, for a country where so many people have said words to the effect ‘we don’t have history like you do’, the museum showed that, in many ways, the Americans do.  It’s just that ancient American history is not architectural and much of it has rotted away and/or been lost by frail memories.  Plus, of course, it isn’t the ancient history of Caucasian Americans, it’s the ancient history of the Native Americans.  We were surprised to see some truly ancient peace pipes on display and even more amazed at the age of the Clovis arrowheads (or, more properly, Clovis points), which date back to 11,000BC!  The blurb with the display also highlighted that arrowheads of this age have been found in many areas of the Americas, stretching from Alberta in Canada to Venezuela in South America.  More impressive still, is the fact that research has shown that the technology for making this design of arrowhead spread across the Americas in just 200 years.

We could have stayed far longer at the museum but we just did not have the time.  So, regretfully, we left before we had seen much of what we would like to have viewed and that for only fraction of the time we wanted to spend on it. But it was an excellent taster to round off our final day of sightseeing in New York for this visit.  And that’s the great thing – there’s far more to see in NYC that we managed to fit in this time around, which means that next year we can certainly justify coming back this way again.

New York, New York, USA

New York City (Part 3) NY USA

The Rockefeller Plaza, complete with ice-rink

On Sunday 14 October we bought tickets to ‘The Top of the Rock’ – the top of the Rockefeller Centre.  We’d held off from buying them until we could be sure of good weather.  There’d be no point in going up the best part of 850ft and then just viewing the inside of a cloud!

Interior views of the Rockefeller Centre

The interior decoration of the Rockefeller Centre is quite remarkable, though a little too beige and shades of brown for Nicky’s taste.  The lifts (sorry, ‘sky shuttles’) on the other hand are truly impressive.  All the tickets for ‘The Top of the Rock’ are timed entry, which reduces the queuing time [Ed: though there is a queue for the almost compulsory picture against a green screen so that you too can look as if you were part of that iconic picture of 1930s construction workers eating lunch on a steel girder hundreds of feet above the city].  Each of the 4 high speed lifts takes up to 16 passengers and travels the 800-odd feet to the first observation deck in 42sec!

View north over Central Park.  The Hudson River is to the left of the picture

There are 3 observation decks at the top of the building and we spent about an hour drinking in the views from all of them.  As you can imagine, I took a LOT of photos.  What follows are the ones I think are the best….

View southeast with the Chrysler Building (1050ft), partly obscured by the MetLife Building, and the Empire State Building (1250ft) on the far right.  The East River is on the left of the picture 

Looking south with the Empire State Building (1250ft) in the middle of the frame, 1 World Trade Centre (the tallest building in the USA at 1776ft) just right of the ESB but in the distance. The Statue of Liberty is just visible slightly right of centre in the far distance and on the right, with the sloping top and the mast, is the Bank of America Tower (1200ft)

(Right) 432 Park Avenue (1396ft) 

(Top right) How to build a skyscraper – Pt 1

432 Park Avenue (1396ft, 425.5m)

(Left) Two of the tallest buildings in New York and (bottom right) that famous lady 

How to build a skyscraper – Pt 2 

Well, we had to really! 

Wow!  Just……wow!

New York, New York, USA

New York City (Part 2) NY USA

New York City Hall

Friday 12 October was a down-day on the repair work on BV, so we took a second trip into the Big Apple.  The weather was much better than the previous Sunday but we had planned to visit the 9/11 Museum so we took the subway to the financial district and then walked the 5-10minutes from there to the World Trade Centre site, ogling the buildings as we went.  Again, we saw an interesting mix of beautiful old skyscrapers, impressive ultra-modern towers and some pretty ugly mid-century buildings.

The Woolworth Building is a beautiful building but the structure next to it is so lacking in aesthetics that it should be torn down

The World Trade Centre Oculus Centre

Despite the World Trade Centre site now housing the tallest building in the USA (1 World Trade Centre, 1776ft) and 2 more of the top ten tallest buildings in New York (3 and 4 World Trade Centre) the building that first grabs and holds your eye as you approach the site is the incredible Oculus Centre.  It’s an enormous white building, somewhat reminiscent of a rack of ribs, an enormous dinosaur exhibit or a Pokemon.  Inside the huge vaulted space, we felt a little as if we were Jonah, swallowed inside a huge blue whale with the baleens stretching up on either side. The building is actually the main transport hub for the World Trade Centre site as well as being a huge retail location so, as we weren’t interested in either function, after gawping a bit like many of the other visitors we followed the signs out to the 9/11 Memorial.

The 9/11 Memorial.  (Top left) North Pool – when we visited the wall fountains in this pool were off
because of the strong winds.  (Top right and bottom) South Pool

The National September 11 Memorial, which centres on twin pools, provides an area for remembrance of all those who died in the terrorist attacks of 9 September 2001, whether they died at the World Trade Centre site, at the Pentagon or in the crash of Flight 93, as well as for the 6 victims of the 1993 bombing of the World Trade Centre.  The names of those who died are inscribed on bronze blocks which edge the pools, each of which covers the original footprint of its respective tower.  It was incredibly busy when we visited but even with so many people in the memorial area, and with the city so close, the pools with their waterfalls, the trees and the openness of the space (in comparison to most of the city) provide an effective space for reflection and remembrance.

(Right) The Twin Towers and (left) remnants of 2 of the steel uprights that formed part of the exterior structure of the towers – in this instance a section of the shaped ‘windows’ near ground level

The museum and the memorial are run by the same company with proceeds from the museum being used to pay for the upkeep of the memorial.  It seemed very busy when we visited so Nicky asked about visitor numbers.  She was told that on a normal day there are about 10,000 visitors, 14,000 on a busy day….. and the day we visited didn’t classify as busy!

The main hall of the museum, showing the Last Column standing (signed by many of the recovery teams that worked on the site) and the original slurry wall of the ‘bathtub’, the retaining wall between the buildings’ foundations and the Hudson River not far beyond

Like the memorial, the museum is essentially underground.  While the memorial’s deep ponds represent the void left behind, and the same could be said of the museum, from a more prosaic perspective putting the main body of the museum underground opens up some interesting features of the Twin Towers that would otherwise not be seen.  A case in point is the slurry wall, which stands 30 feet or so high in the main exhibition space.  When the Twin Towers were built, the Hudson River was extremely close to their foundations (the spoil excavated from their foundations and basements was used to reclaim land to the west of Manhattan, into the Hudson River).  The architects were worried that the river’s proximity would undermine the towers’ foundations and so used a novel system to build a protective wall (the slurry wall) to provide the stability and protection the buildings needed.  Interestingly, despite the reclamation around the World Trade Centre site, when the terrorist attacks occurred, there were concerns that the slurry walls would be compromised and that they may collapse, which would likely cause a structural failure above.  In the event, the slurry walls survived the attacks unscathed though, of course, the towers failed for other reasons.

(Left) Part of the exterior structure of one of the towers.  (Right) The remains of the communication mast from the top of the North Tower

We saw a number of dramatic displays in the main hall of the museum.  The slurry wall and the ‘Last Column Standing’ feature as primary focal points but the crumpled sections of the towers’ exterior structure and the remains of the North Tower’s comms mast were probably more potent symbols of the devastation wrought by the aeroplanes’ collisions and the subsequent collapses.

In the focal point of the museum (an enclosed, maze-like space separate from the main hall), where the events of 9 Sep 2001 are narrated in detail, photography is not permitted.  So we have nothing to show of the nearly 3 hours we spent in there, listening, reading and watching many harrowing tales.  There are countless recordings, from aircraft, from the Towers, from the emergency services…...  We heard people calling the emergency services, telling them not to forget the employees at the top of the North Tower (above where the plane hit and so with no lift and no stairs to get them down); we heard the voices of people who were in doomed aircraft calling their loved ones’ voicemail; and we heard air traffic controllers trying to work out what was going on and whether or not Flight 93 was still airborne.  And then there were the eye-witness accounts.  Seared on my memory is that of one person who escaped the collapse describing firemen climbing the stairs as they, the eye-witness, was escaping downwards: ‘they looked so scared but they were still going up……’.  Unfortunately, so many of the rescue workers didn’t come down alive, though a vast number of the 50,000 people who worked in the Twin Towers did manage to get out – a quite incredible statistic when you think about it.

The World Trade Centre area lives on

Given the numbers in the museum (we spent much of our visit jostling for position to view exhibits and read the commentaries) it was an incredibly quiet and sombre experience.  And whilst we had felt when we entered that the main hall (with the slurry wall etc) was quiet, the lightening of the atmosphere as we left the focal area of the museum and re-entered the main hall was quite extraordinary.

The Woolworth Building

Coming up to ground level, back to the memorial and to New York City as a whole, was a bit of a shock.  So to reacclimatise before heading into the subway, we walked to Battery Park via the Woolworth Building.  It was a beautiful late afternoon and from the tip of Manhattan we could see the distant figure of the Statue of Liberty as the blazing sun dropped in the sky behind her.  A fitting end to an emotional day.

New York, New York, USA