Our trip into New York Harbor was exciting and a little stressful. We departed Manasquan Inlet while the air was a bit hazy, hoping the light fog would burn off as we got closer to the city. We went out of the inlet and into the Atlantic about 2 miles and then headed north along the coast. 

The water was very calm and the wind was light. This is good for a smooth ride but means that the haze wasn’t moving away either. I will take a smooth ride and a bit of haze any day over clear skies and choppy seas. So we sped up to our planing speed, which is about 13 knots for us. At this speed we moved quickly towards our destination. The haze mostly lifted as we went.

We soon were seeing the Verrazano Narrows Bridge in the distance. That is the bridge that we were to travel under to enter the upper bay. We had container ships and barges to deal with first, but as we moved further up the bay we had to mostly watch for ferry bats as they constantly crossed back and forth. 

Our first destination was the Statue of Liberty. This was pretty cool to see from a boat, and we took our time sightseeing as we traveled slowly in front of the statue. By now there were other private boats to contend with, so we took a place in a line of several boats and enjoyed the scenery.

After about 30 minutes we headed north to Liberty Landing Marina on the Jersey side of the Hudson River. This is where we chose to stay for two nights to see a bit of New York.