Wednesday, May 23, 2012

Events Events Events!

Woohoo! Blue Drinks tonight! I'm especially looking forward to this because it's Fleet Week AND OpSail is here - I brought the camera & both lenses because lord only knows what's gonna float by.

And then if you're looking for some good salty fun this weekend, there's a couple of options I know about -

The first one I have to mention is of course near and dear and I shall be there all day. Yes, it's the annual Sebago Canoe Club Open House this Saturday - free boat rides all day, rain or shine! And burgers and hot dogs too! For full details and links to travel instructions, visit SebagoCanoeClub.org

And then of course there are TALL SHIPS and NAVY SHIPS in town & open to the public all weekend. PortSide NewYork has taken a break from their search for a new home for the Mary A. Whalen to play harbor host to the Brooklyn visitors. Here's a great flyer that Bowsprite created showing all the Red Hook guests;
And then they have also put together an incredibly comprehensive OpSail webpage - click here for everything you need to know about visiting the ships in Red Hook, plus links to info about what's going on in the other boroughs, too. Nice work, this is the sort of thing PortSide NewYork does SO well. No news since the "We haven't found anything but we're not giving up the ship yet" (literally!) but my fingers remain crossed that something will come through in time.

BTW, they are looking for volunteers to help out with all the visitors this weekend - if you'd like to help out, check out the details in the gray sidebar on the right-hand side of that OpSail page. I'm hesitating to volunteer because I'm already volunteering as a trip leader all day for the Sebago Open House, but if I wasn't doing that I'd sign up for sure.

Note slightly later - oh, COOL. I missed the big tall ship/navy ship parade this morning because I am covering for 2 co-workers who are on vacation this week, so there's no way I could've gotten the morning off - but for ALL of us who missed it for whatever reason, we have the all day (and all of the night) to watch it on the Earth Cam 24-hour archive! Starts with the 9-10 AM hour - John J. Harvey comes into view in full display just around 9:04 and then you can use the slider to fast-forward. Military ships parade starts in the 11-12 AM file, led off by the Coast Guard barque Eagle just before 11:24. Click here, and have fun! Thanks, Harry, this is great!

2 comments:

Harry said...

I am so wishing that Portside finds a home (like you my fingers are crossed)but with the implement of TWIX its going to be so hard for Caroline,we wish her the best and are glad she is not giving up!Its even hard now on the workboat crews to come and go and has been since 9/11,I would not want to see how difficult it is on the public.Excessing the waterfront is worse than crossing the borders for beeps sake.

bonnie said...

I got a taste of the TWIC card gavotte when I went to help her move. She had the only card that allowed guests. She had a few volunteers; we were all supposed to meet at the gate at a certain time but 2 went for a walk. Argh! If she could've left us alone on the boat, she could've just driven us in, handed us off to the archivist (TWIC carded but no escort privileges) & he could've put us to work while she ran back out to pick up the latecomers. As it was, I swear we lost an hour of time - first we waited, then we drove in and got going, and then when the late arrivers arrived Carolina had to run around and herd us all back into the van to go get them while the archivist worked on alone. I'd heard it was an impractical arrangement but hadn't quite envisioned how limiting it really is.

There are plenty of public piers though - Carolina doesn't need to be in an actual shipping facility, all she needs is a place to tie up, and some way to get shore power...that's all, I think!

And stuff like what the whole PortSide NewYork staff & volunteers are doing this weekend is just the sort of thing that makes it hard to understand why it's so hard to find that.