SWIMMING IN SOUP
FOG WAS SO TIGHT AROUND THE BOAT THAT VISIBILITY WAS LIMITED TO THE BOW AND STERN. IT WAS LIKE OPERATING IN A VOID.
My crew singled up lines at Manhattan’s Chelsea Piers, and I idled the 40-foot convertible out of her slip and into the Hudson River. Our destination was Long Island’s South Shore for a few days of fun on the salt.
It was June, and the afternoon sky was gray. The air was warm, but the water temperature hovered somewhere around penguin-friendly. When I first entered the river, I could almost make out the New Jersey side, but as I headed toward the Verrazano-Narrows Bridge and to open water, visibility deteriorated to hand-in-front-of-your-face. Gray skies plus warm air plus cold water equals fog. It never bothered me much when I was a kid, but fog always weighed on my mind after I became a captain. Give me wind. Give me waves. But keep the fog to yourself.
My radar display lit up with commercial and recreational traffic coming down toward my port side from the East River, astern on the Hudson and head on from the ocean side under the Verrazano. It looked like someone had sneezed targets onto the multifunction display. One target was so large, it filled an entire space on the monitor where channel markers should have been. My boat’s foghorn sounded like a whimper compared to the ship’s, which came back like an angry Mr. Limpet. As I gave way, I glimpsed a rusted hull passing by. I craned my neck, but I never saw the top of the vessel. It was ghost-ship eerie.
Once in open water, we headed due east. The fog was so tight around the boat that visibility was limited to the bow and the stern. It was like operating in a void. If I looked up, my sensory-deprived brain got distracted and disoriented. My eyes stayed glued to the electronics for the next four hours, identifying targets and going slow and steady. At one point, off the Rockaways, a series of targets started bearing down on my vessel. I surmised these were smaller craft that had lost their way and cued in on my boat’s horn. It was like a group of baby ducks looking for their momma. Luckily, no one got too close.
When we entered our home inlet to a setting sun, all was revealed and visibility seemed infinite. The next morning we headed out before dawn. In fog. Again.