Waving from the shoreline at tall ships
Credit: Matthew Chayes
Waving passengers standing aboard a schooner floated by.
And Markel Valmana, age 25 and a civil engineer who lives on Lower East Side, waved back.
Valmana, in a tank top, had biked downtown Saturday afternoon and saw the preliminary sailboat show passing between Manhattan and Brooklyn.
Growing up, Valmana sailed with his dad and later in college, "and now I'm wishing I had a boat, and eventually, I'll buy a boat."
But for now, there are the festivities Friday in the East River and Saturday in the Hudson marking America’s 250’s birthday — with sailboat parades.
Boat after boat passed, including a two-masted gaff schooner with reddish tanbark sails.
"I saw some of the boats that were coming, online. Some of them were super cool," he said.
Nearby, a traditional wooden cargo sailing vessel, with a narrow, long wooden hull and tall wooden masts, was docked near the South Street Seaport.
"It's rare that you get to see this one right here," pointing to a boat docked nearby with a Netherlands flag — the country that founded the company town that would become New York. (
Matthew Chayes, a Newsday reporter since 2007, covers New York City.
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