Before summer ‘08 fades away …
Friday, September 26th, 2008After you read this story, you choose its moral:
“Father knows best” or “I love New York!”
For years, Cara and I have tried to persuade Dwight to take us to Macy’s Fourth of July fireworks over the East River. To no avail. Crowds aren’t his thing. But this past summer, when Tyler was in Costa Rica, Clare in Mexico and Troy in Maine, Dwight was left at home with only Cara, Lynne (also a fireworks fan, naturally) and me. So we talked him into going to see the fireworks.
We made a reservation on a boat called Mistry, a name that should have given us pause. Our Mistry cruise contract instructed us to show up on the 23rd Street dock by 6:30 p.m. and to bring our own food and drinks.
Earlier in the week, the NYPD had announced it would close off the FDR Drive from midtown to Battery Park on the afternoon of the Fourth. Heeding dire holiday traffic warnings, we set out before 5:00 p.m. from Englewood for our Independence Day adventure.
Unexpectedly, Manhattan seemed deserted, oddly bereft of both people and cars. We breezed across the George Washington Bridge, down the West Side Highway and across 23rd Street. Only when we got close to the East River did we begin to encounter some foot traffic, and at 5:30 p.m. — four hours before the fireworks — it wasn’t heavy. The police, though, had already set up manned barricades across the FDR, and we had to show our contract to pass through to the dock.
We spotted our boat easily. I think you could describe it as a cabin cruiser. Mistry was tied up in front of a small motorboat, and they were both moored alongside a long cement dock where a big Fourth of July barbecue was getting underway.
We met and talked with our professional-looking captain, Bonnie, a young woman dressed in jaunty nautical attire - a crisp short-sleeved white blouse and navy trousers. She told us that she was a Staten Island ferry pilot who had been called in to help out on the busy holiday. A deck hand named Oscar hung around below without much to do at this point in the evening, and he didn’t speak with us.
Mistry floated in a big rectangle of water, sectioned off from the river. The long cement dock to our right had, at its end, an extension that jutted out to the left. The extension restricted outlet into the East River to a very narrow passageway. Opposite our dock, the solid cement wall of a East River building faced us.
Shortly after we boarded Mistry, people started to stream onto larger party boats tethered nearby. A singer and band began to perform at the barbecue, and summertime smells of hot dogs, hamburgers and beer drifted over to us from the dock. A teenage couple, both heavily pierced and tattooed, disappeared down into the hold of the small motorboat behind Mistry.
Captain Bonnie placed a radio call requesting permission to get underway, but she was told to wait - all the boats would head out together. Although she said she was impatient, Dwight, Cara, Lynne and I felt quite content.
Mistry was clean and comfortable. We ate our picnic dinner and chatted. Cara listened to her iPod, Dwight read his Economist, I read the newspaper, and Lynne read the stack of Tintin books that she’d brought along. The sky was overcast, but the air was warm. Off to the west, the Empire State Building looked insubstantial in the humid twilight sky. I tinkered around with my camera a little, wondering how best to shoot the fireworks once the skies darkened. People began to line up along the FDR Drive. The mood was festive.
“I have to admit, you ladies had a good idea,” Dwight said graciously.
There was no sign or noise from Oscar below. Captain Bonnie sat at the helm, fiddled around, talked about horseback riding, showed Lynne a photo of her dog on her cell phone and then radioed again, once again requesting permission to head out onto the river. This time, she received it, although the other, larger boats were still loading passengers.
“Oscar!” she yelled. “Untie us! We’re heading out!’
Oscar crawled out from wherever he’d been, and Bonnie turned the key in the boat’s ignition.
Immediately, black smoke bellowed out of the back of our boat - not just little puffs, but huge, dense, stinking billows. The black cloud drifted over the partygoers on the dock and engulfed the small motorboat behind us. The teenage couple emerged from the hold, coughing and choking, smoked out of their tryst.
“Oscar!” Bonnie yelled again. “Does this boat always act like this?”
Oscar didn’t reply. Dwight, Cara, Lynne and I stared at Bonnie.
“I’m sure the boat’ll be fine once we get out onto the river,” she said.
She pushed the throttle forward gently, and the boat eased forward, trailing thick, black smoke. “I’ve only got one engine,” she muttered, “but that will be fine.”
She pushed both throttles all the way forward and the boat shot forward. We were headed straight for the concrete wall opposite the dock. I couldn’t believe it. We’d just left the dock. I grabbed Lynne and clutched her to me. Bonnie jammed both throttles back as hard as she could. The boat bucked, lurched and stuttered to a halt not far from the wall.
Bonnie’s face was as white as her shirt. She was shaking. Oscar was nowhere in sight. No one said anything.
She nudged the throttles forward again, and Mistry stuttered ahead.
“The other engine isn’t working properly now,” she said under her breath. “I’ve only got one screw.” She steered the boat toward the opening into the river, and Mistry slowly, hesitantly responded.
“What’s wrong?” Dwight asked.
“I don’t know,” Bonnie answered. “I’m going to call the owner,” as she picked up her cell phone.
We motored slowly south toward the Manhattan Bridge. Bonnie whispered into her cell phone and stared straight ahead, not looking at us.
“Are we going to be OK?” Lynne asked.
“Of course, honey,” I said, hugging her tightly.
I assessed our situation: We weren’t very far from the side of the river and there were plenty of boats zipping by us that we could hail if we needed help. Dwight and Cara could both swim and rescue themselves if our boat sank, and I could take care of Lynne and myself. Sadly, I mentally accepted the fact that I probably couldn’t save my camera if we went down. I also cast my mind back over many of my family’s previous outings on our Boston Whaler in Florida. These boat trips usually ended up thwarted by one of three outcomes — taking on water, running out of gas or running aground.
Looked like my luck on boats had reached a new low aboard Mistry.
Mistry sputtered miserably along, very slowly.
A police boat pulled up to us. “Hey!” a cop yelled. “You have to get moving! You’ve gotta be in the safe zone below the bridge by 7:00 p.m.”
White-faced Bonnie didn’t seem to notice the police, but continued to murmur into her cell phone, trying to explain our problems to someone.
“There’s something wrong with our boat!” I yelled back to the police, who didn’t seem to be listening. “There’s something wrong with our boat!” I said again.
The two policemen looked confused, but they also clearly didn’t want to linger and hear about our problems. “You gotta get outta here,” one repeated stolidly.
Bonnie turned around, but didn’t move away from the helm.
“They want to talk with you,” Dwight said.
“I only have one engine, and it’s not working right,” Bonnie said in a tight voice to the police.
“You gotta get this boat moving,” rebuked one of the cops, unmoved by Bonnie’s issues.
Bonnie didn’t elaborate. She turned back to the boat’s controls, and the police sped off, seemingly thinking they’d resolved the situation, and certainly eager to be away and rid of us.
Dwight, Cara and I watched Bonnie push the throttles forward again, this time slowly, tentatively. Amazingly, Mistry picked up speed smoothly, and I prepared to relax, forget the crazy start to this cruise and enjoy the rest of the evening.
Abruptly, the boat jerked to a complete halt. No one said anything.
Then Bonnie started to talk to herself. “Why me? Why me? Why does everything always have to happen to me?”
“What happened now?” Dwight asked.
“The anchor deployed,” Bonnie answered half under her breath. “I don’t know why it deployed; it just deployed. I didn’t push the button or anything. It just automatically deployed. Why me? Why me?”
She seemed completely at a loss about what to do next.
Now we were at anchor in the East River, as the day’s light faded.
“Oscar!” Bonnie shouted. “Oscar, can you pull the anchor up?”
Oscar emerged from down below somewhere, still silent, but he did seem surprised that he was being called upon and strangely detached from our difficulties.
“Oscar, try to pull the anchor up!” Bonnie yelled again. Oscar started to struggle with the anchor. Dwight climbed down to the lower deck to see if he could help.
I looked around and noticed that tugboat was now pushing a barge with an illuminated Macy’s sign up the river. “Hey, look, here come the fireworks,” I pointed out to Lynne and Cara.
Oscar and Dwight yanked and tugged on the anchor, but it didn’t budge. Dwight came back up to the cabin. “I think we’re hooked on somebody’s cement shoes,” he joked into my ear so that Lynne couldn’t hear.
Another police boat appeared at Mistry’s side. This one was called P.O. Scarangella.
“You gotta get this boat outta here,” one yelled, while the other piloted the Scarangella closer.
“We can’t,” I told him, “there’s something wrong with our boat.”
“Hey, I got everybody yellin’ at me that I gotta get this boat outta here,” he repeated.
“Well, we’re stuck,” I said, “and our captain doesn’t seem to know what to do about it.”
I didn’t want this team to leave. So much had gone wrong already, maybe Mistry was about to burst into flames.
Meanwhile, a Coast Guard cutter raced up to Mistry. Several young men with ammunition cartridges crisscrossing their chests rode the bucking cutter, standing upright, swaying in unison. They were clumped around a couple of menacing machine guns mounted to the cutter’s rear deck.
“What’s going on?” they shouted.
“Something’s wrong with this boat,” Bonnie answered.
The Coast Guard cutter bobbed closer to Mistry. Its armed and musclebound crew sized up Bonnie, Oscar, Dwight, Cara, Lynne and me.
No Miami Vice action of any kind to be had here this Fourth of July, I could see them thinking.
“We’ll be back in five minutes,” they promised and zoomed away, never to be seen again.
Their departure left us dependent upon the tender mercies of the NYPD’s marine patrol.
“I’m comin’ aboard,” said one of the Scarangella’s officers. His partner guided their boat closer and Sgt. Muirhead jumped lightly onto Mistry.
“Who’s she?” he asked me, as he nodded his head toward Bonnie, “your maid?”
I ignored his wisecrack, which was pretty funny even at the time, and I said again, “There’s something wrong with this boat.”
He climbed up into the cabin and stood next to Bonnie at the boat’s controls. 
She told him, in a hopeless tone of voice, that she only had one engine, that it wasn’t working right and that now the anchor had deployed and we were stuck.
“Hey, all my superiors are yelling at me, not to mention Homeland Security. You gotta get this boat outta here. I’m supposed to be somewhere else already,” Muirhead answered.
Bonnie did nothing. Muirhead took over the boat’s controls and radioed his partner to explain what was going on.
“What’s his name?” Muirhead asked Bonnie about Oscar, who was hanging around on the front deck.
“Oscar, I’m going to put the boat in reverse,” Muirhead yelled down to Oscar, “try to pull the anchor up, but watch out for your hands.”
Mistry under Muirhead’s command chugged backwards and Oscar yanked hard, but the anchor didn’t yield at all. Muirhead tried guiding Mistry back and forth a little, hoping to ease the line, but he couldn’t dislodge the anchor even a smidge. He tried and tried. Bonnie stood next to him and silently watched. Oscar huffed and tugged. No luck.
“We gotta get this boat outta here,” Muirhead said. “We’re gonna have to cut the line.”
Now, Bonnie looked even more white and worried. She placed another call on her cell phone and began to murmur into it again.
“Oscar!” called Muirhead. Oscar’s head popped into the cabin. 
Muirhead flipped open a long switchblade in front of Oscar’s face. Oscar’s eyes crossed, and he looked like he was about to faint.
“Guess I’ll cut the line,” Muirhead announced sarcastically, and he sprang down to the lower deck. In one swift slice, he freed Mistry, then he jumped back up to the cabin and reassumed the helm.
He turned Mistry about and slowly steered her back to the dock we’d left behind not so long before. Bonnie stood next to him, looking shell-shocked. The Scarangella escorted us back to our berth.
At the dock, many partymakers stopped eating and drinking to watch our return in the hands of the NYPD. A large man, wearing a blue shirt and smoking a cigar, strolled to the edge of the dock and issued orders and directions to both deck hands and Muirhead to help us get smoothly tied up again.
We profusely thanked our hero, Sgt. Muirhead, and stepped off Mistry, dry, safe and sound.
“Hey, I’m Tony,” our newfound cigar-smoking friend said. “What happened out there?”
Dwight, thinking that he was on his way home to Englewood very shortly, gave Tony a quick summary.
“Well, this is my private party,” Tony informed us, “and I want you to stay as my guests. It would be a shame for your little girl to miss the fireworks after all that. Go get yourselves some food and something to drink. Enjoy yourselves! Happy Fourth of July!”
“Let’s stay, Daddy! Let’s stay,” Lynne said, completely unfazed by her experience on the Mistry and as eager as ever to see the fireworks. Cara and I remained quiet, both acknowledging to ourselves that this plan to watch the fireworks hadn’t gone too well thus far and willing to let Dwight make the call.
By now it was around 8 p.m., dark, and the crowd lining the FDR was huge. Making our way back to our car looked impossible, as more people continued to join the waiting throng.
Dwight weighed his two unappealing choices and reluctantly capitulated to reality - it was easier to stay now than go. We stepped around and over celebrants who’d spread out blankets and opened chairs. We gradually made our way to the end of the dock and discovered that we had a better view of the imminent fireworks than we would have had on board Mistry. We staked out a little space and settled down to wait another 90 minutes for the display to start.
I took a few experimental shots with my camera. Helicopters buzzed by overhead.
And a fireboat sent out its arching sprays. 
People near us joked, shared iPod music and drank beer. The mistiness of the air increased and turned into a drizzle. I put my camera back into its bag.
At last, the fireworks began. They exploded, thumped and pounded our eardrums. Red, blue, white, green rockets, sizzlers, streamers, whistlers and bangers whizzed and whirled overhead. We peered up into the rain and covered our ears. We oohed and aahed along with everyone around us, as we got wetter and wetter on the dock at Tony’s Fourth of July party.
