Anchored off Liberty State Park, I awoke late in the day to a Manhattan skyline and Hudson River so still and crystalline that I decided the first order of business would be to row my ill-repaired inflatable kayak the three miles to the Liberty Landing Marina. Someone who kept a boat there had left me a key card to the showers and some snacks, and I could very much use both.
The kayak was a bottom-shelf inflatable I’d been given up in Maine. It had served me well until I popped a seam on one of the hulls a few weeks earlier. I repaired it with a piece of sail cloth and 5200, which seemed to hold up fine at first. Then it ripped again after catching on an oyster, and a gale blew away the plastic valve that keeps air in the pontoons after I’d left it on deck. I used a wooden plug instead, but it now slowly leaked air from pretty much everywhere. I just pumped whatever chamber needed it while on longer paddles.
Before shoving off from , my 1962 Tripp
