Crossings

Since we've been traveling this weekend and needed to take the Cross Sound Ferry back and forth to Connecticut, I've been remembering some prior crossings years ago when the boats were not quite as spacious. There was one I remember quite well - must have been about the late 1970s - and we were on the very small "Caribbean" ferry. The wind was whipped up a bit and once we got out of the river and into the sound that little ferry started bouncing around like a cork in a bathtub. There was only one cabin on that little ferry, in the bow, and since the weather wasn't good every passenger was crammed in there. It was hot and people were getting sea sick all over the place so the bathroom smelled like vomit and getting up to visit it might mean losing your seat. It was one miserable trip, made tolerable by the antics of our daughter who was as cute as possible, just a toddler and too busy to sit down but trying hard to keep her footing in the rolling seas. She kept us laughing and distracted and we managed to make the crossing without too much discomfort, but I was not anxious to do it again anytime soon.

There was another crossing where we had been visiting relatives when we discovered our baby - I think she was about 10 months at the time - came down with the chicken pox. I knew what it was immediately because her sister had also had it two weeks earlier, the exact incubation time of the disease. We headed for home right away but had to make the crossing on the ferry, which fortunately was the larger one. It was a day with heavy fog but warm enough and with calm seas so I spent the entire trip on a bench outside in the fog, not wanting to expose anyone to the highly contagious disease the baby had. It was the longest trip I'd every made across the sound, with the boat's fog horn sounding regularly. The baby slept through it all, which was amazing, but I had to endure it.

On a beautiful calm day the trip is great fun. It allows us to avoid the busy roads around NYC and walk around the boat rather than sit in a car for hours. But on a bad day it can be a nightmare.