At Sea in the City: New York from the Water's Edge
The glorious anachronisms of sailing stand out in high relief against the backdrop of New York City in these vignettes of sailing around Manhattan. Kornblum's Tradition is a 24-foot-long shallow-draft workboat based on an American catboat design, which he found and adapted from a classified ad. But Kornblum, a professor at the City University of New York, minimizes the nostalgic restoration story and takes readers right on board for refreshing views of an island city that was built on the economic foundations of great natural harbors and fertile inland waterways. Kornblum knows the remaining "urban archipelago" and cruises Jamaica Bay, the tidal Hudson, the Rockaways and the inshore Atlantic coast. He sails under the city's modern bridges, through disused canals, into still wild wetlands, and pauses for nautical history lessons at sites like the wreck of the General Slocum in 1904, a catastrophe in the narrows of Hell Gate. The eight essays glide along nicely, even as Kornblum approaches the unromantic waters around the East Coast's largest airport and the churning oil-sheen tides of the Arthur Kills. Kornblum and his wife, Susan, are wonderful guides to the city, with its often uninviting waterline. Illus. and charts.Copyright 2002 Cahners Business Information, Inc.