Being on a boat, everybody knows that you need a certain amount of water to float on, hence allowing you to move. Through the annals of history many vessels have been grounded, stranded, or even lost due to the lack of beneath them.
Being on a yacht that draws about 5m (17ft) you do have to be careful with where you go.
However this post is not concerned about depth, this post is looking at what is above the water; Zefira's 65m (213ft) mast and the Verrazano Narrows Bridge that guards the Hudson River and the city of New York.
We left Newport at 6am on a Friday with the aim of hitting (actually that's a poor choice of words, let's say arriving to) the Verrazano Narrows at the 6:30pm low water mark. A few delays, as well as picking up the pilot for the ride in meant we didn't reach the bridge until just after 9pm.
Even though we did all the numbers, and triple-checked everything that it was going to be sweet, the heart still skipped a few beats as the illusion of hitting the bridge at the third spreader became ever so realistic!
Here are some photo's of the delivery and the trip under the bridge, we had about 2m (6ft) to spare (less than 5% for the geeks). But as you can see it looks a lot closer than that, especially considering it is a curved bridge and that is at the absolute centre!
I also put some photos in of the trip out of the bridge, these ones may be a bit better as the second time around wasn't so hair raising. On the way out we went under the bridge right on the midnight low - which gave us about 3m (9ft) to spare.
I know i have said it before, but the Gateway bridge in Brisbane has a clearance underneath it of 55m (180ft) that gives you a scale of what we are dealing with.
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