ML3 was invited up to our friend’s movie shoot at the cove between DiSuvero’s complexes in Long Island City.  We got out there early for a Sunday morning and started dressing Josephine up as a pirate barque.  The film crew made her this great faux mast and bedsheet sail.  I got massacred and covered in fake blood.  The boat was taken by pirates but not set on fire.  These awesome kids from the Long Island City Boathouse free kayak program showed up and politely heckled us.  Some cops came by to check us out.  The kids from the boathouse sent them on their way.  We raced them out to the East River on kayaks.  After the shoot, five of us loaded up in Josephine and headed out for a 15 minute paddle down to Socrates’, when all of a sudden we got taken by a quick current and swept out into the East River proper. I rowed against the current for a couple of minutes and was making maybe 1 knot against it, but we all decided it’d be more fun to drift downstream.  Next thing, we were under the Roosevelt Island Bridge, then the 59th Street, then passing the jumbo fuel barges at the ConEd station, then passing the Water’s Edge yachts, then saluting friends just arriving to clean up the Switchback Sea rafts after a night of amateur dramatics, then sliding by the matte black yacht again, and finally, after an unexpected hour afloat, we made our way to the old Pepsi Cola sign landing spot of the previous night’s journey and hauled her out.  Some Parks Dept. cop was really worried about us.  “Don’t canoe anymore, alright?”  He didn’t mind that we stepped all over his baby plants, even.  “It’s not a canoe,” I said.

When I got home, my next door neighbor came out to say how much she really loves the boat.

“What kind of boat is that?”

“It’s a dory.”

“No, it’s a like a canoe, you should call it a ‘Canoe-zie.’  Canoezie.  Canoezie canoezie canoezie. Ok?”

I said: “Why are you calling it a canoezie?”

“Cause that’s what it is don’t you even know what kind of boat it is??”

“Well… I mean, I built it, you know?”

“Well if anybody asks, tell ’em it’s a Canoooe-zie.”

“Um.”

“What?”

She then kind of fought with me about it, got sort of aggressive and had on this scary full-moon face, and in the end I think I probably said, “Ok, I’ll tell ’em, yeah, canoe-zie, sure.” But then she said I have to write ‘Canoezie’ on it, “in real small letters…” and well, I don’t know… what?

More photos:

I think we may have to turn our garden into a boat-yard this winter.  Canoezies and all.