With one long blast of the horn and three short ones, the ferryboat pulled out from the dock on West 39th Street in Manhattan and headed into open water. The Midtown skyline receded, the Hudson River filled the frame and 4-year-old T.J. Cranmer, on his way to a playground downtown, stared out the window transfixed. Sitting beside him, his father, Toul Cranmer, grinned. “It’s our favorite mode of transportation,” he said. “Kind of like our secret hack.”
More and more New Yorkers are in on the secret. NYC Ferry, the city-subsidized carrier, now has 25 landings and offers more than seven million rides annually. The system’s newest link, added in December, connects Staten Island to Brooklyn by boat for the first time since 1964, when the Verrazzano-Narrows Bridge opened and the 69th Street Ferry sailed off into the sunset.
On a sunny Saturday in August, I set out on a delirious hopscotch across the five boroughs, docking at 19 locations and getting off to explore at 11 of them. In 13 hours, a photographer and I covered 62 miles for less than the price of a movie ticket, thanks to the ferry’s $15 two-day unlimited pass.
Over the course of our voyage, traveling by boat came to seem less like a novelty and more like a sensible, civilized way to get around a city laid out across approximately eight inhabited islands and a bunch of peninsulas.
And we had plenty of company that day, Aug. 15: NYC Ferry broke its one-day ridership record for the third time this summer, with nearly 57,000 rides. But somehow, the ferry still felt kind of like a secret cruise line.
Staten Island to Sunset Park
Riding the ferry is pretty straightforward. Tickets are $4.50 each way, with free transfers to other ferries for up to two hours. Passes can be purchased from vending machines at any landing, or through an app.
T.J. and his family got off at Battery Park City in Manhattan, but we stayed on till Staten Island, where we were greeted by a flotilla of Canada geese.
In a strip mall across from the desolate Empire Outlets, Sam Alex stood behind the counter at John’s Gourmet Deli and Market. “What’s good?” we asked. “For you?” he replied, smiling. “Egg white, sliced turkey, Swiss cheese. It’s beautiful.”
Back on the boat to Bay Ridge in Brooklyn, we zoomed over the Narrows, feeling the breeze like dogs with our heads hanging out of the world’s biggest car window.
There is something unmistakably spiritual about traveling on the water. Robert Valentine, a 68-year-old merchant marine waiting with his family to get on the Rockaway-bound boat at Sunset Park in Brooklyn, knows this. “The ocean, that seawater,” he said. “The way God created that, it’s part of us.”
Rockaway and Governors Island
The 12:25 p.m. boat from Sunset Park to Rockaway in Queens was packed. Empty White Claw cases piled up behind the concession stand. A young woman got sick over the back rail. Adam Forsyth, 44, and a friend sat snuggled on the deck near the base of the staircase.
“I love the act of taking the ferry and going to the beach,” said Mr. Forsyth, who works in finance. “You go from this hubbub of life in the city to this sereneness of being on the water within minutes.”
An eight-minute walk across the skinny peninsula took us from the bayside landing to the beach. Then it was lunchtime, but the lines at the arepa bar were too long. We wolfed down Nathan’s chili dogs, boardwalk lemonade and a $15 Mister Softee pineapple sundae.
Driving along New York City’s streets, the vistas are vertical and constrained. Moving along the water creates a view of the city that’s expansive, horizontal — horizon-tal. Jet Skis and rowboats and tugboats crisscrossed Jamaica Bay. The amusements of Coney Island scrolled by. The underside of the Verrazzano bridge flashed overhead, looked oddly forbidden.
Then we were back in the thick of the city: The Wall Street pier is the Times Square of ferry service, where all seven NYC Ferry lines cross. We fled the hordes and headed for a ferry to Governors Island operated by the Trust for Governors Island. But it, too, was packed, with people heading to a D.J. festival.
Once on the island, we had 16 minutes to get to its other ferry terminal a half-mile south. We speed-strolled past people flying kites and riding in pedal cars, a Bangladeshi arts festival and a Taiwanese arts festival. A woman strummed an acoustic guitar to a crowd on a lawn. We made the boat to Red Hook in Brooklyn with seconds to spare.
Mysteries of Red Hook
In Red Hook, we stopped to chat with Paul Kennedy, a retired locomotive mechanic smoking a cigarette on his front steps. “Don’t write a word about Red Hook,” he said. “You’ll ruin it.”
Too late, Mr. Kennedy. As if on cue, a passel of overdressed tourists streamed past, gabbling like turkeys. Red Hook, famously unconnected to the subway system, managed to stay sleepy and under the radar for decades. Now it fills up every weekend with day-trippers on the ferry from Manhattan.
Red Hook is also home to an IKEA that offers free ferry service to Manhattan. But at 5:20 p.m., shoppers were waiting uneasily by their blue bags. The ferry to Wall Street that was due to arrive at 5:10 had not come, they said. Then 5:20 came and went, and so did 5:30. The sun dipped toward Red Hook Channel.
“Does someone know something we don’t know?” asked Janelle Castillo, 32. She and her girlfriend had a rolling cart with 45 pounds of stuff. People checked Uber prices back to Manhattan — $40, $50. Some gave up and trudged along the charming cobblestone streets to Red Hook’s other ferry terminal.
New York Waterway, the company that operates the IKEA ferry, later explained that one of its ferries had helped rescue two capsized Jet Skiers off Manhattan, scrambling the schedule.
Back on the NYC Ferry, we met Kobie Mars-Hollingsworth, 28, a ticket agent. He said that he had logged the 365 hours of sea time required to become a captain and had just gotten his license. “The job is big on growth within the company,” he said.
His favorite line is the Rockaway. “I love the views. You have your Rockaway crowd, you have your Soundview crowd” — the working class Bronx neighborhood near the end of the line — “and you have your people who get off at East 90th on the Upper East Side.”
Up in the wheelhouse, the boat’s captain, David Ortiz, went on the radio. “Coming next to you, Bayhopper,” he said as he approached East 34th Street in Manhattan. “Pop it on in,” a voice called back.
Last Stops
As dusk fell, the ferry pulled into Roosevelt Island. “Granny Annie’s will probably have some live music going on,” said a man getting off the boat carrying a dog named Benji. “Good food, good drinks.”
At Granny Annie’s, Rachel Dowling, a personal caretaker, listened to a young guitarist sing soft-rock hits as she nursed a reddish drink.
She said the ferry, which came to the island in 2017, had “opened up Brooklyn and Queens” for her. “I’ve started to understand the lay of the land more because of the ferry, and how the boroughs are connected,” she said.
After a brief stop at the Manhattan landing near Gracie Mansion, the mayor’s house (he wasn’t home), it was on to Soundview in the Bronx.
A 10-minute walk from the landing brings you to a venerable Ecuadorean restaurant called Maravillas. A few weeks ago, the restaurant’s general manager, Kenny Alarcón, traveled to City Hall to receive an honor from the City Council. Coming back, he took the ferry for the first time. It was faster than the subway and bus, and “a lot more peaceful,” he said.
“I was on the ferry, looking at the sky,” he said. “I felt like I was in a daydream. It was the cherry on top of my day.”
Just after 10 p.m., the last boat of the night pulled into the slip at Ferry Point Park in the Bronx — named for one of the dozens of ferry lines that plied the city’s waters in the days before the bridges were built.
Sixty-five people filed off: couples, families, toddlers sleeping against parents’ shoulders. They walked up through the park, past barbecues and thumping music and children wrestling, and off into the city night.
Edison Wu produced the maps.
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