![]() ![]() When the great ice monster melted ten thousand years ago, sea level rose about three hundred feet. It was one dripline coming off the world-topping ice cap of the Ice Age, which was such a monster that the entirety of Long Island is just one of its moraines. People call it a river but it’s more than a river, it’s a fjord or a fyard if you want to be geologically prissy about it. ![]() It’s only a mile wide, and yet once through it, hopefully coming in on a rising tide, as it’s much easier that way, like Hudson you will come into a humongous harbor, unlike anything you’ve ever seen before. The Bight of New York forms an almost ninety-degree angle where the north-southish Jersey Shore meets the east-westish Long Island, and right there at the bend there’s a gap. ![]() If you’re okay pondering the big picture, the ground truth, read on. Sail ahead a page or two to resume voyeuring the sordiditties of the puny primates crawling or paddling around this great bay. If you don’t care about such an antiquitarian sailor’s fact, bight me. A bight is an indentation in a coastline too broad and open to be called a bay, such that you could sail out of it on a single tack. Henry Hudson sailed by and saw a break in the coast between two hills, right at the deepest part of the bight they were exploring. New York, New York, it’s a hell of a bay. ![]()
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