Flat-Bottomed Dutch Boats!

PortSide NewYork put together a wonderful event yesterday in the Atlantic Basin in Red Hook, playing host to The Flat Bottoms, a fleet of historic Dutch vessels, some more than 100 years old. Dutch sailors helped many a Yankee aboard their beautiful, tall-masted vessels and displayed good humor as we inspected their ships from stem to stern. There was a jazz band, whose music was wafted along the docks by the cool harbor breezes. There was free Heineken (gone in a flash) and Sonnema, an aggressively herbal Dutch liqueur that I came to describe as "vile, but I could get used to it."