And then I crashed the boat.
It wasn’t my fault. Really, it wasn’t. A puff of wind came out of nowhere and drove the boat into the stone wall I had been steering it toward. Gently. Smoothly.
The vessel I was captaining was not a cruiser with an engine whirring below deck — it had no engine at all. Mine was a miniature sailboat on the model boat pond in Central Park, the setting famous from E.B. White’s story “Stuart Little.”
Model boats are being rented on the pond for the first time since 2019, the last full year before the coronavirus hit. The concessionaire is new: Rocking the Boat, a nonprofit from the Hunts Point section of the Bronx. The organization also teaches teenagers how to build full-size boats for rowing and sailing and how to pilot them on Long Island Sound.
Jasmine Benitez, who is managing Rocking the Boat’s operation at the boathouse east of the pond, said that the transition from the Sound to the diminutive world of the model boat lake (officially, Conservatory Water) had not been difficult. “The physics is exactly the same as on a big boat,” she said.
Physics? Yes, physics, said Sue Donoghue, the parks commissioner, adding that Rocking the Boat’s workshops introduce “the importance of STEM in a fun way,” referring to science, technology, engineering and mathematics. Teams from Rocking the Boat assemble the three-and-a-half-foot-long model vessels from components. The group plans to conduct workshops to teach people how to build their own.
Adam Green, the founder and executive director of Rocking the Boat, said that the operation in Central Park was a departure for the group — its first venture in Manhattan. Rocking the Boat is charging Manhattan prices, $15 for 30 minutes of sailing. The price was $13 in 2019, he said, adding, “We thought it was obvious that everything is more expensive now.”
Green said that he was counting on model boats to boost the name recognition of Rocking the Boat and to bring in revenue for the organization’s programs. Starting today, Rocking the Boat will rent sailboats on Wednesdays and Fridays from 11 a.m. to 7 p.m. Next month, it will add Thursdays and Saturdays to the schedule, and in July, the operation will expand to five days a week, from Wednesday to Sunday. The rentals are separate from races organized by the Central Park Model Yacht Club on Saturdays, from 10 a.m. to 1 p.m.
People can also bring their own boats during Rocking the Boat hours, but they need a $15 permit from the city’s parks department.
Green, 50, grew up on the Upper West Side and said that, when he was a child, he climbed all over the Alice in Wonderland statue just north of the pond. But he did not pay much attention to what was going on in the boathouse that Rocking the Boat is now using by Conservatory Water.
“As a New Yorker,” he said, “you never think about something like this existing here.”
The boathouse was built in the 1950s. Conservatory Water, one of the man-made wonders that Calvert Vaux and Frederick Law Olmsted created, dates to the 19th century. Despite its age, the pond is not littered with (model) shipwrecks — it is not terribly deep. But boats can capsize.
I did not want that to happen when Benitez handed me the remote-control device used to control the miniature sailboat that she and Myah Recinos had placed in the water. The device looked something like an Xbox controller.
“I’m more of a PlayStation girl myself,” said Recinos, a Rocking the Boat veteran who is renting the boats and, as she put it, “helping people get them going.” People like me.
I had also read that the winds on the model boat basin are typically 3 to 6 knots, but at that moment there was not even a whisper. “Patience is key to dealing with these boats,” Recinos counseled. “When the wind dies out, you have to be patient.”
So I waited, and after a minute or two, a breeze carried the boat out. I maneuvered the controls. The boat zipped along nicely. I worked the remote control to turn the boat to head back.
Bad idea. At least the stern had what Recinos called a “nose,” a rubbery cone designed to absorb the shock of a slow-speed mishap.
“You cannot control the wind,” Recinos told me later. “You thought you were doing really bad when I didn’t think you were. I remember you crashing into the wall, and I was like, That’s pretty much bound to happen at some point.
For Trump, a $9,000 fine for violating a gag order
The judge in Donald Trump’s hush-money trial held the former president in contempt and fined him $9,000 for violating a gag order with his social media posts.
Judge Juan Merchan also warned Trump of “incarceratory punishment” if he were to flout the gag order from now on — meaning jail.
For Trump, $9,000 is not much money. Merchan said so himself, in an eight-page decision. The penalties for repeatedly violating the gag order “unfortunately will not achieve the desired result” when the person penalized can easily afford the fine, Merchan said.
The judge ordered Trump to remove nine “offending posts” from his Truth Social account and his campaign website. In doing so, Merchan rejected claims by Trump’s lawyers that the former president had simply reposted messages written by others. Merchan called the idea that such reposts do not count as violations of the gag order “counterintuitive and indeed absurd.”
The jury heard from Keith Davidson, the lawyer who represented two women who claimed to have had sex with Trump: Stormy Daniels, a porn actress, and Karen McDougal, a Playboy model. Davidson’s testimony has pulled back the curtain on the negotiations for the hush-money payments made to both women ahead of the 2016 presidential election.
METROPOLITAN diary
Passing it on
Dear Diary:
Whenever I finish reading a magazine and it is in clean condition, I face a dilemma: Recycle it or leave it on a park bench or subway seat for someone else to enjoy?
By leaving it somewhere, I could be doing a public service. Or I could just be making trash for someone else to clean up.
One day not long ago, the question was answered for me as I watched.
I was sprinting to make a transfer at Columbus Circle when the magazine I had been reading flew out of my coat pocket and fell to the ground. Wanting to make my train, I decided not to stop to pick it up.
As the doors closed, I watched sheepishly while people streamed past my litter.
But just before the train pulled out, I saw a woman stop and examine the cover. Then she bent down, picked up the magazine and slipped it into her bag.
— Ryan Kailath
Illustrated by Agnes Lee. Send submissions here and read more Metropolitan Diary here.
Glad we could get together here. See you tomorrow. — J.B.
P.S. Here’s today’s Mini Crossword and Spelling Bee. You can find all our puzzles here.
Francis Mateo, Rachel Gomes and Ed Shanahan contributed to New York Today. You can reach the team at nytoday@nytimes.com.
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