Fabio Buzzi talks about his record attempt just minutes before he departed Liberty Landing Marina at 16:00ET on September 27, 2012. He set a new record of 17 hours and 6 minutes running his FB41 — a 40-foot boat originally designed and built by him for military use, and powered by twin 650HP diesel inboards — from New York to Bermuda. Leaving the marina, his waterline sat 3 inches below as he was laden with 900 gallons of fuel. His crew of five included Roberto Rizzo (pilot and responsible for on-board electronics), Antonio Binda (engineer and chief mechanic of FB Design, he physically built this boat!), Emilio Riganti (pilot), and Maurizio Bulleri (Italian TV/magazine journalist, and former offshore pilot). The photo above shows Buzzi passing Ellis Island as he left New York Harbor.
200 mph on the Hudson
This past weekend, Aperture was chartered to cover the New York Super Boat Grand Prix event on the Hudson. On Saturday, the offshore powerboats conducted their test runs, and rescue divers were staged on board our boat in case one of the speedboats lost control and the pilots needed extraction.
Sunday morning we set the turn-makers for the six-mile rectangular course and put out two lines of spectator buoys across the river — one north, stretching from Hoboken to Manhattan, the other row south from Governors Island to Battery Park, before taking on the role as ‘Course Marshal’ for the actual event.
These boats are no joke! Some go as fast as 200 miles per hour, powered by twin 2,000HP turbine engines. I expected them to roar like crazy, but to my surprise it was a high-pitched whining sound.
On Sunday, all classes raced at once — Superboat Unlimited, Superboat Vee Extreme, Superboat, Super Vee Limited, Superboat Stock, Manufacturer Production P1, P2, P3 and P4 — for a total cash prize of $75,000.
It’s not the prize money that lures these professional offshore powerboat racing teams to New York every year, explained course marshal Randy Mearns. It’s the challenge and bragging rights.
After running laps for about an hour, the event concluded safely and only a few boats broke down during the race.
The 22nd Annual Super Boat Grand Prix had set up camp in Liberty Landing Marina and I’m looking forward to their return next year as this is quite a spectacular sight and photo opportunity!
Sewage Spill Turns Attention to Hudson Plumbing
Most people are horrified by the thought of three millions of gallons of raw sewage spewing into the Hudson River.
Not Captain John Lipscomb of Hudson Riverkeeper.
“Accidents like this come and go,” he told me Friday on the phone from his boat docked on the Hudson in Ossining, N.Y., though he would have been out sampling had it not been raining. “But the chronic releases are happening all the time.”
The spill at a Westchester water treatment plant threatened to cancel Saturday’s Ironman triathlon, and environmental advocates seized the opportunity to shine a light on the regular dumping of raw sewage into New York City waterways.
“The issue for the triathletes isn’t what’s happened in Westchester, but what’s happening in the harbor,” given heavy rains on Friday, says Lipscomb, who has been Captain of Riverkeeper’s research vessel for 12 years. “From our data, we can see that chronic releases are much more significant than accidents.”
Fourteen wastewater treatment plants in New York City, and a handful in northern New Jersey, collect and filter the excess from sinks and streets alike. Much of the metropolitan area is on a combined sewer system, where the pipes that carry refuse from toilets eventually meet with those funneling away rainwater. All of it is scrubbed before being discharged back into local waterways.
Normally, the system works fine, Lipscomb says, and major accidents like the Westchester spill are rare – although an accident at a plant in Harlem poured hundreds of millions of gallons of untreated sewage into the Hudson last summer.
But after a decent rain, the combined sewer system can get overwhelmed, opening valves that send a mix of sewer and rain runoff sloshing into natural waterways.
Engineers say it’s the more palatable alternative to having raw sewage bubble up in residents’ toilets.
Every year, about 28 billion gallons of this “grey” water flow from 460 outfall sites around the city, with an additional 23 billion gallons from more than 200 sites in New Jersey, according to estimates from the Environmental Protection Agency.
Not all of that is concentrated sewage. Since it’s diluted by rainwater, about 20% of the mix comes from household drains, Lipscomb says. Still, that amounts to hundreds of millions of gallons of straight sewage leaking into local waters during each of the the Hudson River area’s average 50 storm events per year.
Riverkeeper has been detecting these discharges during monthly sampling. Below deck in their research vessel is an oven-sized incubator that reveals within 24 hours the level of Enterococcus in water samples.
Few in this bacteria genus are harmful; they’re present in the guts of most species, including humans. But abnormally high levels indicate that untreated sewage has found its way into the water.
Lipscomb’s complaint is that residents have no idea when levels exceed those considered safe for recreation.
But that’s changing. On Thursday, the same day as the Westchester spill, New York Gov. Andrew Cuomo signed into law the Sewage Pollution Right to Know Act, which will require public notification of all raw sewage spills, even those permitted during normal rainfall events.
“It’s almost like a setup,” Lipscomb says. “I was out collecting samples during the event and got an email saying the governor had signed the legislation.”
He says the city has taken other steps to alleviating the problem, like building additional rain gardens and diminishing the amount of impervious surfaces to lessen the volume of water hitting the sewers. It’s less costly than revamping the wastewater treatment infrastructure, which would run a multi-billion-dollar tab.
The New Jersey Department of Environmental Protection says it, too, has been trying to find a reasonable solution to its combined sewer outfall issues. DEP spokesperson Larry Ragonese told me the agency has added more control measures, such as filters, to 83% of its outfalls, and another 13% are under construction.
Over the past decade, about a quarter of combined sewers in the state have also been tied into other systems that don’t mix sewage and rainfall, Ragonese said.
And some municipalities have been taken to task by the EPA to upgrade, including Jersey City and Perth Amboy, which will spend $52 million and $5.4 million, respectively, on updating their systems as a result of settlements with the agency.
Ragonese says the DEP expects to release an updated plan for its combined sewer permitting process within the year – something Debbie Mans, executive director of NY/NJ Baykeeper, says is a long time coming. Her group, along with the Hackensack Riverkeeper, filed suit last year against the DEP over its slow progress.
As intimidating as regular sewage spills sound, their actual health impact is much harder to pin down. Though health officials have established safe exposure limits, swimming in places exceeding those thresholds doesn’t guarantee an infection.
Nor is there any sure-fire way to trace an illness – with water-borne disease, it can be anything from an ear infection to dysentery — to a specific exposure.
“If you swim in contaminated water and get sick 24 hours later, you don’t know if it’s from your salad, the food at the deli, or your dog,” Lipscomb said. “It’s hard to source it.”
The lack of hard evidence doesn’t mean he’d take his chances. When asked if the Ironman challenge should have gone on, as it did on Saturday, Lipscomb said it probably wasn’t the best idea – but not because of the Westchester discharge.
It was Friday’s rains, he said, that would have kept him on dry land.
Diving the Rum Runner
We cast off at 7:30 a.m. with a promising NOAA marine forecast. Two foot seas and less than ten knots of wind – pretty much ideal conditions to hit a wreck further out.
I decided to shoot for the Lizzie D, a prohibition rum runner that sank in 1922 laden with crates of illegal whisky. Sitting upright in the sand at about 80 feet, she’d make a good first Northeast wreck dive for Joe’s student Alison.
The twenty-two nautical mile boat ride from Manhattan took just over an hour and a set of good numbers put us directly on top of the wreck. The sonar signature confirmed the location and we dropped a mushroom anchor with 100 feet of line and a buoy to mark the position.
Dive-master Joel splashed and descended the anchor line. He gave three good tugs to signal a successful tie-in and we moored the boat to the buoy and activated the drift alarm on the chart plotter.
The visibility looked promising and after a dive-site briefing Joe, Alison and Gary geared up and back-rolled over the gunnel. They planned to do an orientation dive on the wreck and go through some deep water drills.
I kept anchor watch, traced bubbles, and spotted a shark cruising by on the surface. After forty minutes Joel came up the line with an almost intact rum bottle in hand. Fifteen minutes later the rest of the crew surfaced – all stoked by visibility and condition of the wreck.
During their ninety minute surface interval I jumped in and cleaned the bottom of the boat. The weather seemed to be holding out nicely so the divers swapped tanks and Gary studied the 2012 fishing guidelines aka ‘dinner menu’ while prepping his spear gun.
This time Joe, Alison and Gary descended first while Joel and I went over the un-tie procedure. He then splashed twenty minutes into their dive.
Alison surfaced with two half bottles – not bad for her first time diving this wreck, Gary with two fish, and Joe happy to have certified two more students in specialty courses.
Once they were aboard I started the engine and we cast off the mooring line to give it slack. Joel untied from the wreck and sent the anchor to the surface with a lift-bag, starting a floating decompression under his surface marker.
By now the wind had picked up, the seas were building and white caps started showing. A sign to get underway and head back to port. As we got within cell phone range I checked the radar and saw some rain over New York Harbor. Only green colors – no yellow or red. That changed by the time we were off the Staten Island coast. Rain set in and soon turned into hail dropping visibility to a mere twenty feet. Running around the weather system wasn’t an option, as we were bound by the Brooklyn shore to our east and New Jersey to the west. The sky looked threatening and though we were only five minutes away from safe harbor I did not want to run the boat through this storm cell so I turned about and headed back towards the Verrazano Bridge – to not be the tallest object on the water.
The next fifteen minutes were truly spectacular! A lightning show better than the Macy’s fireworks. Fog horns from freighters sounded through the punishing rain and our gear got a thorough fresh water wash-down.
As quickly as the sky turned dark, it became light again and we crossed New York Harbor making it back to the dock within fifteen minutes.
It was a great day of diving and a reminder of how fast these thunderstorms can pop up. I’m looking forward to going back out to dive the U.S.S. Turner later this month, as well as to investigate some new sonar targets.
MAYDAY South of Hell Gate
The broadcast came across the VHF at 11:25 a.m. that Saturday: “MAYDAY, MAYDAY, this is the sailing vessel Blue Moon. We’re stuck below a bridge on the East River by Roosevelt Island.”
Escorting a NYC Swim event, I happened to be less than two miles away from the described location, and able to respond to the mayday call. When I arrived on the scene within minutes, her mast was lodged mid-span of the Roosevelt Island Bridge, and the strong current had turned the 35-foot hull broadside, leaning her 40 degrees. Water was washing over her starboard gunnel as two sailors in red life preservers took the high side, fearing the boat might not stay afloat much longer.
NYPD Harbor Unit’s 35-foot response boat #351 also arrived on scene and picked up the distressed boat’s crew from the downstream side. Meanwhile, an FDNY rescue truck stationed itself on top of the bridge. Sparks flew as the team cut open a metal gate for two rescue divers to access a ladder that led them down the stanchion of the bridge. The firefighters asked to come aboard my boat and use her as their stand-by vessel while they assessed the situation.
Next, a 55-foot “Kenny Hansen class” NYPD launch arrived and tied off Blue Moon’s halyard to their bow in hopes of pulling the mast free. But the halyard stood no chance. As the twin 740-HP Detroit diesels lurched, it snapped and whipped back at the boat.
FDNY’s new 64-foot fast-response boat ‘Bravest’ was there within minutes as well, and took station upriver of the bridge. This boat can pump over 6,000 gallons of water per minute, and the lettering of the vessel’s name was cut from steel salvaged at Ground Zero.
The NYPD and FDNY secured the scene and determined that the best course of action would be to summon a bridge operator and wait for the lift-bridge to open and free the boat.
The situation was under control, and I returned to the NYC Swim event, with a renewed sense of vigilance to the swimmers. The whole episode is a reminder of the extreme difficulties posed by the East River’s notorious 5-plus knots of current.
NYC Swim: Brooklyn Bridge
I haven’t gotten up at 3:45 am since my days at the New Jersey TV station News 12, but this morning I wanted to hit the road early to meet NYC Swim‘s race management on the pebble beach by Brooklyn Bridge Park before sunrise. The roads were still empty. Within 30 minutes I made it to Liberty Landing Marina and cast off just before 5 am. It was dark, but the navigation lights and chartplotter threw a neat light on the deck as I ran the boat around the southern end of Manhattan and up the East River.
We picked up the course markers — five-foot-round, bright yellow and orange buoys connected to a rope, with chain and anchor — and started placing them under the Brooklyn Bridge and across the East River, marking the route for more than 400 swimmers that would soon be racing across the channel.
As the sun was coming up, swimmers, kayakers and other support boats started arriving. Photographers from the Wall Street Journal and the New York Daily News came aboard to get closer to the action.
The USCG and NYPD were on scene and closed the East River to all boat traffic shortly before the first wave of athletes splashed at 7:15 am, competing in the 1K swim under one of the most famous bridges in the world. Bruce Brockschmidt, 45, of Mount Laurel, N.J., placed first, making the crossing in an impressive 13:09 minutes.
A few swimmers had to be rescued for various reasons, but most made it to the finish on a small sand beach at Dover Street in East River Park. As always, this was a very well organized event and I’m looking forward to working the next NYC Swim on July 28th at Governors Island.
Hugo Boss Crew Transfer at Ambrose Light
As Alex Thomson sails for the starting line at Ambrose Light off New York aboard the IMOCA Open 60 Hugo Boss, his crew transfers onto New York Media Boat’s RIB running alongside at about 20 knots. Thomson is attempting to break the transatlantic record in preparation for the Vendee Globe later this year. After all three crew were in the RIB we stationed just north of the ‘A’ buoy. Simon Clarke sighting it due south and waited for Hugo Boss to cross the line, marking the time.
Alex Thomson, BOSS Prep for 4th Solo Round-the-World
You’d think a man who executes a swan dive off the keel of his sponsored 60-foot sailboat in a tuxedo or entertains Ewan McGregor at sea might exude a certain arrogance.
Not so for British sailor Alex Thomson. In fact, one of the first things he told me in our brief conversation at Manhattan’s North Cove Marina aboard his Hugo BOSS Open 60 was that he’s failed his first three attempts to sail singlehandedly around-the-world.
First, there was the structural damage in the 2004 Vendee Globe, some apparent breakdown of carbon fitting that caused boom trouble.
Then there was the keel damage in the Velux Five Oceans Race in 2006, when Thomson had to be rescued by fellow British sailor Mike Golding.
In 2008, yet another Vendee went unfinished – or un-started, rather – when a fishing vessel struck Thomson’s yacht, dismasting it as he brought it into port for the race start.
In an extension of this streak of bad luck, Thomson was hospitalized with appendicitis just two days before the 2010 Barcelona World Race, which he was to tag-team with sailor Andy Meiklejohn. (Though this setback wasn’t all that negative – Thomson got to be present at the birth of his son).
When we met him that Saturday night at North Cove, Thomson seemed far from disheartened. He was below deck at his navigation table testing and demonstrating electronics to some of the crew as we came aboard.
We weren’t exactly stowaways. Earlier in the day, Bjoern had ferried some of the BOSS sailing team across the Hudson to Liberty Landing Marina in Jersey City, where the boat was initially docked. The crew had to move it back over to New York, but ferry service wasn’t running. Bjoern’s SeaRider was, of course, and he took the crew aboard in exchange for a promise of beers and a tour of BOSS.
Thomson had a week of hospitality sailing ahead of him but was happy to tell us about his upcoming round-the-world attempt. The 2012 Vendee Globe gets underway on November 10, leaving from Les Sables-d’Olonne in western France.
Barring any health or dismasting concerns, Thomson will likely be at sea for some 100 days. The winner of the 2008 Vendee did it in 84 days – but that’s the advantage of a trimaran over a monohull. (The winner was actually FONCIA, which Bjoern recently photographed during the KRYS Ocean Race stopover in New York).
Perhaps luck will be on his side this time. The latest trip across the Atlantic to the states only took 12 days, and Thomson and co-skipper Guillermo Altadill finished second in last fall’s Transat Jacques Vabre.
It’s probably true, then, what they say about Thomson on the Vendee website: “The day he makes it all the way round, Alex will be a real threat.”
MOD70s Squeeze into North Cove
Kristina and I were having lunch at Liberty Landing Marina when we spotted the first mast approaching at an impressive speed despite the calm wind. I grabbed the boat keys and headed for SeaRider. Jean Marc Normant, the technical manager for MOD 70 KRYS Ocean Race had hired me to assist his newly designed 70-foot trimarans make a smooth entrance into the tight opening of North Cove Marina at the southern end of Manhattan.
It was borderline intimidating as these boats quietly flew past Ellis Island under full sail swarmed by media helicopters. I put the throttle down and went to pick up Jean Marc at North Cove, who would orchestrate the docking.
The boats had just raced from Newport, Rhode Island, to New York with Steve Ravussin’s ‘Race for Water’ in the lead. Now they were staying a few days in New York before the official start of their inaugural transatlantic KRYS Ocean Race, which would take them to the finish line in Brest, France.
Approaching North Cove, I noticed nice custom fenders with KRYS logos wrapped around the marina’s bulkheads. The entrance was a bit narrow for the trimarans and the extra safety measures had been ordered a day earlier.
Jean Marc was at the waters edge working his handheld VHF in French. “Ça va – mind if I take the wheel” he said to me as he walked down the floating dock towards SeaRider.
Sensing his confidence, I agreed, and immediately recognized his excellent boat handling skills.
The organizer had flown in a few zodiacs outfitted with strong outboards to act as tug boats. Their sponsons were wrapped in cloth to prevent scratching the hulls of the MOD70 fleet. The two-man zodiac crews reminded me of cowboys corralling wild horses. They sped out onto the Hudson and strategically positioned themselves below the trampoline on both sides of the center hull, forward and aft in order to best maneuver the trimaran.
Having missed slack tide by more than two hours, they were facing a strong ebb current perpendicular to the 76-foot opening at North Cove, and with a beam of 55 feet they had only 10 feet of clearance on each side if they hit the entrance dead-center.
The zodiacs powered up and pushed the first MOD70 towards the gap at about 15 knots. There was no backing out at this speed. Fully committed, they were shooting for the entrance as the crowd of a few hundred people went silent in fear. Some boat owners were standing by aboard their vessels with fenders in hand. Jean Marc and I were stationed just inside the marina and were ready to assist whatever the outcome would be.
The boat cleared the gap with only three feet to the northern bulkhead. An extremely tense moment – but then the crowd erupted in cheers.
All the while, Jean Marc kept his cool. “One down, four to go” he said, turning his attention back to conducting his symphony telling the next boat to come in a bit slower.
All five boats made it safely to their docks. As Jean Marc disembarked, he thanked me and said he’d see me in a few days for their departure.
Queen Honored in New York
As thousands of boats flooded the Thames for the Queen’s diamond jubilee river pageant, those in the Clipper yacht race flew their Great Britain spinnakers to pay tribute to Her Majesty on this side of the Atlantic.
A parade-of-sail launched Sunday morning from Liberty Landing Marina in Jersey City, sweeping past the Statue of Liberty and nearing the Brooklyn Bridge before docking at North Cove Marina in New York.
Winds rounded the massive spinnakers of the Yorkshire and the Edinburgh, casting a union-jack explosion against southern Manhattan and its rising Freedom Tower, to honor the 60-year reign of Queen Elizabeth II.
London’s larger flotilla included more than 1,000 vessels – the largest river pageant in that city in more than 300 years, according to the BBC.
The Clipper race departs New York on Thursday June 7 for the last official leg of the round-the-world voyage, which got underway last August in the U.K. The fleet of 10 vessels is scheduled to arrive in Southampton at the end of this month after completing a nearly 40,000-mile journey around the globe.
Each boat bears the name of a different city, with Australian, British, Chinese, and American destinations well-represented. Crew comprise a mix of experienced and novice sailors, some hopping on for specific legs, others staying for the full circumnavigation.
The boats return to a busy summer in London, with the Queen’s jubilee rolling into the Olympic games in July.
Soldini Sets Sail for Cape Lizard
Italian sailor Corrado Rossignoli had landed in New York from Milan just two hours ago. Now, he was pacing the dock at North Cove Marina in lower Manhattan, waiting to meet the new crew with whom he’d be attempting to break a transatlantic world record.
It was 9 p.m., and the goal was to leave within two hours for Ambrose Light, where the team would set out for Cape Lizard in southwestern England. A diver had just splashed, tasked with scrubbing away any bits of algae and residue that might have accumulated during Maserati’s nearly two-month stay in North Cove.
“If you lose by 20 minutes, I don’t want to be the reason,” the diver joked to Skipper Giovanni Soldini, the 45-year-old veteran Italian sailor at the helm of the 70-foot monohull Maserati, which was once the Volvo Ocean Race boat Ericsson 3, now modified to be significantly lighter.
Soldini had spent most of the past two days trying to get his new crew in town to take advantage of the window of opportunity he’d been waiting for. A low-pressure system was kicking up winds that could be just right for breaking the nine-year-old record for fastest transatlantic crossing in a monohull: 6 days, 17 hours, 52 minutes, 39 seconds, held by Robert Miller and the Mari Cha IV, a vessel twice the size of Maserati carrying three times the crew.
American crewmember Brad Van Liew flew in from Charleston that afternoon, as did Sebastien Audigane and Ronan Le Goff from France, and Javier de la Plaza from Spain. They met Soldini and boat captain Guido Broggi, who’ve been in New York since late March, passing the nights drinking espresso and grappa at the Battagli-Bastianich collaborative restaurant-market Eataly, their meal sponsor.
Soldini and Broggi had a full crew for the first attempt, but some, including German sailor Boris Herrmann, had to return to Europe for other regattas.
Now, Rossignoli and the British sailor Tom Gall made for a team of eight that huddled around the stern at 10 p.m. for a safety briefing. Soldini handed out personal locator beacons, strobes, headlamps and extra batteries – standard precautions, though the crew would be facing some big challenges. Satellites were already counting about 40 icebergs in their path – and those were just the ones large enough to detect.
“You only need a piece of ice the size of a soccer ball to end the game,” said Gall. It’s hard to maneuver around these obstacles when you’re traveling at 20 knots, their target average speed.
But there was little time to worry. Soldini sailed through sail descriptions, and Broggi ran through winch operations and watch schedules. Just past 11 p.m., after the extra gear had been sent off with a courier, Soldini and his crew cast off for Ambrose into a still Hudson River.
Just past the Verrazano Bridge, the winds picked up, rain set in, and the swell grew. Once at Ambrose, they waited until 3 a.m. – and then, they were off.
Behind The Lens: the Maserati Shoot
Five years ago at the Emmy Awards a TV News colleague said “this is a highlight of your career.”
I never thought of it that way, but while escorting Maserati eight nautical miles out to sea aboard my 12 foot boat, in the middle of the night, in swell and rainy conditions, I found myself thinking ‘now THIS is what I consider a highlight’.
I had been commissioned by Giovanni Soldini’s PR Team to photo document the crew’s final preparations on the dock, for the racing yacht’s transatlantic record attempt.
My car was loaded with gear, when Soldini called asking if I could also bring my boat to push Maserati’s bow around to better maneuver her out of North Cove Marina.
The forecast called for 25 knots of wind and the Hudson River has strong currents, so he felt it was crucial to have a support boat in the harbor when casting off the lines.
I thought to myself ‘How am I going to run boat operations and photo/video on the dock at the same time… I need assistants!’ Kristina Fiore and Joel Gibson had been onboard with RIBphoto.com (now New York Media Boat) since day one, and immediately offered their availability.
They would take the photography equipment by car to lower manhattan, while I ran the boat over to North Cove Marina. Parking in that area is a real challenge but after paying off a hotel concierge, the loading zone was ours.
Soldini was below deck charting icebergs, bowman Corrado Rossignoli focused on checking all ten sail bags, while a diver gave the hull a last wipe-down. Shortly after our arrival at 9:00 pm the rest of the Maserati crew came down the dock. Brad Van Liew expressed concern that the latest weather update slightly differed from what had previously been predicted.
Personally I like to shoot with a 12-24mm lens when working on boats as it captures a good amount of deck space. In this case the helm, winches and three carbon fiber grinders added a nice touch.
Joel and I were hitting the shutter buttons, as on-board preparations continued, and Kristina managed to arrange for a video interview with second bowman Tom Gall – who’s biggest worry are growlers south of Newfoundland.
A steady and annoying rain had set in and I was glad to have opted to bring equipment dry-bags.
Around 10:00 pm Soldini held a final briefing and boat captain Guido Broggi distributed PLB’s, strobes, and the watch schedule.
There was a pile of bags on the dock with non-essential gear that needed to be shipped to London in order to lighten the boat and Soldini grew nervous as the hired courier was running late. After promising him that we’d take care of it, he felt ready to cast off.
My crew split up. Kristina stayed on the dock to handle equipment bags and the car. Joel kept shooting aboard Maserati and captured one of my favorite photos of Soldini setting course towards Ambrose Light.
I ran the RIB and took shots of the yacht in front of the new york skyline.
Once clear of the marina, Soldini gave orders to hoist the main. He then motioned me to come alongside for a moving transfer of Joel from Maserati to the small boat, at about 15 knots.
We continued chasing Maserati past the Statue of Liberty and under the Verrazano Bridge.
With the ISO screaming at 6400, the camera LCD showed more than the naked eye could see.
These were extremely difficult shooting conditions, but I was pleased with the results while cranking the ISO to the max, as I like to normally keep it below 1200.
Once the lights from the NY boroughs faded and Maserati sailed onto a pitch black Atlantic Ocean, we wished them good luck and reversed our course.
Just after 2:00 am we docked the RIB at Liberty Landing Marina, where Kristina awaited our return.
A preliminary photo selection was made for the Italian PR firm just in time for them to start their workday in a timezone 6 hours ahead of ours.
It was an successful shoot and I want to thank Kristina and Joel for their hard work on short notice.
Check out a list of where the photos from this shoot were published.