Jul 5, 2026, 3:04 AMThe people organizing the event built a set of bleachers (a raised wooden seating platform) on Governor’s Island, offering the best view of the Parade of Sail and all the warships and everything else. Seats on the bleachers were available to VIPs and to people who wanted to pay top dollar for the best views of all the ships.
On Friday night, a line of thunderstorms blew through and totally destroyed the bleachers. Oops.
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Jul 5, 2026, 3:10 AMThe sloop “Clearwater" entered the line-up of sailing vessels flying banners that said things like “Indigenous Rights”, “Racial Justice" and "Climate Solutions”.
For these un-American sentiments, the sloop was immediately removed from the parade by two Coast Guard vessels, because God forbid patriotic Americans should have to think about things like racial justice or indigenous rights on July 4th after they've successfully avoided thinking about them for two and a half centuries.
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Jul 5, 2026, 3:17 AMAnother useful fact: you may be totally crap at recognizing national flags (not helped by the fact that nautical flags are often subtly different from the regular variety), but if you are SLIGHTLY less crap at recognizing them than the people around you, you can pass for a genius.
Also, even if you don’t remember what the Peruvian flag looks like, if a vessel has “Peru" written in big letters on the forward staysail, guessing that it is in fact Peruvian will earn you mad props.
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Jul 5, 2026, 3:27 AMThe air display that accompanied the Parade of Sail was divided by type: fixed-wing aircraft went up the Hudson, rotary-wing aircraft went up the East River. And a trio of V-22 Ospreys, for no obvious reason, circled round and round Liberty Island.
This is actually something military helicopter flights over NYC like to do: if you track them, you'll find they almost always do a couple of orbits of the Statue. So maybe the Ospreys were just giving some senior officers a private tour.
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Jul 5, 2026, 3:13 AM@angusm It would have been funny if the banners quickly came down, to be replaced with "your first amendment rights in action!"