Bring Back the Commuter

Commuting

There you are!  Hanging on the handle of the downtown BMT on the infamous New York Subway System.  It’s August and, as usual, the air conditioning isn’t working in your car.  You are grimy and sweaty and your $350 hat is limp and drooping over your eyes.  Your $400 Gucci loafers are filled with sweat and your $800 blue pinstriped suit (which was neatly pressed when you left your Long Island house this morning) now looks like a pair of painter’s coveralls.  You are pressed into the car like a bunch of asparagus spears in a jar.  On one side of you is an unkempt guy wearing a baseball hat and red high heeled shoes. He is breathing hard, smiling weirdly, and grabbing your leg.  Odors emanating from both ends of the fat guy on the other side of you suggest that he recently gorged himself on garlic bread, pickled eggs and baked beans. 

Your surroundings are hot, very noisy, lurching, jerking, and generally nerve racking. The inside and outside of your train is decorated in abundant graffiti with great sayings like “Jesus is the Conductor of my Train” or “Pedro loves Juan” or, perhaps, the two words that best sum up your feelings about commuting....“Subways Suck.”  When you bought your beautiful waterfront house in Glen Cove, Long Island, you knew that you would have to travel to work on Wall Street.  You would become… A COMMUTER.  Commuting in the context of today’s lifestyle entails clutching a pole in a long, narrow coffin hurdling through dark subterranean holes in the ground, or driving (or being driven) in a motor car through traffic jams and potholed streets.  But it wasn’t always this way…

It is 1925.  Cleanly slicing the blue-green waters of Long Island Sound comes along, sleek 65’ motor craft traveling at 34 mph.  The crew, in starched whites, smartly pilots the craft from a low, swept back bridge while the owner sits aft in the covered cockpit enjoying the ride, the fresh air, his Wall Street Journal and coffee and croissants.  THIS IS COMMUTING!

In New York City during the ’20’s, poor and middle class folks clustered closely around downtown areas and took a trolley or subway or bus to work.  Nobody considered this “commuting,” but simply “going to work” (at this time personal cars for the masses were not common).  Only the well-heeled could afford to travel from locations distant from the city.  Most did it by chauffeured automobile, however, roads at that time were not very good and the trip was long and tedious -- especially in the summers before the advent of automobile air conditioning.  Most of these travelers lived on or near Long Island Sound and many of them owned crewed motoryachts.  Sometime between 1900 and 1910 a few pioneering Wall Streeters decided to commute the 26 miles or so down Long Island Sound to Wall Street in their yachts, which were docked or anchored off Wall Street awaiting the return trip later in the day.

These first “commuter boats” were merely motoryachts pressed into commuting service but, as time went by, a special breed of powerboat evolved which was known as the “Commuter,” or “Commuterboat.”  By the mid 1920’s, a typical commuter was a long, skinny, round bilged, wooden powercraft about 65’ long.  Her profile was rakish and she was lightly built and powered with huge gasoline engines, usually adapted from aircraft engines of the day.  The morning “race” to work was indeed just that: it was not uncommon for these vessels to race one another down Long Island Sound to Wall Street.  The fastest boats were held in high esteem and it was not unusual for owners of slower boats to repower them over the winter or to build entirely new boats every few years to stay out in front of the pack.  Some of these craft did 50 mph!

A typical morning for a Wall Street executive in the ’20’s would be thus: our man would awaken late, yawn, stretch, scratch, etc., throw on his bathrobe and slippers, maybe kiss his wife and kids and shuffle down the rolling green lawn of his Glen Cove estate to the dock.  His white-clad crew would be standing by and, as he stepped aboard, the already warmed up engines would roar to life and the lines would be cast off.  He would retire to the owner’s stateroom and, by the time he stepped into the shower, he was already underway at 30 knots heading west down Long Island Sound towards Manhattan.  By the time he was off Throggs Neck, our showered and shaved executive would be mixing cream in his breakfast coffee. 

Breakfast would be enjoyed while places like Beechhurst, College Point and South Beach (now LaGuardia Airport) streamed by.  Sliding through Hell Gate, he would, again, retire to his stateroom where, waiting on a wooden stand, would be his suit, shirt and tie.  As they approached Wall Street, slipping under the Brooklyn Bridge, our magnificently attired executive would be ready for a day’s work after an exhilarating ride of 45 minutes.

Compare the “commuter” described at the head of this article and the one who just stepped off his yacht.  One arrives at work hot, sweaty, harried and generally ticked off at the world.  This is understandable -- how can anyone arrive at work with a happy attitude when one has just crawled, like a worm, out of a hole in the ground.  Our water commuter is fresh and ready to go out and “own the world” (which is just what many of these gentlemen did).

The point of what I am saying here is this: the situation today is very similar to what it was in the ’20’s (let’s hope it doesn’t end the same way!).  All over this great country we have a large group of overachievers living in high rent districts just outside major cities commuting to work by railroad or in private cars. Many of these guys already own boats which usually have full time crews.  Most of the people that I know in this category either drive or are driven to work and back each day and despise it.  Their boats and crews are available so... WHY NOT BRING BACK THE COMMUTER?

Time is Money

There are only two requirements for commuting via water to work.  They are: a fast boat and a major city accessible via mostly protected waterways from outlying residential communities.  A look at the map of the United States clearly shows the major cities accessible via waterway.  Boston, Massachusetts; Providence; Rhode Island, New York, New York (where commuter boats were born); Baltimore, Maryland; Norfolk, Virginia; Charleston, South Carolina; Miami and Tampa/St. Pete, Florida; New Orleans; Louisiana; and San Francisco, California are all logical commuting areas.  Of course, further north Seattle, Washington, and Vancouver, B.C., look good except for the very short seasons.  And let’s not forget another great hot spot of commuting during the 20’s -- the Great Lakes area.  Here we have cities like Cleveland, Detroit, Toledo, Milwaukee, and, of course, Chicago, all accessible from the Lakes.

Although virtually any vessel can be used as a commuter boat, there are some requisites for the ideal vessel.  Firstly, she should be fast in order that commuting times via water are equal to or less than those by land.  We’re talking about cruising speeds of 20 to 30 knots (23 to 34 mph).  And because there aren’t many Rockefellers or Vanderbuilts or Whitneys left, she should also be rather fuel efficient.  These two criteria have already eliminated 95% of all existing vessels.  Then, proper accommodations should be fitted, including an owner’s stateroom, salon, crews quarters and an open or enclosed cockpit. We are talking boats with a minimum length of 50’ and, ideally, 60’ or 65’.  High speed and efficiency will require lightweight construction and sophisticated underwater shapes.  Ideally, a small office should be fitted or a “convertible” area of the salon should include an office.  By means of today’s sophisticated cellular communications systems and computerization it is not far-fetched to imagine our executive playing hooky on Fridays, while doing his office work aboard.  If the idea catches on, a whole new breed of yacht may be born -- dual purpose vessels such as commuter/sportsfisherman or commuter/motor yachts.

But isn’t it expensive to commute by boat?  The answer is that it is expense to commute by any means-- auto, train or boat.  Using the legendary Glen Cove, Long Island to Wall Street, New York run of 26 statute miles as an example, let us investigate costs.  Below is a chart for vessels of different speeds and efficiencies.  You might ask why dockage in the city has not been included.  Since waterfront property is so scarce and expensive in metropolitan areas, I have assumed that our modern day commuter boats would be anchored or moored.

But wait!  These are only fuel costs.  What about the other costs involved in running a boat?  Well, it is my view that, other than minuteman missiles, pleasure boats are the most underutilized vehicles in the world!  The owners are paying for maintenance, upkeep and crews whether the boats are being used or not. As far as wear and tear is concerned, I feel the boats would actually benefit from increased use since idleness is the nemesis of marine machinery and electronics.

Now let’s look at what it takes to make the same trip from Glen Cove to Wall Street, by automobile, a distance of about 60 miles.  Assuming our overachieving commuter is not driving a Volkswagen Rabbit, but a car more suitable to his station in life, like a 500 Mercedes, Maserati Quattroporte, Cadillac Limo or Ferrari 308, we can safely say that he may attain a “stop and go” average of 8 mpg for the hour and a half it would take him to reach his destination.  These basic costs are as follows:

On the face of it, commuting by car is much cheaper -- until one considers the time involved.  To the high pressure executive, time is money, and assuming that their time is worth $250 an hour, the hour and a half treck by car will add $375 to the cost of the trip totaling $407.00.  Adding time in transit to the slowest boat (20K) totals $327.50 and the fastest boat only $305.00 per day, thereby rendering commuting by water considerably cheaper than going by car.

But there is more to it than cold figures.  Driving an hour and a half by car from Glen Cove to Wall Street is a harrowing and dangerous experience.  The majority of the distance must be traveled on the infamous Long Island Expressway -- the world’s largest parking lot.  Then there are the toll booths at the Queens/Midtown Tunnel.  Here, you might be breathalyzed by one of New York’s finest, or mugged, while waiting in long lines to pay your toll.  Entering the Queens/Midtown Tunnel is like entering hell.  It seems you are always behind a dirty diesel bus belching black noxious fumes directly into the air intake of your car.  Once you have made it under the East River, there is still the drive downtown which must be accomplished by taking any one of the main downtown arteries or the FDR drive (it is rumored, by the way, that potholes on this road have swallowed whole cars -- their drivers never to be heard from again).  By the time you arrive at Wall Street, you feel like a combat veteran.  Your car, which was pristine when you started, looks like an off-road vehicle which has just competed at Baja.  With the air conditioning on full blast, you will still be hot and grimy.  Of course, your daily exposure on these roads greatly increases your chance of being involved in a fender bender -- or worse.

We haven’t even addressed the business advantages of having your yacht near your office.  Think of it!  Lunches aboard while cruising the skyline.  A private haven for a quick nap (or a quick whatever) in the afternoon.  Business lunches and meetings aboard will, most likely, provide tax advantages.

A few years ago, on a delivery trip, from South Florida to Glen Cove, New York, aboard a 44’ Midnight Lace, we recreated the classic commuter run from Wall Street.  We encountered no debris in the East Fiver, the infamous Hell Gate was no problem and we weren’t breathalyzed once!  Cruising the shoreline of Manhattan at over 20 knots while observing the crush of traffic ashore was great fun.  The run was accomplished in a bit over an hour-.  Think about it, high-rollers and take your choice: the romance of sweet, crisp sea air and sunshine at 30 knots or garlic breath, rotten eggs and diesel particulates.  I’ll take romance!

(Reprinted with permission of Regina Fexas.)

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