Call me Ishmael. The obsession took control that first torrid day in May. Water. I longed to float, to look out on water, to take a boat anywhere, to see the city across water painted by neon sunsets, lost in silver haze, shockingly beautiful in diamonds by night (like certain glamorous women who only appear after dark). To snack alfresco as the boats slip by. To sip a chilled country red as the barge lurches beneath me. A river commute to dinner. That was the fixation.

          It’s almost midnight. We’re sipping tropical nectars (pineapple-cranberry and strawberry daiquiris, supposedly rum-spiked) and sharing crisp fried calamari with a peppery after kick at a plastic garden table. The Hudson River slaps the pier’s pilings below. A palm shivers in its big clay pot. A plastic snake smirks down at us from the tent pole. And the moon climbs over the city’s concrete monoliths. Is it paradise or just a clever mixed metaphor? Which is the real jungle? New York City or the Amazon Club at Tribeca Beach?

          Two Israeli-born Philadelphia restaurateurs and a venture capitalist from Brooklyn have dumped 10,000 square feet of sand onto Pier 25 opposite Moore and Beach Streets. There’s volleyball, lounge chairs and a shower, mock waterfalls, thatched bars, jungle flora and fauna, a portable dance floor, occasional live music, and valet parking for 100 cars. A $5 tariff after 9 pm is refundable if you eat (and don’t get so drunk you forget to ask).

          Expect plastic glasses and paper plates in wicker holders and fresh-faced servers in variations of next-to-nothing. “Oh, it smells so good,” cried Amy (hoping to cover next year’s tuition at Penn) as she drops off the spicy “tobacco onions.” This rib eye is edible. Wings with a sissy Roquefort dip are moist and tangy; salmon and black-bean-corn salsa, surprisingly tasty. And the price is right -- from $7 for a burger with fries to the $12.50 rib eye.

          The crowd reminds me of the high-decibel nights at Studio 54 -- a little bit of every species known to the city: earnest yups with briefcases, upper-crust dweebs and floating Euros, lovelorn hopefuls from every borough, thugs and stallions in menacing insignia, even Sylvia Miles. Of course, the tide could shift at any moment.

          The Boathouse Café in Central Park is positively blooming. It’s not often that a delight from childhood turns out to be better than remembered. The café has grown from 50 to 150 seats, plus space for a bar, and spawned half a dozen satellite fast-food carts. There is a Venetian gondola for hire and jazz after dark Wednesdays and Thursdays in this enchanted enclave. And the Northern Italian notions from chef Anna Ellis’s kitchen are surprisingly good.

          All these ambitions (ours was a six-doily lunch) have a price: antipasti $6 to $7.50, entrées $13.50 to $22. The lunchtime crowd -- savvy New York women, Grandma and Mom with tot-on-wheels, tourists toting bulging sacks from the Metropolitan Museum -- doesn’t seem to care.

          Be warned: The Boathouse Café is relentlessly romantic, with its brightly striped umbrellas and mock greenery furring the tent poles. And on the lake, aimless male rowers, each with an adoring female, prove that twenty years of feminism has not nicked this macho ritual. Perhaps we’re hypnotized by the voluptuous languor of the late afternoon. But the seafood salad does seem nicely cooked and flavorful. Except for an excess of oil, orecchiette pasta with escarole, anchovy, and garlic is a triumph, and the steak, returned for overcooking, is a winner on the second try. Unseasoned grilled vegetables need a hit of oil and vinegar.

          Now the sun has shifted and hits full force. A busboy sent off for an umbrella disappears, but our fey and peppy waiter comes to the rescue, unfurling a canvas parasol. “I stole it.” Yes, the café does take reservations (For the gondola, too), and a trolley moves down Fifth Avenue, stopping at 90th and 72nd Streets, and back through the park from 6 PM till closing. If you live west of the park, you’re on your own.

           Buzzy O’Keefe’s waterfront fixation is a glorious gift to the city. He deserves a Purple Heart from Tiffany for the angst suffered launching his much-loved River Café under the singsong of the Williamsburg Bridge and then building The Water Club, Manhattan’s prime perch on the water. Granted, the skyline of Queens and Brooklyn from 30th Street on the East River is about a three on the ooh-and-aah meter. But it’s a joy to sip cocktails alfresco on the deck. And the big, glassed-in ivory room with its skylights and colorful signal flags offers a close-up lens on waterside drama.

           With chef Rick Moonen’s arrival two years ago, the house’s fare, once very ordinary, took on exciting sophistication. His fragrant chowders, savory risottos, and hearty roasts with homey stuffings and corn bread signaled a renaissance. So it was sad to return in early spring and find the kitchen demoralized. Had Moonen departed? Only in spirit. He’d become distracted, perhaps, opening the new Chefs Cuisiniers Club. And O’Keefe is absorbed elsewhere, too -- mothering his new Laura Belle. The $35 prix fixe was too uneven to recommend.

           On our return in June, the barge rings with the whoops of celebrating graduates. Our very good captain dashes about the room doing the work of three. And some of the old élan is back. There are daring, delightful flavors -- a Vietnamese accent in the luscious strings of vegetable that garnish silver-dollar crab cakes with avocado tartar sauce and homemade gaufrette potato chips. Smoky Andouille sausage peppers the gumbo, and shrimp with heads intact ride sesame noodles in a pesto-like sauce with cilantro.

           There are small biscuits and wimpy bread and later, popovers like linoleum, but the chicken is crackling and moist beside its apple-corn-bread-walnut stuffing, and the fine little lamb chops flank a balsamic-vinegar-touched timbale of barley and quinoa. Yet even as we polish off dense chocolate cake with frozen Sambuca-espresso parfait, cheesecake with three-fruit coulis, and lovely sour-cherry crème brûlée, I am wondering what mood the chef can be in to offer “Autumn fruit” strudel and “roast winter” salsa in June.

           “I have no excuse,” Moonen says. “None.” Doesn’t he get sick of doing the same menu forever? “I’m bored out of my mind,” he confesses. A new menu is imminent. It sits on my desk, not really changed enough to notice. Moonen is too gifted, the Water Club too special, to drown in such apathy.

          “We’d like a window seat,” quips my friend. The hostess grins -- “You’re in luck” -- and leads us to a couple of raffish industrial-steel chairs beside a shallow pool on the tree-shaded plaza outside Edward Moran. Ah, serenity and sea air. Summer fairs, outdoor boutiques, Count Basie, jugglers, barbershop quartets -- the powers of the World Financial Center are knocking themselves out to promote this secret island of sanity (except for the cool-down hours after work, when madness reigns).

          Late on a weekday after the noon-hour crush, good-looking idlers prop bare legs on the pool’s edge to catch a ray. There are pigeons, dog walkers, helicopters, an EMS ambulance, and, at the next table, a trio of elegant Frenchwomen. Even in an off-and-on-again haze, Ms. Liberty looks great. This feels like lunch in a park. Not all that cheap, not terribly expensive -- sandwiches, burgers, and entrées $8.75 to $11.75. Iced tea in tall glasses. The burger not as rare as ordered but expertly grilled with fat, insipid fries. A giant heap of thick calamari, a trifle chewy but satisfying, at $10.50 enough for two or three. Excellent grilled salmon club on good sourdough bread, Caesar on the side. Then good mud pie and rather primitive strawberry-rhubarb, and a stroll south to check out the yachts parked in the marina.

Edward Moran Bar & Grill, World Financial Center, 250 Vesey Street.

***
STEAMER'S LANDING

Steamers Landing, 1 Esplanade Plaza.

          On the second landing, we’re lured by white neon, lively music, nicely chilled air. It’s Harbour Lights, outer deck sheathed tonight but boasting a window-side vista of three jeweled bridges and the blinking lights of the FDR Drive.

          We’re not going anywhere soon; we may as well eat again. And what a surprise. There’s a chef in the kitchen with a keen sense of flavors. Swordfish au poivre is fresh, with a tingling wine sauce. Intense earthiness marks the wild-mushroom ravioli. And a peppercorn sauce with capers adds pizzazz to decent crab cakes. The tariffs here -- appetizers $7.95 to $9.95, entrées $19.95 to $25.95 -- can build a tab as quickly as those at the Liberty Café, but you’re buying more than grub. Alas, the wine list is almost an act of piracy, with no red under $30 and the cheapest white (carafe wine excluded), Dry Creek Chenin Blanc, an outrageous $27.50.

          The room empties and we sit unnoticed till a passing waitress spies our neglect and offers dessert. She returns with tragic news: “The kitchen is closed.” My friend is suicidal. Sympathetic, the waitress goes off to rouse the chef from his dinner and brings dessert, everything poised on painted streaks of chocolate -- slightly gummy cheesecake with blueberries lurking near the crust, old-fashioned rhubarb pie, and dark, intense chocolate-truffle cake.

          After midnight now, outfitted by our rescuer in giant garbage bags, we hit the pavement thinking Harbour Lights a find worth exploring again.