Rockaway Point

Wow. It's been weeks since I posted last, though I know I've paddled since. I was so taken aback that I went through my calendar, weekend by weekend. It did this that weekend and that on this other weekend, and sure enough, except for a short trip out to enjoy my new boat (the Pace 18), I really haven't gotten out. I took a class in early May, and that was nice, but for weeks afterwards, weather kept me off.

Well, I made up for it this past weekend.

For Memorial Day weekend, I reserved camping at Bennet Field. This is my third time camping out here. In fact, I was here last year as well. Just like last year, the nearby Sebago Canoe Club held their season opener, including some interclub racing that I participated in (3rd, 2nd, and 3rd place BTW, in 100m, 400m, 800m sprints).

Also just like last year, on the Sunday after, DR and I set out for some surfing - only this time on schedule, and to great reward.

We set off from the old sea plan ramp, paddling south as military helicopters took off and set out for Manhattan. It was Fleet Week, after all.

Hangar B.

Helicopter taking off.

Helicopter flying away.

Our paddle out was mostly uneventful. We had more and more current as we went along, and while the day was partly cloudy, visibility was good. We avoided some pleasureboats, mostly setting out to go fishing, as we went under the Marine Parkway-Gil Hodges Bridge. We crossed south to the Rockaway side, then continued westward past varied beaches, mooring yards, and piers.

DR taking in the view.

Looking North.

Passing R10.

Our basic plan was to paddle out to the end of Rockaway Peninsula. We'd gotten some tips from the Commodore of the Sebago Canoe Club. West of the shipping channel was a very shallow area the broke incoming swell and, in some parts, formed a little island at low tide. We would come to call that place "Bird Island", because when we got out there, it was little more than a bald beach in the middle of the water, with various gulls on it.

To find it, we'd looked at a chart and seen it was just southwest from a range formed by the G7 and R6 buoys. So, we'd paddle out to those buoys, then cross the channel. The current would be ebbing, growing in strength at that, so to avoid getting taken out to see, we kept in from the channel.

However, as we paddled along we saw R10 (pictured above), then R8, and then . . .the end of the line. No more buoys, just the day marker mounted on the end of the jetty, the very southernmost tip of Rockaway Point.

Hmmm. Well, there were some big waves coming in, so yours truly paddled out to see what they were like. In hindsight this was probably unwise. The waves were tall and short-period, too short to surf properly. I ended up cruising in towards the rocks of the jetty, which was part of my plan: paddle the weaker current back up. The tidal current was ebbing, which meant that in the even of something going awry, I'd be carried out to sea, and more importantly, into the swell that wasn't already being broken by the jetty.

Also a larger sport-fishing boat came over and positioned itself at the end of the jetty. Fishermen love to get where fast current is whipping fish by like on a conveyor belt.

In any event, I completed my survey without misadventure, and came to the conclusion that we'd be better off finding our originally planned surf zone.

We landed for lunch on a pocket beach and orientated ourselves on the chart. We could see our quarry. It just wasn't near any of the buoys we'd planned for.

Here is a snip of the chart downloaded from NOAA May 31, 2017. The red X is approximately where I noodled in the big water, and the blue box is our approximate Area of Operation for the remainder of our surfing. Squint and you'll see that the last red buoy is R8, not R6, as indicated on my Maptech chart.

We landed at a beach not far north from the jetty, so our closest referents were the day marker on the jetty and G5. Based on landmarks to the north, we fixed out position and checked it once we launched, by paddling up to R8.

Location and theory confirmed, we set out to enjoy the surf.

Approaching "Bird Island".

As you can see, there is no island charted, but it does get quite shallow, and there is a spot that comes above the surface at low tide. It's bigger than the chart would have you believe, and forms a broad eddy, particularly on the western side. We found it very easy to surf in, ride the eddy up the western side, come around, and then paddle with current down the eastern side.

For that matter, in the surf zone, the current was weak enough that it was easy enough to turn around and paddle back into the surf, then ride it in.

For the birds.

Coney Island in the distance.

We surfed, and surfed, and surfed and surfed. Farther out there were bigger waves, closer in, smaller waves. We had set out near the end of the peak ebb, so the waters calmed as the afternoon wore on.

One phenomenon that we both experienced, no matter what we did to edge or trim, was that we'd get continually cocked to the right while riding a way. In some spots, there were clearly two wave systems intersecting, and one would take you off the other. At one point, it seemed like I was getting weathercocked, as the wind picked up. We tried trimming forward, backwards, edging left and right. Mostly we were just able to manage coming off the wave early and circling back to try again.

As the water got more shallow, I began to feel its effects. Even on the smaller waves, I found my boat starting to plow into the sand. We started experiencing breaking waves - not huge pounders, they were still 1-2 feet, but breaking nonetheless. It was one of these that finally put me off balance into a capsize - in about two feet of water.

I tried my roll, a couple of times at least. I even stopped to try figuring out if I was coming up on the correct side of the wave - pretty sure I was. But, by the third attempt. I realized I was reaching over the top and not getting the support I needed, and my shoulder was dragging on the sand, so I exited, and there I was, standing on a sand bank in the surf off Rockaway Point.

A couple of thoughts went through my head, while I held on to my boat, keeping it downstream of me. First was, I know in whitewater we're not supposed to stand up - but while the waves were relentless, they weren't worse than any shore surf I've stood in. Second was, should I self-rescue? But in my estimated I thought it was a good opportunity to try an assisted rescue in bouncy water.

DR didn't think so. He was worried about bumping into me - and in hindsight, that wasn't an unrealistic concern. He also comes from a whitewater background, where the better play is usually to let the casualty wash out down stream - although in these conditions, neither of us was sure if "downstream" meant the bird island or the lower harbor.

Instead, what I did was swim my boat out of the surf zone, and form there we did a conventional assisted rescue.

Problem solved, we surfed another forty minutes or so, basically running out the clock until the tide was a bit further past slack. We'd ride the flood in to Jamaica Bay - the opposite of our ride out.

Taking a break on bird island.

Cruise ships and more, in the distant Ambrose Channel.

Far in the distance, we could see ships coming in and heading out along the Ambrose Channel. We could even make out West Bank light and Romer light, two of the lighthouses that mark the treacherous shoals of the lower harbor.

Our route back was more than a bit of work. The predicted F3-F4 winds were on the higher end of that scale, primarily headwinds as we paddled towards the bridge and under, and then as crosswinds while we paddled north. Fortunately the tidal currents improved in our favor, so as we might have been paddling slower, the currents made up for it.

The wind also chilled us a bit. We'd felt a bit overdressed in various layers of neoprene earlier in the morning, but were glad to have multiple layers now, as well as paddling jackets. Once we landed, DR got to break in my fancy Kokatat storm cag; he reports it was very warm and kept him comfortable while we packed up kit and boats. I was wearing my Reed Chillcheater dry cag, and once onshore had some rain paints on to keep the wind off.

Overall it was quite a fun day. I've been meaning to check out this surf spot for a while, and I learned a lot very quickly. I think in the future I'd time it differently, and it's certainly not an environment for beginners, or even improvers who do not have surf experienced. Like most of NYC, there is a bit of traffic to manage. It's also a bit of a schlep to get to. All that being said, it is a fun place to play, and I hope to go back.

Sandy Hook Launch

MM is a friend of mine who lives in Monmouth County, basically the stretch of land from the I-95 corridor over to Sandy Hook. She's outdoorsy and athletic, into things like winter camping and biking and climbing and hiking. She's also a surfer, in the board sense, so while we met in a kayaking instructional class, she's always talked up how we should try some surf sometime.

So, last Monday, I drove all the way down to Sandy Hook and met her in one of the parking lots on the ocean side, to survey the scene. Sandy Hook is a long spit pointing almost straight up towards the NYC harbor; it receives a lot of swell on the ocean side, and has a protected bay side, albeit with a lot of fetch. It's a short walk from one side of the hook to the other, so paddlers have their choice: ocean side or bay side.

I've launched from the bay side before. I've heard of people launching on the ocean side, but it's challenging. First of all, along most of the short, the water level rises quite sharply; you can even see this standing on the bank, where a gentle slope of dry sand abruptly dives into the water. The waves are therefore a bit dumpy, and hard to get into the water at all, let alone paddle against.

On this particular day, the other challenge was a steady F4 wind lingering from the previous day, pushing with swell, to create some short period waves (5.2, 5.4 seconds) with wave height of three to four feet. Put this together with the dumpy characteristics, and what we saw was constant rollers cascading just past the shoreline, washing up, and then falling out to be recirculated by the next wave.

MM knew a spot near a jetty though. Also, the shore extended out a bit, so the break was farther away, and while we were still watching foamy hills come up to the shore, it wasn't quite as intimidating.

Here, take a look for yourself.

We decided that the surf zone was, at best, going to be more work that it was worth: it was short, and there wasn't a lot of runway to come off a wave before landing, and coming out again would be a lot work, even assuming no out-of-boat experiences. So, we decided to "circumnavigate" the Hook to the bayside, what MM and her local buddies call a "reverse hooker".

As we proceeded north-ish, we took steady wind abeam, along with swells. You can get a good idea of wave height at about the 2:10 mark in the video above. Generally 3-4 feet, with occasional 5. There were moments when we couldn't see each other, so we kept close.

As we came around the hook, we paddled over a large bank known as the False Hook. As the tide was flooding in, there wasn't as much action there as we hoped, but we had some current and small swell as we paddled past the channel marker.

The entire day was sunny and brilliant, and we could see for miles: ships coming in from sea; the skylines of Manhattan and Jersey City; Romer Light, just two miles away, even the bridge connecting the Rockaways to the rest of Queens.

The bayside had much flatter water, though by no means still. We paddle along the now-familiar shore, past Horseshoe Cove, landing at a small beach that was literally across the street from where we parked. We washed up and had lunch, and that was our day.

Sandy Hook is an interesting place to paddle. It's far to get to, and once there, specific features can be a ways off from paddling. All the same, it's proving to be a good place to go to work in conditions that are hard to find in NYC.

Safety Patrol

So I embark herein on a somber post, one I've been ambivalent about: what can go wrong on the water.

Nothing terrible's happened on any trip I've been on, but a number of local headlines have brought the subject up. Recent back in July, at least.

For the good and the bad, all you have to do is subscribe to the US Coast Guard Twitter feeds. For example, this one from mid-March, near the Tappan Zee Bridge. The water was still very cold, and anyone unprepared was not going to fare well.

More recently, a paddleboarder disappeared off the coast of New York. Although it's worth pointing out that,  in some cases, people are found.

Even non-kayaking events give one pause. Sometimes planes crash on the Hudson. They don't always end this well. Recently a WW2 fighter-bomber crashed while preparing for showing off Memorial Day weekend.

So what's a paddler to do? When these events cluster together, it's hard not to think that this is a dangerous sport, and one should be careful at all times. Flat water, perfect weather, always file a float plan, never far from shore.

But, that's kinda boring.

It's easy to look at most of these stories and observe, "there were inexperienced, or poorly equipped, or poorly trained people who had no business being in those conditions at that time." Then you read something like this.

A trained and registered guide, with two clients, caught off guard by a strongly-winded storm, capsized in cold water, and two of three dead.

There's probably more local knowledge that I can't glean over the internet. The point is, it's not always the misguided idiots on a lark who suffer catastrophe.

It'd be too easy to wrap up with the familiar caveats: always check the weather, always go out in a capable group, have multiple means of summoning assistance. A proper trip, even a simple one, involves contingency plans that mimic disaster recovery plans; the most audacious expeditions have redundancy approaching the Apollo program in depth.

It can happen anytime. A medical emergency, a badly placed log that hits your head when you capsize while reaching for some snacks in your day hatch. Or maybe you just forgot that one thing, that one step, that makes a difference.

It's pointless to live in fear; it is the human condition. We can only take steps to address it.

A House of Surf and Fog

Over Memorial Day Weekend - nearly a month ago - I managed to do some camping out at Floyd Bennet Field. You may recall I camped out here with some friends last fall, and was back with most of them again. The difference was, we base-camped instead of kayak camping. We drove our cars and boats out, but only kept the one camp, rather than packing it all in for Staten Island.

Partly this was practical. I was organizing an event at the nearby Sebago Canoe Club that Saturday, so packing up to go and come back was going to eat up time I'd spend enjoying the area. The area, of course was Jamaica Bay. I'll write about the event itself later; here's what we did on our big paddle day.

We all wanted to try some surf, and there's brilliant surf at Rockaway and Breezy Points, where the open ocean first touches New York City. To get there we'd have to paddle about three or four miles, and as it happened we were a bit lazy in the morning, and so paddled against some tide on the way out.

Preparing to depart.

Passing along the old airfield.

Striking a pose.

After paddling out past the bay bridge that connects the Rockaways to Brooklyn, we made a brief stop for lunch on a beach before heading out to Rockaway Point. Breezy was a bit further, and we were already seeing nice wind waves pushed by an easterly breeze.

Testing the waters.

Trying to get a speedy start.

It took us a while to sort the waves. Primarily wind-blown, tide on current, they struck the beach at a very shallow angle. The result was, we had to paddle out pretty far just to catch them, and rather than surf evenly in to the beach, we'd just find ourselves on an elongated taper, coming off with a low brace and repositioning to head back out.

Waiting.

Keeping position.

Bad form!

Most of the waves were like this

After a while, we were tired, and the waves were getting less pronounced as the tide rose.  We took a few more runs and decided to head in.

Here is where the trip got interesting. We could make out a thick hazing drifting in from the west, and closer and faster, we could make out a low fog drifting northwards from the sea over the Rockaways. it looked more like smoke from two forest fires, but was fog, possibly an inversion layer.

In a matter of minutes we could tell that the entire outlet was about to be enshrouded in fog - and we had about a mile to cross at the bay and a mile to the bridge, before heading in to Jamaica Bay proper. We'd seen a large barge and some party vessels about. We decided to cross the bay earlier than planned, at about its widest point.

This turned out to be a wise course of action. As we crossed, we had to wait and radio our intentions to two party boats out of Sheepshead Bay, and by the time we were all the way across, the fog had dropped visibility to under a mile. We couldn't see the bridge, nor the far shore, but both were maybe a twenty minute paddle away.

We crossed one last marina mouth at its narrowest point, having seen a number of pleasure boats scurry in (and out, oddly). We were soon under the bridge, and handrailing close to the shore, until we could make out the old hangar and radomes.

It was an odd paddle, an eerie one in a way. The fog happened so fast, and was so thick. I've been in fog before but it's usually much more gradual, and a phenomenon of cool weather. We'd been in the low 80s F, wearing jackets only because of the breeze. It was muggy as we paddled back, and what photos I've got here of the fog are from when it was lightening. It was thick as soup before!

A good one for the Cowgirl's final send-off, should it occur.

The fog was a harbinger of bad weather to come; we ultimately called out weekend short and went out for dinner at a lobster shack on the way home. Jamaica Bay is lovely, and I hope to paddle there again, under more fair weather conditions.

Florida

The past couple of years I've managed to get away to Florida. Mostly this is to get away from the cold in New York, and to practice my other expensive hobby: scuba diving. I came down this weekend with a friend and, for the first time, paddled a proper sea kayak in Florida.



I've been staying at a small place in Key Largo. About a block away is a kayak shop that rents deck boats (sea kayaks). On the map above, we're about halfway down the lower right reverse "C" that runs along the highway. I rented a boat, once with a friend and once on my own, to paddle east a bit across Blackwater Sound, then south through the first channel into the mangroves and into Tarpon Bay.

Both days there were steady winds, in the 15-20 mph range. This created a lot of wind waves on the sound itself, which while fun to play in were more than a little work. Once in the mangrove channel however, we were sheltered a bit from the wind, and had to content only with passing motorboats  and the fishermen they carried.

What we weren't protected from were critters. My friend SS saw something, probably a manatee, that startled the bezeezus out of her. We later took a turn into some more narrow mangrove channels and saw some ginormous pelicans. Our biggest start came from a cormorant emerging from below the water, silhouetted against the bright open background like the Loch Ness Monster. We then took a look at the wind effect on Tarpon Basin and decided to turn around, catching some current back and saving our energy to fight the wind.

The next day, after she had left and one of my diving trips had been cancelled, I went out again, on my own. This time, rather than stay near the shore, I paddled out into the sound, taking wind and 1 foot waves abeam and practicing landmark navigation. At sea, without well defined landmarks, the shore blends together into a single depth of field - what looks like a long unbroken line may turn out to be a point or headland jutting out a mile or two in front of a more distant shore. Using my chart, compass, and starting point as references, I decided a course to take me to a point that lined up with the channel, and that worked out well. I took following seas into the channel.

This time, I took a different route than I had with SS, following the markers for bigger boats as far as I could. I considered going in to the next basin - Little Buttonwood - but the wind had picked up and I wasn't sure how much it would slow me on the return. I took a stab navigating back through the mangroves, but after about my third major turn, I was no longer sure I wasn't in a dead end, and I backed out and returned the way I came.

Back out on the sound, the wind was stronger than when I left it coming mostly from the NNW. I thought that might push me against the southern shore of the sound, so I opted to essentially ferry against the wind. I picked a radio tower in the distance a bit north of what I thought was my destination, and paddled towards it, keeping the wind at about a 30 degree angle to port. In this manner I found the wind slowly blew me towards the eastern shore as I paddled north. As I got closer I realized my destination was not quite as far up as I'd thought, and I paddled due east the last half mile or so.

After that, I practiced skills: braces, edging, rolling, hanging draws. I put on quite a show for the locals at waterfront bars to either side of the shop. The water here is much saltier than the Hudson. After that, I hopped out, talked shop with the local staff, and went on home to clean up for dinner.

I would love to come down here and paddle a proper journey at sea. Perhaps one day I will.