NY Seals

"Turecamo, Turecamo . . .hey captain, mind if I cut in front of you? We're just anchoring in Gravesend Bay. Or, you want me to wait, let you pass?"

We were in the lower harbor, directly across from Gravesend. One barge captain was talking to another, presumably outbound to inbound. The first captain wanted to know if he had time to pass in front of the incoming vessel and drop anchor. The captains worked it out - it turns out the other was heading in to the Bay Ridge anchorage, so they just altered courses to get closer to the eastern side of the channel.

Last weekend I accomplished a goal I've had for a few years now - to get out to Swinburne Island and see the seals there in winter. I do feel like I cheated a bit because I cartopped out there instead of paddling from Manhattan.

Except, wait a minute, hold on a tic - I have been out here before. Only this time, we spent more time on site, definitely saw some seals, and there was no hypoglycemia. Hurray!

I cartopped out from Inwood, along with friends from the Inwood Canoe Club in a separate car. The three of us drove down the West Side Highway, through the Brooklyn Battery Tunnel, down the BQE, and then across the big bridge at the narrows, and in short order we were at the north end of the boardwalk at the beach.

We were fortunate in the conditions for the day. Despite being the last weekend of February, the water was 40 F, air about the same, and winds were manageable at 8-10 knots from onshore. We were launching at about slack tide, and would have just a little current against us on the way back.

Our aim was Hoffman and Swinburne Islands. These are two manmade islands just off the coast of Staten Island, about a mile (two for Swinburne) south of the Verrazano Bridge and about a mile offshore, and west of the Ambrose Channel. These islands have their own fascinating history, better documented by others elsewhere, but basically were used as quarantine and military facilities until being abandoned.

Hoffman Island.

Unlike several other such islands in NYC though, they're managed by Gateway Recreation Area, a National Park that encompasses Sandy Hook, Bennet Field, and Fort Wadsworth on Staten Island. In fact, I'd gotten a good tip on where to launch from Ranger John D, whom I met last Fall at Bennet Field's welcome center when we went camping there.

Ranger John was right: those seals are hard to photograph!

A glimpse.

We paddled out, about forty minutes, over some mild waves. The wind was a bit stiffer than predicted but not unmanageable. We took in the view. Even if we didn't see seals, we saw the lower harbor, including Coney Island in the distance, a lighthouse, and Manhattan far to the north.

Eventually, I got some better shots. I had to take a pretty big risk for these. I'd put my camera in its waterproof housing at the beach, and I think they moisture captured fogged up the lens internally. At a certain point, I took my plucky little Powershot out and held it with three fingers, cupping my other hand under it, and stowing it in the Gore-Tex sleeve of my drysuit in transit. It was hair-raising, but it got better shots than if the foggy-witch of the sea had had her way.

The seals.

When we arrived, they scattered, but would show up behind each other. "There's one right behind you," we said repeatedly. In one view I counted five, and then two or three to my right. We floated along, pushed only by the wind and minimal current, and they took us in. One of them, larger than the rest, seemed to keep closer, ready to do something if we got suspicious.

We waited and watched.

The Narrows and Manhattan in background.

One our way back, a couple of them followed us. We were a good two miles out at least, and they followed us till we were just north of Hoffman Island - nearly a mile north of where we'd seen them of Swinburne. Satisfied that we weren't predators, they seemed genuinely curious about these 17-foot long creatures that swam only on the surface, with flippers in their midsection.

The seals look back.

Well, it was a bonnie day.

Sun glistening.

Of course when we landed, obligatory group photos ensued. Watch the container ship.

And maybe ignore the beachcomber !

This was a fun trip, one I hope to do again. Even in summer, sans seals, it is a fun location, with low, choppy waves, views of endless sea, and just enough nearby navigation markers to put fun exercises nearby.

Updated Charts

A couple of years ago, when I took an assessment, part of it included some basic navigation. The other candidate was asked to locate where we were on a chart, and then to identify a buoy.

He pointed at one, and the assessor shook his head. Later on though, we had a bit of fun trying to find that buoy. It wasn't on any of our charts!

The buoy is off the northwest corner of Governors Island in New York Harbor. Here is a picture from my paper chart:

The Paper.

A year or so ago I bought an app for my iPhone (iNavx, also available for OS X). This downloads maps from NOAA, and so can be more up to date.

iNavx.

There it is: Green #1.

So, the next most obvious question is, what is it doing there? It's green, so marking the right side of the channel to see - but that doesn't make sense if you've coming down the Hudson to see, because the buoy would be to your left.

My theory is, it's to keep traffic from the East River (to the right and up on the images above) farther out from the Statue Cruises at Battery, and also wide if they're coming around Battery - that area can be something of a blind corner.

I actually contacted the Coast Guard, and got the following response - more or less confirming my theory, with a little more detail. Apparently this is a newly marked path that replaces Deep Water Range - if I read my old chart correctly, that dashed line from a flashing light on one of the Brooklyn piers to Green 35, east of Ellis Island.

"Good Afternoon [Kayak Cowgirl]  Deep Water Channel LB 1 (Light List Number 27350) is the first of three buoys (1, 2 and 3) that replaced the Deep Water Range that brought deep draft vessel into and out of the East river past Dimond Reef, north of Governors Island. LB 1 ensures that outbound vessels from the East River are past and clear of Governors Island before turning south. And it does help deep draft heading into the Hudson R avoid the 30 foot curve off the Battery."

If you look closely on that old chart, in my snapshot above, you can see what they mean about the "30 foot curve off the battery". There's a faint line kinda looping south and then east to include a 29' depth mark. The old chart marked a pretty generic path through the area. The newly-placed buoy basically marks the end of that bar - if you're a deep-draft vessel, you'd definitely prefer to keep to the left of it on the way out.

So, mystery solved. Charts, and the markers and channels they document, can change over time. Be sure to check for updated information before heading out to sea!

Update: On further review with a fellow chart enthusiast, we noticed that the old path - the dashed line indicating a range - was based on a straight line between flashing read markers at the northernmost Brooklyn-side piers and Green 35 near Ellis Island. And, the new channel is almost exactly that - draw a straight line through the new Green 1 and Green 3 buoys and the new Red buoy near Dimond Reed, and it's an exact match to the old range.

However, those markers are not on the new chart - are they gone, perhaps as part of the refurbishment of that waterfront?

So little had changed for vessels heading to and and from the East River and the sea, other than how they are marked, but my original hypothesis is supported - vessels making that corner 'round the Batter will want to know where the edge of that 30' bank is.

The Original Spuyten Duyvil

Edited to Add video and a note: the "Johnson Island" cut came about decades after the original canal. 1/1/2018

A curious map turned up recently on the internet - a map that shows the original flow of Spuyten Duyvil Creek, aka the northern portion of New York City's Harlem River.

Since this is right in the Cowgirl's backyard, I thought I'd share this and try to explain what's different, as well as expound on some of the more picayune aspects of New York City history.

First, the old map. Along the left edge runs the Hudson River, and along the right edge, the Harlem (it even says, "Harlem River". The squiggly shaded bit connecting them is the original flow of the creek. Light portions below it are Manhattan, above are the Bronx.

The "Scene of the Disaster" is an artifact of the image, and beyond the scope of our needs. The image comes from an article on a rail disaster there in the late nineteenth century.

The Map.

What was done, a bit over a hundred years ago, is actually pretty simple. Follow the river with your eyes from the Hudson to the Harlem.

See that peninsula jutting down from the Bronx? That was cleaved right about at the three-way intersection, forming two tidal mudflats where the river used to be, and the cliff where the famous Columbia "C" is painted.

See how on the next, larger peninsula jutting north of Manhattan, there are two narrow inlets on either side? Well, they cut through there to connect them, and then filled in the part of the creek the flowed up north of there. This is the area known as Marble Hill, in "The Bronx" but technically part of Manhattan.

You can sort of make out Marble Hill from the following Google Earth snapshot:

Marble Hill today.

On the north side of the river, left of the bridge, that neighborhood that's sort of bounded in a circle? That's Marble Hill. Technically it's part of Manhattan and residents there serve Jury Duty in Manhattan (seriously: the judge will say "residents of Manhattan and [zip code of Marble Hill]").

And that's that. The goal was to create a shipping canal so that vessels could go from the Hudson to Long Island Sound without the trouble of heading around the Battery.

And that, as they say, is that. It's a good bet that the Cowgirl and friends could have taken the old route down to Hell Gate and back, and it might have been more interesting. All the same, we're happy for the modern route. After all, how else would we get to practice dodging Circle Line and Classic Harbor Line vessels?

Update January 2018
A couple of years after I wrote this post, a member of my club found the following video, which does a much better job of describing where and how they cuts were made. It turns out that where the Columbia "C" is came much later than the original project. The video also describes the early challenges of the creek and later canal in much more detail.

The Pelham Islands

A couple of weeks ago I was joined by a couple of friends for a nice paddle in one of the farther reaches of New York City: the Pelham Islands.

What the heck are the Pelham Islands?

These are a set of rocky, irregularly shaped dots of land stretching from City Island in the Bronx towards New Rochelle, NY. These lie past the Throgs Neck bridge, open to Long Island Sound. There's tons of history here. They're all worth reading up on. I'm only going to offer some highlights here.

I was joined by AA (in the green Delphin) and MM (in the yellow Avocet). AA and I keep our boats in the same clubhouse, so we met there and cartopped up to Pelham Bay Park, where we launched near the northwest corner of the parking lot into sheltered water. The weather was predicted to be a slight breeze and a gloomy, overcast day. It started out nice and got to be less so.

We saw swans - big, huge, beautiful swans.

And came out around Hog Island, right around where these floating houses were.

None of us had paddled here before, so this was a good orienteering exercise. After we came out into full view of the Sound, we headed up and around Davids Island. For the first couple of centuries of non-Native American use, the island was a getaway for mainlanders, but during the Civil War became a military hospital, later made into a defensive fort; as late as the 1960s it was home to Nike defense missiles, much like Sandy Hook. Somewhere there is a themed paddling excursion from Davids Island to Sandy Hook, methinks.

As we came round Davids, we headed out a bit to round Huckleberry Island, a much smaller island that is owned by a boating club. There's an old saw that Captain Kidd buried treasure there. In less fanciful circles, it's regarded as a major bird sanctuary.

We tried a little rock-hopping, but there wasn't much tidal current to play with.

Plenty of mussels - and a clear distinction of which parts the birds had a hard time getting at !

Far in the distance, we could make out Manhattan. If you zoom and squint, you can make out the Empire State Building.

The club that owns the island also has a gazebo on it. Pity they're not into letting random paddlers camp there.

Onwards we went. Our next sight was Columbia Island. Formerly home to a broadcast tower, complete with living and workspace for a husband-and-wife broadcast team, the tower's since been knocked down and replaced with solar panels by the present owner. It's a pity. Towers are cool. Why wouldn't you put panels up on the tower? It's a rhetorical question, science friends.

It took us a while to figure out this long, lonely island was Pea Island.

After these was the island with perhaps the most ominous backstory: Hart Island.

Hart Island has been variously employed as a prison, a workhouse, and currently as NYC's potter's field. The work is done by prisoners from Rikers Island. Otherwise, access is limited to the family of those who are buried there and by special appointment. In the past few years, there's been considerable movement on multiple fronts to open the island up, both to family and friends who may have a loved one there, as well as to the public as a park and important part of New York City's past.

Thing was, not everyone in my group knew its history as we paddled past. The weather was gloomy. We saw white stones laid out in a cross pattern on a hillock. The chimney of the old power plant (or crematorium) stood out in the middle.

"This place is creepy," said MM, after we'd paddled nearly half a mile in silence.

At the southern tip of the island was a marker, "Marker 46", which we'd identified earlier on the chart in our pre-float briefing.

We took a little rest, and noted that the current was still flowing northwards considerably - a flood tide from the city.

We were about halfway through our plan. Little did we know how weird things would get - weirder than paddling past a graveyard of unclaimed dead.

As we paddled north up the channel between City Island and Hart Island, we spotted some figures walking on a large pile of rocks, which turned out to be Rat Island. Rat Island is the only privately owned island in New York City, purchased a few years ago by someone, apparently a Swiss man.

On Rat Island was a news crew from Switzerland shooting some sort of interview of the man. We talked with his friends while they wrapped up. They were impressed we we out paddling, and invited us to land on the beach in front of their house, just across the water. It wasn't clear which house was theirs, but we aimed in the general direction.

As we approached, we saw flickers of water splashing, and little heads . . .and big orange floats. There was some kind of SCUBA class going here, in 54F water.

We landed at the beach and walked up to talk to the guys on shore running the SCUBA class. There was Mike, and "Uncle Vinnie", and a couple of other guys. Mike was a former NYPD diver who, after the tragedy of 9/11, had moved out of New York City for a more peaceful life . . .in Newtown, CT. These kids were in the Boy Scout troop there, and he'd talked to an old diving buddy with a shop in the Bronx and put together the class.

They had a pit fire going on the beach, and a hot water kettle for hot chocolate. They shared their hospitality and it was most welcome. We weren't cold but we weren't warm either. A couple of hours in cool, gloomy air had taken its toll.

After eating a small lunch and warming up at the fire, we said our farewells and headed back. MM took a couple of rolls using her Greenland paddle, partly to practice rolling in a drysuit. Onwards we went.

The tide was much lower now and I checked out a couple of passages that were closed now.

We saw those swans - and a bunch of juveniles. They perked up at our approach, slightly territorial. Darn Rock-Roll music! Bunch of punks.

I blame the parents. Kidding!

At the end of the day, once we'd packed up and got into dry clothes, the puffy gray sky suddenly lit up, like a light switch. As far as we could tell, the sun had finally dropped below the cloud layer, and now instead of being blocked it was reflected all over the city. A fierce orange glow overtook us. 

I have to say, this cowgirl is of an age when glowing orange clouds were the stuff of atomic nightmares, but all the same, it sure was pretty, and a great way to end the day.