Easter at the Brothers

For Fire Island to Sandy Hook . . .Winds 18 to 20 miles per hour from the South-Southwest, gusting to 30. A small craft advisory will be in effect from Eleven AM till late this evening.

I was listening to the synoptic on Easter Sunday, undecided if I wanted good news or bad news. It was a beautiful day, predicted to get cloudy and windy in the afternoon.

My plan was to paddle out to the Brothers, a pair of small islands just north of Hell Gate, west of Rikers Island and northeast of Randalls Island.

What I figured was, the hardest parts would be the transit from the Bronx Kill to the Brothers and back, and the last mile or so on the Harlem and Hudson. The westerly winds we get here have a lot of fetch on the Hudson, and at the entrance to the Harlem the heights on both sides form a giant wind tunnel reaching back to the Broadway Bridge.

I dressed for warmth - and second-guessed myself the first hour or so as I paddled in light wind and brilliant sunshine. I debated stopping ad taking off my wool sweater, but the winds started to pick up and with the breeze, I was no longer heating up.

Paddling down the Harlem was uneventful. An NYPD boat passed me twice, once up and once down, and a Classic Harbor and later a Circle Line boat passed by. I radioed the Circle Line - our courses were such that right after we saw each other, a bridge tower obscured us from each other's vision and I could tell he slowed down to avoid me. I let him know I was well out of the way.

These early spring paddles are always tough. For one thing. I haven't been out this long, and such a steady pace, in months, and the conditions are relatively rough. Spring roars in on the back of stiff breezes, and the water is still cold enough that you don't want to spend any time in it.

In time, I came to the NYPD marina at Randalls Island, took a left into the Bronx Kill, and made some observations.

First of all, at Battery High +2 hours, the current in the kill was flowing west - that is, against me. Not super strong, but useful to know for future trip planning. I took some photos but they did not come out well. There's a little baby overfall that indicates quite clearly the direction of flow. It was clearly not in my favor.

I paddled against it until I was through the kill, and took in the water. I love this view: The upper East River opens up in a way completely different than Manhattan waters short of the harbor. Once nosed out to the edge of the channel, you can see the towers of Manhattan, factories in the Bronx, offices in Queens, the Bronx-Whitestone Bridge and Laguardia Airport, all at once. If you wanted to paint a picture of a city, this would be everything.

The Brother Islands are storied in New York City History. Both are now bird sanctuaries controlled by NYC Parks, and landing at either is forbidden. I've paddled this way before, in a group and in warmer times, when I was less experienced. It's a fun trip.

I paddled out towards the channel between the Brothers, and once over, took a peek at South Brother. This is the "lesser" of the two, smaller and never used as much by humans - a former owner of the Yankees built a summer home there over a century ago, but it burned down. Decades later, some other industrialist bought it but never made much of it, and it came under NYC control nearly a decade ago.

South Brother Island.

I always paddle past South Brother Island but never really take time to look at it. It's only a few acres, not much more than the plot of land my grandparents retired on in the country. It's more bucolis - a couple of big spindly trees, some marsh, a pebbly beach. I saw some gulls perched on rocks, getting ready to launch much as the planes at Laguardia were: facing into the wind.

Approaching North Brother Island.

I started paddling over to North Brother. North Brother Island is, in my opinion, the island with the most tragic history. In the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries it served as a quarantine hospital, ad in fact is where Typhoid Mary was taken, not once but twice, the second time after she violated the conditions of her release. She was kept there until she died. North Brother is also where the General Slocum ran aground, the most deadly civilian maritime disaster until the Titanic sank just a few years later - hundreds of mostly women and children drowned or were consumed by flames and smoke as the Slocum, on fire, barreled through Hell Gate full of German immigrants out for a picnic. It's said the disaster on the Slocum so devastated the community that many relocated from the Lower East Side to the Upper East Side, which kinda explains a decent German BierHalle in the area.

The Old Ferry Dock at North Brother Island.

North Brother had extensive plant facilities: power, water, electric. They even had their own crematorium. By the 1960s, the facility was used to dry out and treat indigent drug addicts, and eventually the facility was shut down, probably due to the massive near-bankruptcy the city experienced in the early 1970s.

As I paddled, I noticed an NYPD boat slowing and tailing me. There was no attempt to hail, and even after I pointed at my radio and tried calling, there was not response. I paddled over. Turns out they only listened to channel 17, not 16 as the Coast Guard do, or 13, which is what I rely on to hear bridge-to-bridge.

I told them my plans and they advised me not to land. Landing was not in my plans. I was just paddling around the island taking photos. I continued on, working my way clockwise.

A Glimpse of the Old Hospital.

I was in a bit of a hurry though. I was getting hungry and wanted to land for lunch, and also, was running a bit behind schedule. I was worried about missing the tide, and also aware that the longer I was out, the more likely I'd run into bad weather.

My original plan was to paddle down to Little Hell Gate park, where there is a nice area to get out and eat, but that would have taken me a mile out of my way roundtrip, against current. I considered going through Hell Gate but decided no on my own, with the gusts expected.

This was wise, because crossing the half mile or so back from the Brothers into the Kill was pretty challenging. I took a transit based on buildings in the background, but was quickly blown off a couple hundred yards by wind abeam. I figured I'd just cross the channel - a shipping channel mind you - and make up the distance once across, and that plan mostly worked, but it was a lot of distance to make up, against a steady headwind that gusted into something stiff from time to time.

I figured I'd find a place for lunch in the kill. I did, but after one clumsy bit of exploration. The first rock I tried to climb out on turned out to not be entirely fastened to the earth, and I ker-plunked right into the water. I stood up, straddled my boat, and got back in, then looked for a better spot, eventually deciding on a sandy patch on the north edge of the kill, just before exiting into the Harlem.

The Harlem was like an express ride, lots of current in my favor. This was good, because even after resting for lunch, I was still pretty tuckered from that crossing. Also in my favor was that those gusts were now tail winds, and until I reached the first major bend in the river, I felt myself blown along a couple of times. So I paddled easy, and pretty soon found myself nearing Peter Sharp Boathouse and the final bend in the river.

Here was the final challenge, part one. What I figured would be the hardest part was certainly borne out. From about the Broadway Bridge, it's almost a straight shot to the Hudson, which means for any westerly wind, there's a barrel of air blasting at you. I've seen the water pebble before, and it wasn't this time, so I can say I've seen worse. I had the current with me and that helped, but it was still a slow and steady pace until I reached the railroad bridge - at which point I really had to crank it to get past the wind on current waves driving in from the Hudson.

Then came part two of this final challenge. Now on the Hudson, I had no protection from these southwesterly winds coming abeam and sometimes quartering angles. I have no shame in admitting I used my skeg, and kept away from the shore as best I could with the wind pushing me towards it. I've paddled in worse but this is in my top five, maybe top ten challenging conditions. It wasn't dangerous it was just hard: keep paddling, fight the wind, just another mile, and we're home.

And, bam, I was back at the boathouse. Exhausted for sure, but after a little break, I unpacked my boat and cleaned up.

Most of my layers were wet with sweat. I'd eaten all my vittles and finished my hot tea to warm up. As soon as I finished putting things away, the wind seemed to relax just a little and the clouds started to wander off, and I could see sun soaring over the west.

It was a beautiful day after all. It was just one I had to really work for.

Sunrise to Throgs Neck

Four. 4 AM. 0400. Four o'clock in the morning. I set my alarm for this, on a weekend, because I managed to convince a couple of friends that a sunrise paddle to the Throgs Neck bridge would be fun.

It's a trip I've made before. I made sure to apply the lessons learned from that trip. We'd take nearly four hours to paddle out, have a one hour layover, and paddle back.

The thing was, to get there we'd have to leave at 0545. At that, we didn't get going till 0600, making our way in short order up the Hudson, through Spuyten Duyvil, and then down the Harlem.

The morning sky.

The Hamilton, Washington, and High bridges.

High bridge has the scaffolding off!

We took a little jaunt through my favorite new shortcut: the Bronx kill, along the north edge of Randalls Island.

Moving right along.

We don't have caves for NYC paddling, but we do have overpasses.

Under the rail and pedestrian overpasses.

And now the upper East River.

I've started using the appellation, "Upper" East River to distinguish between the East River that runs alongside Manhattan and the East River that separates Queens from the Bronx; these are connected by Hell Gate. For most NYC paddlers, the East River is just a little stretch to pass through on a circumnavigation, or perhaps a path to Hell Gate or the upper harbor.

In our case we were heading out past the Brother islands, Rikers Island, Laguardia airport, the Bronx-Whitestone Bridge, and ending at the SUNY Maritime college next to the Throgs Neck bridge.

The upper East River is a great place to teach chart navigation. For one thing, there's a great deal of variety in charted objects, from landmarks to channel markers, making it easy to triangulate position and practice orientation. For another, the current is generally mild but noticeable, and there is enough enough fetch that it's easy to demonstrate a ferry crossing. I didn't teach a proper class but I did show my paddlemates how to figure out where we were and where we were going.

The weather had been predicted to be cloudy and overcast, improving with the day. We had winds 6-10 mph out of the ENE, giving us a decent headwind and waves to paddle over on the outbound trip.

At one point in our journey I overheard a Coast Guard cutter repeatedly hailing an outbound power vessel, and later something about letting an NYPD boa out of Flushing handle something. I realized we were very close to part of Laguardia Airport and had just skirted the shore of Rikers Island, NYC's main prison facility. I hailed them.

"This is kayak three,  we just want to make sure we're not the cause of any trouble out here."

"No, ah, kayak three, we're not aware of any local law enforcement activity in your area. Just be sure to observe charted security zones and shipping regulations."

Or, something to that effect.

The skies improve.

Along the way, we spotted what seemed to be part of a submarine being towed out towards Long Island Sound. Which prompted the questions: who buys these things? How are they assembled?

Sub Assembly Required.

As we approached the Throgs Neck, we could make out a vessel I didn't see last time - the Empire State, the training vessel for SUNY Maritime College. It was moored next to the college, right next to the bridge. We crossed, and paddled alongside her.

Approaching the Throgs Neck.

The Empire State.

There is a small beach between the bridge and an old art deco building on campus. There we saw the remains of some wildlife - or maybe living wildlife in the case of the turtle.

Horseshoe Crab.

Turtle.

It turns out it was cadet induction day (or something like that). We saw quite a few of them marching up to what amounts to their parade ground, where they would salute the colors and then move on to wherever they were directed next.

This is where we stopped for lunch - well, second breakfast. We took a brief peek in the fort, but mostly sat watching the water, and or boats and the gently receding tide. Fishermen in small recreational craft drifted by.

Cadets on parade.

We only had about an hour. I was very specific about this, since the last time I made this trip, my friend and I got caught out behind some very strong current in the last mile of the Harlem river. I budgeted two hours each for the East River and Harlem river legs of the trip - a little generous for this group, but also allowing for conditions, gabbing, and gear dickering.

As I explained to the group, our departure was driven not by conditions where we were, but by where we would be near the end. We needed to be exiting the Harlem by one hour after low tide at Battery, or the end of our journey would be a bit of a challenge.

The time came to leave, and we set out under the bridge, returning along the north, or Bronx, side of the river. The wind died down pretty quickly, and it even got a bit sunny and warm, so we just had to paddle. We made good time, and took a short detour to peek at the mouth of the Bronx river, the only freshwater river in New York City.

The Way Home.

We went 'round the Brothers, veering to North Brother and then crossing the channel again to the Bronx side. Once back in the kill, the boys took a short break, and then we continued on.

Back in the Bronx Kill.

The Harlem was uneventful, remarkable only in that we were passed by no commercial traffic - just a couple of jetskis, and recreational craft, remarkably polite craft at that - they all cut their engines to produce no wake. We waved a a small crowd of people hanging out from a large housing complex. The shouted "ole!" as we passed by.

Our timing worked out well, we managed to be half an hour ahead of schedule, which is better than being half an hour behind. By the time we passed the Broadway bridge, we were content to drift, paddle a bit, drift, and so on. Once on the Hudson, I took a little roll, mostly to cool off, but also to practice and give myself a little victory move before we went in.

I ought to mention that I tried out a new bit of kit, some paddling clothes I picked up at the shop. I got a short sleeve top and a pair of shorts, and both are basically an inner lining of a warm, quick-dry material, and a waterproof/windproof outer material. I wore it bc I expected the wind to bite a bit more, and wanted something that could block the wind when I was out of my boat.

I'm happy to say this stuff was warm and I was downright toasty on the Harlem legs of the paddle; I appreciated it on the East River legs, when my buddies were pulling out their jackets. There's a dry cag on sale from the same manufacturer, and I think I may get it as an interim step between my paddling jacket and drysuit.

All in all this was a good trip, and an improvement on how I did it last time. It's not a hard trip but the distance make it something for experienced paddlers. I'm working up some variations - going deep into Flushing Bay, or landing at nearer shores. It's nice to know my understanding of tides isn't totally off.

Hours later, after we're off the water and all our boats and gear have been washed and put away, I was walking to the subway station past a bunch of restaurants serving brunch. I scanned the skies, reading the clouds as I had so much earlier in the morning, as if I were still at sea.

I'll look forward to the next!

The Penultimate Mile

Sometimes, it isn't the last mile, but the mile before last, that is most challenging.

On Saturday I paddled with my good friend and fellow Inwood Canoe Club member AW from Inwood to the Throgs Neck Bridge. It's a trip we'd planned for two weeks earlier, but AW and other company were unable to make it, so we postponed until the 14th and move the departure time up by about an hour. Other company were still unavailable, so it was just the two of us.

Ideally we would have left at 0745, but left at 0815. For the ride out, this wasn't a huge deal- if anything we would cut our trip short. Ultimately we did not have to, as we were able to make up the time.

Paddling North on the Hudson.

It was a sunny but cool morning as we glided down the Harlem.

Paddling past Washington, Hamilton, and High Bridges.

We took a shortcut through Bronx Kill, a narrow creek - technically a tide race - to avoid going around Randalls Island. The kill is underutilized by most NYC kayakers - they're either going past Randalls entirely, or going the Hell Gate. No one seems to come from the north.

Paddling Bronx Kill.

In short order, we were staring at the Upper East River - the part of the river between Queens and the Bronx, home to Rikers Island, Flushing Bay, and further out, the Bronx-Whitestone and Throgs Neck bridges.

A White Heron at Randalls Island.

Paddling out was fairly straightforward. We used a chart to keep track of our location, finding waypoints on the chart and matching them to fixed objects we could see. A succession of barges headed out, along with a few small pleasurecraft. At one point a sailboat gave us confusing signals; her captain later radioed, "sorry".

Behold, the East River, Bronx-Whitestone in the distance.

Past the Bronx-Whitestone, we saw some large, expensive houses on the Queens shore. One even had bot a boat garage with ramp and a lift on a pier holding a sizable pleasurecraft out of the water. Some had weird architecture; a few had clearly new construction at the waterline, presumably from Sandy rebuilding.

A Marker.

We crossed north, getting a little bit of ferry current and cutting just past an anchorage. Soon we were near the SUNY (State University of New York) maritime college, with a campus on both sides of the north end of the Throgs Neck Bridge.We passed a small beach, and paddled on around the neck, avoiding fisherman's lines.

SUNY Maritime College.

We were looking for another beach, but it was almost all rock landing. We turned around, giving the fisherman a wider berth. Off in the distance we could make out the lighthouse at Execution Rocks - a tempting target, but not for that day.

Execution Rocks in the distance.

We landed back at the beach and pulled our boats up to the high tide line. We unpacked for lunch, and negotiated a space-sharing agreement with some geese an goslings. Poppa was VERY protective. They later took a little walk. They were cute in their formation!

The Family.

While we ate, a security guard came by. Mr. Wong was actually very nice, demanding only to see our ID and get or names. Normally people checked in at the gate. We had bypassed that. "You're so brave," he said. "I used to outrigger, at least we had the arm to keep us from falling in!"

Fort Schuyler for Lunch.

We found our landing spot rather mesmerizing. The campus of SUNY Maritime is a fort dating back to the Revolutionary period, used to defend approaches to the city and later used as a POW camp during the Civil War. The grounds cover a lot of history, including a propeller blade from the SS United States. Old ships' bells and plaques to commandants past adorn the exterior walls, and supposedly there is a decent museum on campus.

The Campus.

We left, half an hour or so later than planned, but figuring we'd make up the distance. What we didn't account for was the stiff headwind on the way back across the East River. The current was with us and we made relatively good time, but it felt slow. It was only when we passed a barge in the anchorage areas that we could see how steady our progress was.

This was one of those trips where you realize sea kayaking is a mental game. We felt beaten back, but we were. We simply had to paddle into the wind and keep going.

On the way back, we got a closer look at the Vernon C. Bain, an immense prisons ship/barge moored in the Bronx directly across the river from Rikers Island. The boat, as it is called, holds about nine hundred inmates and is named for a well-regarded prison warden. Who wants their name on a prison ship?

Paddling past the Vernon C. Bain prison ship.

Onwards we went, rounding the Brothers the long way to the north until we came back in to the kill. We paddled along, and found that the rapids we'd passed on the way out were now flowing in! This makes it technically a tiderace . . .although a meager one.

Moving up the Harlem, we continued to experience headwind. Even when we attempted to use Manhattan as a windbreak, he wind shifted to come more from the north. It wasn't terrible but it wore us down psychologically. Even after singing some trail tunes, we were ready to be home long before we would be home.

Around Peter Sharp Boathouse, I noticed he current had turned against us. It wasn't bad, but it meant we had to get past the next mile before we'd be back in friendly current. As we rounded the corner to the Broadway Bridge, it became more pronounced - the old Spuyten Duyvil creek is a constriction that makes the whole things go faster. Also, the wind came howling down the canyon. With steep cliffs and hills on both sides, a westerly wind off the Hudson funnels into a tunnel in this stretch.

We pulled out all of our tricks. We eddy-paddled. We used low angle strokes. We fell into that sea kayaker cadence to keep into a steady rhythm. We were fortunately in that the wind was mostly straight at us. Abeam or quartering would have been worse.

As we crept along, we saw signs of how struggling this would be - strong eddy lines, water building up against fixed objects. In particular, the Columbia dock looked very strainer-ish. I'd remembered earlier that the nigh before had been a full moon, making this a spring tide. The mudflats seemed especially high, and the current therefore stronger.

Where'd all the water go? Oh yeah, behind us.

We eventually arrived at the little nook near the railroad bridge, which affording a brief respite. We ran into fellow club member IB and his niece and nephew. While chatting, we drifted a bit, and by the time we parted company we were about to be pulled over the eddy line into the current. We had to paddle backwards to stay in the eddy, and then charge out through the current into the Hudson.

And then we were  . .free. The Hudson was flowing steadily south. Free from the Harlem's grip, we paddled lazily, resting half the way, back to the boathouse.

And that was that. The penultimate mile, from Peter Sharp to Spuyten Duyvil, was the hardest. I never thought I would say the Harlem river was the most challenging part of the trip, but it was.

While it was challenging, I didn't feel exhausted afterwards. I didn't ache. Oh I was tired in the moment, but once through, I thought, that's it. That's kayaking. We practice these skills for when we need them. Oh sure this wasn't high surf, or the rocky coast of main, but we were fighting current and wind, and crossed from one tidal stream to another. the weather changes. You miss your waypoint. You've got to make up for. That is kayaking.

As we washed up our boats and unpacked our kit, the sun set behind the Palisades. We nibbled on boathouse bananas and snacks left over from lunch. We both felt like we'd pushed our skills. AW in particular amazes me as someone who will plow through these sorts of things. I like paddling with her for her tenacity.
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