A Race with Improvers

I taught a fun class near the end of September, taking students down to a little tiderace that forms under the George Washington Bridge, right here in Manhattan.

I called this an an improvers class, as everyone had some experience sea kayaking, but wanted to develop their skills a bit. The tiderace was just a bonus feature to practice against.

First, we practiced near Dyckman street, in the last bits of ebb tide, working out the fiddly bits.

A wee bit of practice.

Then, we headed south, towards to bridge.

Sally forth!

On the way.

I've mentioned the GWB tiderace before. In a post from last year, I described it a bit of a trip Kayak Dov and I took.

At the start of the flood cycle near the bridge, a wider body of water starts flowing past Jeffrey Hook, where the Little Red Lighthouse sits. Furthermore, if you look on a chart, it's clear that the hydography has a steep, banked curved in the long bay south of the bridge. The effect is that a large volume of water gets squeezed and accelerated at the hook, and the surface water piles up and back over itself. As these waves form, they appear to fall, bizaarely, back towards to flood current. As the effect builds you can actually surf upstream, and if some sizable wake arrives from, say, a passing barge, you can ride some dumpy waves in excess of 1m in height. It can be quite exciting.

For these students, it was a safe, low-consequence environment to gain confidence in somewhat rough water. What I like about the area for instruction purposes is two fold. First, there's a sizable eddy just north of the hook, making for a safe spot to retreat to or observe from, as well as a "ski lift" effect to make multiple runs practicing peelouts. Additionally, since it's a flood current, in the worst case, swimmers and boats and kit will all float back towards where we started.

Getting a taste.

Perfecting a stance.

We did have one rescue. Towards the end of the session, we did get a bit of wake that vaulted the wave heights to 1-2 feet from behind us. I shouted a heads up to my students, reminding them to keep momentum and either ride the wave or let it pass under. One was indecisive, and capsized. I was able to recover him, and called the rest over to the eddy. As a group we decided to end the tiderace portion of the session and practice rescues, with the current carrying us back to our starting position.

Taking a pumpout.

Enjoying the scenery.

Observing others.

I really enjoyed this session, and was happy to have a sizable group for instruction. It's an area I am constantly learning more about, and having a group of students with different goals and abilities pushed me to develop my coaching ability - focusing on one or two things at a time for each participant.

At the end of the day, we were treated to a weather system moving in, some potential precipitation crowding out our sunny day.

Farewell to the Bridge.

I hope to do this again next year - maybe more than once.

The Moon

Moon Paddles are popular in the paddling community. A summer night, when the wind is low and the water is relatively warm, the air is still, and a ginormous reflecting rock about 224,000 miles away from the Earth is at its closest - these make for pretty and pleasant paddles.

Canoeboy and I put the trip together at pretty short notice. Earlier in the week here were predicated chances of rain and even thunderstorms - things which proved to come in just after the weekend. Thus we had low turnout, but it was a fun crowd.

Paddling North on the Hudson.

We paddled north with a strong flood current, and then into the Harlem, heading for a salt marsh at the northern tip of Manhattan. We passed pretty easily under the railroad bridge at Spuyten Duyvil, and then onwards towards the Henry Hudson Bridge. The sun had pretty much set and we were left only with some afterglow, and the lights coming up on the various bridges.

Towards the Henry Hudson.

We need a better photogapher My little powershot doesn't understan "faraway light", and the case I keep it in doesn't help. We watched the moon rise over the Bronx - the glowing orange-ish orb in the photo below.

Moonrise on the Harlem.

We paddled around in the salt marsh. At low tide, it's a mud flat, and you can see birds walking on it. Here at high tide, we were able to paddle all the way in, and see the park from an angle we usually skip. The water was still too shallow for anything clever.

Some kids on the sidewalk of the park called out to us, and asked us questions about our boats. "Take me for a ride!" "Is that fun?" "Are you wet"? I did some sculling for support, and some low brace turns. "Are you a hero?" That one made my day.

"Yes," I answered, in the Winson Zeddimore school of etiquette*.

After some time had passed, we went back, and one of our number got out at the boathouse. The res of us continued on, south against the current towards the George Washington Bridge. We managed around the point at the Little Red Lighthouse, which was no mean feat. With the tide rushing in, there's a fair amount of current to paddle against, with some large rocks making eddy paddling slightly perilous. 

We made it around, and paddled into the crescent-shaped (one might say moon-shaped, but not on this night) bay next to Washington Park. We took in the urban skyline, and the planes and helicopters flying above it, a glittering canvas against the night sky.

When we were ready to go we ferried out to still see Manhattan, a bit more of it including midtown and downtown and the tremendous spires of light. Then we turned around, and practically flew home on the current, learning just how hard - and easy - it can be to spot people at night. Hard at a distance, and to make out whether moving lights are other paddlers - it's a bit deductive, accounting for last known position and course. On the other hand, easy - it would have been impossible without lights.

Our evening came to and end, we landed and cleaned up boats.

Awash

"Mike*, move your boat away from the edge".

We were standing on the dock at the Inwood Canoe Club not long after low tide. At that point in the cycle there's maybe a foot of depth there. On a spring tide cycle, the water between the dock and the shore is even more shallow. Dipping a paddle in always nicks mud on those days.

I'd spotted a large barge heading north under the George Washington Bridge. It was a beautiful day, the kind of spring day that starts cool but warms quickly. The barge was red and very pretty against the dull brown walls of the Palisades. There was some beautiful bow wake rolling away from it.

I knew it would take a few minutes, but that wake would reach us, and when it did, the dock would buck a bit.

He did as I instructed, pulling his boat in about a foot from the dock and putting his paddle into the cockpit. We went up the ramp to the deck and talked with our friends about our outing.

A little less than ten minutes later, we saw the waves rolling in, gentle swells further out, curling and breaking as they hit the shallows. Pretty soon our dock was bobbing up and down like a carnival ride, and water washed up over the edges, wetting it about a foot in.


*Not his real name.

Short Stop

The cowgirl headed north today, but alas a late start cut short the destination. I was hoping to catch a couple hours of flood tide up to the Harlem River, and take some photos there, getting as far as Peter Sharp Boathouse. However, a gabby woman at the beauty parlor, along with a need for lunch before I launched, meant I started to fight the current right around the time I got to the GWB.

Hand in hand with that were predictions of winds up to 15 miles per hour. There were some gusts, and coming back there was a steady wind coming at me. I didn't relish the prospect of fighting current north and paddling back through thunderstorms after dark . . .so I called it short and landed at a muddy patch just north of the GWB, south of Ross Dock.

Muddy ain't the word for it. By the time I was ready to launch, the water looked fine, but as soon as I stepped past the waterline, my sandals were stuck in mud. I couldn't climb in my boat without bringing along some extra muck. I almost got stuck, straddling my boat like I was going to sit in it, my feet anchored to the riverbed. I was able to free myself, backed out, and launched like I would from a beach - facing the water and bunny hopping with each incoming ripple until the boat was on the water. While that worked, I noticed that it was a good twelve or fifteen yards before my paddle wasn't touching mud with each stroke.

There was some kind of race going on. My first clue was when I saw a Coast Guard ATN boat (Aids To Navigation) with a blue light on. I later texted my brother, who has served for over a decade, and he said it meant either search and rescue or law enforcement. Then I saw a caravan of motor boats and kayaks, each clustered together and moving slowly, which usually means one thing: swimmers. I asked around later on, and it turned out there was a relay swim event around Manhattan.

Watching this event perplexed the cowgirl on a couple of points. One set got REAL close to a barge, much closer than I'd ever let anyone get. Then, as we got closer to midtown, and 56th street, and the cruise ships next to it - well everyone had to stop because one of those graceful beauties was backing out. Given that the current was flowing south, and the wind blowing north, I'm not sure what might have happened to the swimmers, but everyone had to stop and peel off while the Norwegian Princess got underway (I may have the name wrong - that's my generic name for these queens of the sea).

I pulled in, good and tuckered. The wind had picked up quite a bit, and I warned some members of the public to keep paddling lest they be pushed into some pilings.

I ought to mention another sight, one I observed not too long ago on another trip: vintage planes. There is a biplane that flies, straight out of the roaring twenties. I have also seen what looks like a World War 2 era bomber, not sure of the model but definitely of that era. I'm not sure if they're filming a movie, or just having a lark.

I took a closer look at the Binghamton. I think it is repairable; the damage is all to the superstructure. No pictures though -the wind was a-blowing, and I didn't want to trade in my paddle for a camera.

In fact, no pictures at all this time - nothing new, this was a trip on familiar territory.