Good Fortune of the Sea

Almost every weekend for the past two months, members of the Inwood Canoe Club, including yours truly, have met at the boathouse to make repairs and prepare for the winter season. Members who don't work regular 9-5s have also met during the week to do what they can. This is all in addition to the initial cleanup and makeshift repairs completed in the aftermath of superstorm Sandy.

A lot of what we've focused on is rebuilding the retaining wall on northern shoreline Without it, there is a real danger that it would erode away, making our boathouse inaccessible by land. Sandy washed away hundreds of cubic feet of dirt and rock, and what we've done is use 8x8 timbers layered together to form a new wall. It's almost done, and we're already making plans to turn it into usable deck space for entertaining guests.

There's plenty of work to do inside as well. We've added new racks, and are repainting our offices and changing rooms now that they've dried out.

As much work as this is, we only recently realized how fortunate we are among Manhattan boathouses. Most other boathouses are located in a stretch of shoreline managed by the Hudson River Park Trust, and for a number of reasons they've been mostly inaccessible - only key custodians have access. That means most paddlers have been unable to paddle on the river, unless they were able to move their boats someplace else - Yonkers offered storage space along with a brief exception to their membership policy. 

That means that those few of us who have paddled this winter out of Inwood are among a fortunate few. Most city paddlers haven't beee able to get out. Some of the people I respect and look up to have been landlocked.

That's something. It shows the impact of the storm, the politics of water access, and the value of having dedicated club members (whether volunteers or paid membership) to come together and keep things running.

Sandy

A hurricane - wait, it wasn't, it was a large storm - whatever it was, Sandy hit New York City last week. More accurately, it made landfall on the eastern seaboard, devastating beach communities in New Jersey, Staten Island, and Long Island. Power was knocked out for millions in the region, and massive flooding drowned lower Manhattan to a level where some buildings won't be usable for weeks.

Relevant to this blog, the flooding came up very high at both of the boathouses I paddle out of. At Pier 96, the water came into the boathouse to about four feet high, depositing a thin layer of mud on the concrete floor. At Inwood Canoe Club, the water came up higher because the boathouse sits lower. The flooding lifted the launch dock higher than the main dock, and swept away portions of the retaining wall that holds dirt onto the island.

In both cases, the clubs had taken measures to lift everything up high that had to be and could be. Paddles, floats, papers, electronics - everything went up or went away. fiberglass boats were lifted to at least four feet off the ground. I'm happy to say the Argonaut, ten feet up and as high as could be, survived without incident. the only damage, such as it was, was mostly cosmetic to the boathouses. In the case of Pier 96, the Hudson River Park Trust is tackling the major repairs, and at Inwood, the club is putting together a plan to replace lost soil, repair the walls, and clean the place up.

In both cases, work days after the storm cleared away the detritus that washed in, and through out the wreckage of what was left. The boathouses are in good shape, though there is still work to be done at each.

This is all a long way of saying I haven't been out on the water recently. There is a possibility of getting out this weekend, but following the storm, there was a sudden drop in temperature, and as the weeks roll by, we'll soon be in drysuit-only season.

But fear not! The cowgirl has prepared for this contingency, and if she's not out paddling, she'll be blogging, and writing down kayak-related thoughts that she hasn't had time for in the regular paddling season.