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.

Another Rainy Day in New York City

It’s another rainy day, in New York City. 

Softly sweet, so silently it falls, 

As crosstown traffic crawls.

So begins a song by the band Chicago, one of my favorite ’70 era rock-horn fusion ensembles. The song is exactly what we had: an overcast, dreary day, with patches of fog now and then.

What a perfect day for a circumnavigation of Manhattan !

We had a client flying in on holiday, an experienced sea kayaker from Jersey (the channel island, not the US state immediately across the river). This tiny island, roughly the same circumference as Manhattan, doubles in size at the low point of a spring tide, owing to the dramatic tidal heights. Surf, rock-hopping, and expeditions to various points offshore, Jersey has quite a bit to offer the intrepid sea kayaker, so it was very flattering to have someone with that in their background claim Manhattan as a location on their paddling goal punchlist.

One thing we do have, that Jersey has much less of: boat traffic. More about that later.

Now, this Cowgirl was as prepared as she ever is, perhaps more so owing to the early season, for such a trip, but forgot one key piece of equipment: her camera. Therefore, this post will rely on painting pictures with words. Bear with me.

We’d scheduled the trip for May 1 earlier in the spring, coinciding with JR’s vacation. With various plans in place, this past Sunday was the only day he could paddle. Unfortunately, tides and time wait for no one, and so the timing was not optimal for a daytime trip, and we both had plans for the following Monday. The best I could manage was to leave Pier 40 at about 1100, and be done by 2100, paddling against current a fair portion of the way, and including a significant layover. Our other options were to start at 0500, or to start later in the afternoon and proceed clockwise, and down the East River after dark – something I wasn’t willing to hazard with just two paddlers, at the end of a trip, cold and dark. We settled on the 1100 start and, following some onshore traffic delays, were underway by 1130.

Weather is also not known to bend to the will of man. In this case, I watched rather obsessively through the preceding week and kept fingers crossed that a series of storm systems would move slowly and leave us a fair if cloudy day. Instead, they sped up, and after a rather nice Saturday, Sunday was a navy-gray day of low clouds, higher clouds, and more clouds up above. In the morning and for a while in the evening there was some fog limiting visibility to about five miles, less in the evening. Fortunately the wind prediction was low, and the rainfall for the day was predicted to b half and inch, so it was quite bearable in our drysuits. In many ways, the dank and dreary day brought out more color in the spring foliage, and in the evening gave a surrealist glow to the lights on ships and on land alike.

Battery

We moved quickly down the Hudson River to the Battery, floating near Pier A while we assessed the traffic situation – Statute ferries coming in and leaving, a water taxi that had just landed – and while we waited a Coast Guard RIB boat came over, close over for a crewman to talk to us, even after I lifted my radio.

“If visibility drops under a mile, you’ll need to get off the water.”

I looked around. I could still make out the Verrazano Bridge in the distance, about five miles away.

“OK.”

“You have a radio?”

I lifted my radio, again.

“Sure thing”.

The RIB motored off, and we later saw it guarding the Staten Island ferry as it departed Whitehall for St. George.

We paddled around the Battery to the East River, which by this point was beginning to flood to the north. Traffic was remarkably clear, and we started to line up to make the short ferry across the East River.

Suddenly, as is often the case, traffic appeared. A NY Waterway boat was coming down the river for a little dock at the base of the Brooklyn Bridge. Further up, we could make a party boat coming in to land, presumably at the South Street Seaport. A water taxi came across the Buttermilk Channel for the dock we were near, and a Zephyr came ‘round Battery. Suddenly we were where everyone wanted to be, and to get where we wanted to go we’d have to avoid them.

We stayed in place and let the larger vessels finish what they were up to, then passed along and across. New York City traffic, I tells ya.

After passing all that traffic and heading north up the East River, traffic was remarkably light, nearly-non-existent. We saw perhaps two or three more water taxis, and only one barge, which passed us to the left and headed up the channel between Manhattan and Roosevelt islands. After a while, JR remarked on how peaceful it was, a quiet bizarrely juxtaposed against the city immediately around us. We were alone, on the water, with eight or nine million people within a few miles reach on land.

Hell Gate

We approached Hell Gate, which by this point was about an hour and a half into its flood cycle. While Hell Gate can get upwards of five knots speed, we were on a neap tide and I estimated the speed was still under two knots. We sheltered in an eddy near Blackwell Light, and after a quick check for traffic we ferried over to Mill Rock and then paddled up to Little Hell Gate park, a little marshy nook on the western side of Randalls Island. It’s all the remains of the old passage between Randalls Island and Wards Island, which are now connected by landfill on the eastern side.

Normally, I paddled through a winding stream that spirals to the middle of the park, landing at a dirt bank that leads up to a bridge where we can egress to the rest of Randalls Island. At this point in the tidal cycle though, the water was so low it was impassable, and we landed instead on a pocket beach near the entrance of the waterway.

Two cats scampered by on the seawall, one violently chasing the other. They disappeared behind a large rock, and we her some hissing. We joked that perhaps they had escaped from the nearby psychiatric hospital, which we could see along with the high fence around it. One of the cats’ heads popped up from behind the rock and gave us a quizzical look, as if the chase had been interrupted by the realization that, “that’s not usually there”, us strangely-garbed people with our long, narrow boats.

At this point in the tidal cycle, the Harlem was flooding south at nearly two knots. We decided to wait it out rather than paddle against it, and spent nearly two hours at Randalls. In that time, the water level rose and we moved our boats twice. We finally left when we were running out of land, and also to get moving and generate some body heat. The cold and dreary weather had started to chill us, so paddling against a knot and a half was more inviting.

Heading up the Harlem was uneventful. While I saw one vessel leaving it while we were are Randalls, we passed no moving vessels on it: no Circle Line boats, no NYPD boats, no pleasure boats, kayaks, no rowing shells. We had the entire river to ourselves.

After paddling against current to Peter Sharp Boathouse, we stopped for a short break, staying in our boats. By now we were in near-pure parkland, the industrial storage of the Bronx and the Harlem River Drive in Manhattan giving way to a rocky railroad path and High Bridge Park. We continued on, and I pointed out the cuts where Harlem used to not flow, as well as Marble Hill, the neighborhood in the Bronx that is technically, politically, part of Manhattan to this day. In short order, we were past the Columbia “C”, under the Henry Hudson Bridge, and then out onto the Hudson, across from the majestic Palisades cliffs.

The entire area was shrouded in fog. We could see the cliffs, and in the distance the George Washington Bridge nearly two miles away. But there was no wind, and just two lit barges on the river. We were on the watery moors of Inwood, as I like to style it.

By the time we got to the bridge, a wide plain of fog was before us, and we were about an hour for sunset, so we fixed lights to our vessels and watched traffic ahead. Mostly, barges were tied up or tying up. By the time we were to the mooring yard north of the 79^th Street Boat Basin, it was hard to tell if it was nighttime or just extremely overcast sundown. On the radio I heard a captain complain about something – I’m not sure what, having missed part of the conversation – and shortly after saw a tug hurriedly tying up and turning to face the current.

By Pier 96, it was dark, but fortunately the fog had subsided; I could make out first responder lights on the road atop the cliffs in New Jersey. Building in Manhattan took on a surrealist glow though, their lights refracted through the moisture into big glowing balls of light. We could make out water taxis hurriedly making the ferry crossing. My radio, still on, came to life with renewed chatter.

The Classic Harbor Line Manhattan was heading north. Various barges were rounding Battery, and some were heading to sea. Circle Line Queens was moving from Pier 76 to Pier 84.

Wait, what? We were just north of the Intrepid, which is essentially Pier 84.

We stayed in place. I radioed the captain that we would hold while he came in. Right about the time I was starting to lose patience, I saw her lights, little green and white and red dots, emerge from the darkness, and she started to turn.

“Circle Line, Circle Line, this is Kayak Two. Captain, we’re going to swing wide around you and pass astern.”

“OK. Thanks,” was the response.

We did so, and then waited for a water taxi to pull in, and then entered the final leg of our journey. Our only other traffic was the Manhattan, announcing her return to Chelsea Piers right as we were about to pass. I radioed that we’d hold but the captain politely said, “no, go ahead.” So we sprinted forward as she turned to and pulled in right behind us.

By this point I realized JR had been operating not just with ordinary paddle fatigue, but also jet lag. Having just left the UK the day before, for him the hour must have felt more like two or three in the morning. I commended him for being as alert and capable as he was. At 26.4 miles on the GPS and eight hours of paddling time, we’d put in a lot of time and more-than-typical effort on this circumnavigation – under wet and gray conditions, no less.

We pulled in to Pier 40 around 21300, pulled off the water and rinsed boats and kit. We rinsed our drysuits by leaving them on and walking in to the shower. After packing everything up, we made our farewells, and that was that.

Another circumnavigation completed. It won’t be the last for this season, but it will certainly take place as one of the more interesting ones.

If you don' like the weather . . .

 . . .wait five minutes. It'll change.

That old aphorism has stuck with me in all of my paddling trips and trip planning. In a city known for not being able to see much past the next block, when we're on the water we can see for miles. From certain areas on the Hudson near Battery, once can see the Verranzano, about six miles away, and the George Washington Bridge, about twelve miles away in the opposite direction.

Manhattan is long and narrow enough that sometimes I'll get on the subway at work under sunny skies and get out under rain at home. I'll get conflicting reports from friends about the weather as short bands of precipitation crawl across the happy island like so many commuters.

Yesterday we'd planned to paddle down to Pier 40, to meet up with a friend and escort her paddling back to Inwood. She's dropped her boat off there for some repairs and they were done. It's a trip that can be done solo, but where's the fun in that? Tides worked out well for a midday departure from Inwood, returning in the evening.

Trouble was, weather was predicted to be rainy all weekend, but with sunny days on either side. So, we kept an eye on the weather. Sure enough, the two days before, the afternoon was predicted to be low on rain - how winds up in the teens. We decided to wait and see the morning of.

The next morning, a dense fog hug over the river. While it cleared up by 1100, it was partly a result of a hugely warm day, touching 80F, though the water was still in the low 50sF. The morning was warm, and I paddled a bit just to work on my strokes and my balance. At 1130 I checked again - maybe this beautiful weather was a harbinger of good things?

Thunderstorms at 1500, with winds predicted in the teens and gusts up to 25mph.

I wasn't as worried about the thunderstorms because, based on radar tracking, I expected they would come and go quickly and sporadically. The winds weren't terrible either, but they would be annoying. They'd form a tailwind, which is normally good, but with a growing flood tide they'd form following seas. We'd spend as much time steering as paddling.

On top of all that, one of our number hadn't been in a boat for six months.

We called it. We came up with an alternate plan - we would just do this again Sunday. But, a couple of us still me up for some paddling.

At first, we wondered, did we make the right call? It was so nice out - and then the breeze would stiffen. Sure enough, around 1400, an endless cloud crept up from the south over the western side of the river, and we felt like we'd made the right decision. We wouldn't have left by then. Raindrops pelted us jus north of the GWB.

However, by 1430, that system had moved over, and sun was glaring through a lighter set of clouds . . . .and then by 1515 or so, another set of rainy clouds had moved in. We paddled up close to the shore, waving at fishermen and their families, avoiding their lines. We could see columns of light refracted in precipitation further up the Hudson River valley, straight out of a painting.

After we landed, we washed or boats and changed . . .and by the time we left the boathouse, it was warm and sunny again! We walked over to Broadway, where we parted ways. I made my way home through Fort Tryon Park, and along the way, the sun once again disappeared, and this time the air cooled a bi as well.

Sure enough, about four blocks from my building, it started to rain. Sprinkles, then proper rain, then a downpour. Buckets, I was pretty wet by the time I go home, less than five minutes later.

Did we make the right call? It's a combination of factors. Any sea kayaker worth their salt should be able to manage in these conditions. Certainly, things were not terrible, and if we'd gotten caught out in it, we would have done alright. The wind, when it rained, was barely a factor. We would have been wearing dry gear so that would not have been an issue. And while we would have still been on he water, about four miles out, when the thunderstorm hit, we could have sheltered in, evening finding a place or two to land and wait it out - and then been fine.

So, it would have been an adventure, in this alternate timeline. But that wasn't what we were looking for. Coupled with it being early in the season, and one paddler being out of practice, we're happy with the decision.