A Sound Idea, Pt. 2

Part of the original plan was to meet up with some friends of mine - Jean and Alex from the 2 Geeks 3 Knots blog. The 2 Geeks paddled up to meet us from their home base in Larchmont, arriving in the evening and setting up camp next to ours.

We traded stories and talked about gear, especially the keeping-warm kind, as we shared dinner and a little wine. Kayak Dov shared a story from his hiking days, about a man he met on the Appalachian Trail who always built a fire, and always attracted company. "Fires are the center of community," the man had said. "Build a fire and you pull people together."

As warm as it was during the day, the temperature dropped considerably overnight, into the low forties. Our nighttime dinner was fortified with hot tea, dry clothes, and a storm cag to keep the wind off.

The original plan was to leave early the next morning, but we all decided to sleep in. Kayak Dov and I were in no hurry, and the geeks had only gotten to the island. We took our time Sunday morning, before packing all our things and heading out on the sound.

Breaking Camp.

Good Morning !

We headed out to exit the islands.

Threading through the islands.

Past nice houses on the shore. . .

. . .and a nice house on an island.

Up around a little point.

And finally, back out on the sound.

Our first major landmark - a flagpole on a point.

We passed a lot of nice and very interesting houses along the shore.

House with gazebo.

Seawalls and townships.

Jean on the shore.

Eventually we approached Stamford, peeking in the harbor and passing to the interior of the eastern breakwater.

Coming on Stamford.

We paddled along the breakwater.

The channel between breakwaters.

 

Heading back out.

We spotted Osprey hatchlings high in this marker.

A marker and a home.

Passing an old lighthouse.

We paddled past Stamford and over to Greenwich Point, which is the southeastern point of Lloyd Neck. There's a wide wading beach there with facilities and concessions. Closed to kayakers except during the off-season, we pressed our luck and landed away from the crowds, making use of the facilities and taking a prolonged snack and water break.

I learned a new term on this trip: diaper streak. It's not something I see on the Hudson or the harbor, whether because boaters are better behaved or the water flushes more. Diaper streaks, the 2 Geeks informed us, are where vessels discharge their human waste into the sound, an it spreads out in a long, brown stripe on the surface of the water. They look as appealing as they sound, and they can be quite long and unavoidable. We saw quite a few - more than is typical, the 2 Geeks said. It was disgusting and we encourage all boaters to be cognizant of how to manage their waste properly.

Sound Keeper offers free pumpouts to boating vessels. Give a hoot, don't pollute.

A shady shack.

There were a few little kids who side-eyed our boats as they scooped sand near the surf with their parents. We saw a lot of people in swim clothes and bikinis, mostly just sunning themselves. They were quite a contrast to our drysuits and layers underneath! We got a few looks but nothing more than, "there's something you don't see every day."

Kayak Dov paddling close to shore.

Once rested, we continued our voyage. In short order we were at the Captain Islands.

Wee Captain.

Little Captain.

Great Captain.

The Captain Islands were actually our first choice for a trip like this. They're far from our home base in Inwood, the northern tip of Manhattan, New York City, but can be reached in a good day's paddle. However, everyone we talked to indicated that 1) they're all private property except Great Captain and 2) the township of Greenwich is very strict about people landing on their shores, and there is no sanctioned camping at all. Having seen the landscape I don't think there is a way we could have avoided being seen.

The funny thing about the lighthouse at Great Captain is that the light atop the house is no longer in service. It's been replaced by the tower out front.

Paddling past the light at Great Captain.

After this, the clouds started obscuring the sun intermittently, and our headwind started to pick up and gust a bit. We were close, but our pace slowed. The last few miles would be challenging, partly because we were growing tired but more because the conditions increased against us.

We gradually passed Rye, New York, where we could see parts of the Rye Playland amusement park. Then on a bit further to Peningo Point.

Passing into a cloudy later afternoon.

Approaching a pass.

Off in the distance, we could start to make out the Manhattan skyline. What was really curious here, more easily seen later than when I took this picture, is that our angle had us seeing from left to right the Throgs Neck Bridge, Bronx-Whitestone Bridge, and then lower Manhattan. The bridges made sense because the Throgs Neck is the first one in from the sound. However they're lateral from the Upper East Side. Manhattan seemed very out of place!

Home, in the distance.

The skies lightened up for a bit for the final push in. We were soon paddling through sailing marinas, the American Yacht Club and Milford Harbor, the Larchmont Yacht Club and Larchmont Harbor.

A Big Buoy.

Eventually we arrived at our final destination: Horseshoe Harbor in Larchmont, a tiny little nook of sheltered water next to a sizable boathouse. We unloaded our boats first, and then took a group photo. A park surrounds the cove, so almost as soon as we began a couple stopped and offered to take our photo, so we could all be in it.

I have to say again that this was an amazing trip and I'm so happy it came together. All three of my paddling partners were great company, and as a bonus I saw one friend meet two others for the first time. The weather of the three days was as near perfect as could be for paddling and for camping. While the paddling legs were long, they were rewarding, and the island was very interesting.

It's the first expedition of the season. We're off to a good start!

Epilogue:
At the very end of our journey, once the boats were stowed and we'd all showered, and Kayak Dov was fetching the car for our ride back, the 2 Geeks and I found ourselves overwhelmed with choices in a restaurant:

6 oz steak (with mushrooms? onions? rare/medium rare/well done?)
8 oz steak (with mushrooms? onions? rare/medium rare/well done?)
11 oz steak (with mushrooms? onions? rare/medium rare/well done?)
chicken (grilled, smoked, barbecue)
Half a dozen kinds of beer and half a dozen house coctails.
Choice of two sides.

Camping, and at sea, your choices are very simple:
 do you eat the food you brought now or later?
  do you stop for water now, or later?
  Do you paddle out of your way and out of the wind, or stay on course and fight the wind?

Life at sea, and camping, is very simple. We recognize that we are privileged to be able to live so humbly as a choice, and not a permanent state of affairs, unlike so many in the world who are permanently without a home. "Getting away from it all" here meant the countless decisions, checklists, and short personal transactions that make up our daily lives. It does put in perspective the wealth of choices those of us in the modern first world have. When our only major choices are where to build shelter, when to eat, and how to deal with the weather, coming back to "civilization" and its myriad  options for each of these is a bit jarring.

That said, I'm not complaining. I'll take a hot shower after a long paddle every day if I can.

A Sound Idea, Pt. 1

Martha's Vineyard. Block Island. Captains Harbor. These were all ideas we had for a long weekend paddling off Long Island Sound (or Block Island Sound). We had a few constraints in terms of when we could take off from work, but the major ones were: where would we have a good chance of camping without getting in trouble? After asking around, we settled on another set of islands, based on the advice of some friends.

I won't say specifically where, but basically the incredible Kayak Dov and I started in one place further east, paddled eighteen nautical miles, landed and camped for two nights, then paddled to where our friends lived, also about eighteen nautical miles.

Anyway, who wouldn't want to live on an island all to themselves?

Weight for It
Pouring water takes time - and it's heavy. I bought a couple of collapsible eight liter bags and filled them . . .filled them . . .filled them with water bought at the store.

As I poured, I contemplated that all that water would go into me, and then out of me. It was mesmerizing.

We figured we would need about fourteen liters apiece for the trip. Water weighs 2.2 lbs per liter, which meant that these bags alone added over 35 lbs of weight to my boat. I looked forward to dropping all that weight as the trip progressed.

We both brought along food as well. Snacks, as well as breakfast and dinner. I had a camping stove and fuel for it, as well as some enamel bowls and mugs.

Most of my kit I've looked up the weights and written on them (mugs, 4 oz weight). Of course, the biggest items were my tent and sleeping bag. My tent comfortably sleeps two. My sleeping bag crunches down quite a bit, but is still 3 lbs 3 oz. Weight and volume. Suddenly kayaking involves elementary school math.

Launching
We'd found a little public launch about two miles up a river from the sound, right in front of a shopping center. Kayak Dov would leave his car there, take the train back, and come back to pick me up, when it was all done.

My boat was very near capacity. We could barely lift it fully loaded, and when I slid it into the water off the dock, the wood beneath creaked and groaned. However, once in the water, it was imminently paddle-able. I had good trim, a little biased to the stern. I could edge comfortably, and while it took a bit more effort to get going, I could go.

One kind gentleman questioned out plans. "The river gets up to ten knots. I've pulled people out myself. People just like you." Really? Nothing we researched indicated such strong currents, and we certainly didn't experience them. In a little more than half an hour we'd gotten to the mouth of the river and on to Long Island Sound.

Paddling
We paddled past a lot of lighthouses and markers, including this one at Stratford Point.

Kayak Dov Rounding Stratford Point.

We debated whether to stay near shore or go farther out. I favored the latter, as for me this was a navigation exercise. I'd worked out that a heading of 240 based on a couple of offshore waypoints would get us there. However an offshore tailwind steadily blew us back towards shore, and I spent a lot of this leg of the trip just keeping track of where we were using buoys and landmarks.

We did keep ourselves entertained though. Pretty sure this was Black Rock. If you squint hard you can see that the sailboat is being towed in.

Black Rock, Towing.

Near an area called The Cows, we were a bit perplexed because we only saw one rock-mounted light where we expected two would be in sight. We later attributed this to one compass not being set correctly for magnetic deviation, leading to a lot of head math and a little disagreement about where things were. We took a guess that the lighthouse we saw was the outermost of the two, and in hindsight we were probably right.

Pretty sure Black Rock, near The Cows.

We paddled on. One thing I learned - or had reinforced rather, as I've experienced it before - is that bearing paddling is very much an act of faith. If I keep going in this direction for two hours I will get there. It's not totally an act of faith - have your wits about you regarding the wind and current. However, far from landmarks, there can be little sense of progress, and you just have to trust that as long as you maintain a given course, you'll be near enough to your destination to find it.

We Paddled.

I have to confess a couple of things.

First of all, I was low on energy. I'd carb'd up the night before, and had a decent breakfast, and lunch, and power bar on the way, but I was flagging. I felt slow, though Kayak Dov later pointed out that, along the lines of what I wrote above, without anything nearby against which to gauge speed it's easy to feel like you're going nowhere. I stopped for breaks more frequently than I would have liked, and ten minutes felt like half an hour.

Once we landed, I worked out that I hadn't been especially slow. Despite the deviation from plan, we'd more or less followed the plan and arrived only a little later than expected. It's only that along the way, I hadn't been feeling that.

The second thing was that I misread the horizon. There was one point where we were much farther offshore than I'd intended, perhaps half a mile to a mile. It's easy to fail to distinguish between a piece of land many miles away and a low headland closer by. For the longest time I mistook our destination for a small spit that we never seemed to have passed, when in fact we were just so far out we never crossed it.

In short order we realized we had already passed the easternmost of these islands and could make what we thought were the middle and westernmost. Suddenly I had renewed energy, just like I've seen in clients. The destination is right there. Full speed ahead!

Unfortunately, we had a little more noodling around to do. There are many islands in this little archipelago, and some of them are connected at low tide. What we thought was our destination clearly wasn't, on account of a house being on it, and the next one over was clearly for the birds only - there were signs posted. However by now we were close enough to shore that I orientated myself and got to a beach.

We got out, checked it out, and made camp. Partly as a result of having to paddle around the islands we'd originally mistook for our destination, we landed at the wrong beach. Instead of a sandy beach with fire pits and outhouses, we were about half a mile around a small point, on a beach mixed of short reeds and large pebbles, with a long mound of shells forming a berm.

We didn't know, and in any event decided it was good enough. We set up camp and made dinner, watched the sun set, and went to bed shortly after.

The Island
The next morning, we got up and explored the island.

The interior pond.

The Argonaut after landing.

On Saturday I took a wee paddle by myself around the island - actually two islands, connected at low tide by a land bridge.

Much closer than usual to this gull.

The old lighthouse.

As I rounded the far point of the far island, I saw a paddleboarder putting out to sea from a long soft beach near the lighthouse. Now, I am a friendly paddler, and said howdy as we got close, but I got barely a response.

Maybe he thought I'd criticize him for being underdressed for the water, or maybe I was just ruining his zen. We were vessels passing in the day, and that was all there was to it.

A paddleboarder.

The inner shore of the westernmost island.

On the back half of my circumnav (duo-circ? It was two islands at once) I came across what I dubbed the wishing well and some old structures that I suppose once supported a walkway out to it.

Remains of former grandeur.

Opposite the north shore of the island was a power plant. That stack had been one of our landmarks the last few miles in. It was quiet, and not smoky.

A power plant.

Several smaller islands dotted a small bay just northwest of out island. On the one hand, we thought it was a shame that they'd been turned over to private development. On the other hand, if we had one, we'd certainly put it to use! They seemed to be summer homes though. I didn't see any signs of habitation in any of them.

Houses in the interior bay.

More houses.

Each one unique.

On this last house, the forces of erosion had clearly taken their toll. I don't expect this home has too much longer, relatively speaking.

The high ground - for how long?

When I got back, I joined Kayak Dov for a walk around the island.  At low tide, we saw quite a bit more than our earlier reconnoiter.

Dead Horseshoe Crab.

At times we saw other kayaks in the distance. This fellow was making great speed. We tried to identify the style of his boat. It looked somewhat ski-ish, or race-style sea kayak. Kayak Dov thought it might be a skin-on-frame boat.

We tried hailing him but got no response.

Another Paddler !

You can't stop a boy from frolicking over nature !

Beautiful tidal strands.

As we came around the island, I found that parts of this bay were closed off at low tide.

Those same islands.

A wading bird - white egret, I think.

What really took me about this island was that you could clearly see the effect of tide on the geography and local flora. At low tide so much more of the island was exposed, and at narrow bars of sand and stone you could make out the flow of water, and even visualize the slow erosive effects that must take decades, even centuries, to change the landscape. I really felt like I could see Earth as a living planet, and the effects the tides, and by extension our moon and sun and our oceans and the wind, have on the world we live on.

Most of our isthmus.

This included the mussels and reeds. Most of the island's flora were these short stubby reeds, amongst which sprawling clusters of mussels grew. Our camp awoke each morning to the calls of oystercatcher birds, and we could see them streaming down to the fields for breakfast. The tides, the moon, the sea, they pumped in and out, feeding the mussels, which filtered the water and fed the birds. We were living in a great organism, this little island, on our living planet.

Mussels.

Huge tracts of mussels.

In this next photo, everything greenish was submerged at high tide. Our first trek around the island we'd walked very close to the tree line and only seen the remains of one old dock. This time around, we saw so much more. There was quite a bit of old working equipment, indicating either a formerly working embayment, or that old ramps and docks and other detritus from those houses washed up here.

A formerly working embayment.

As I mentioned, some parts of the bay closed off at low tide.

Grandeur from the shore.

 Kayak Dov checked out the scene of the low tide plain.

Patrolling the remains.

I spotted a little hermit crab. At first we thought he was dead, but he moved a bit. Perhaps he was lost, or got in a bad spot with the tide.

A wee crab, lost in the reeds.

Speaking of grabs - we found this major crab city in a small channel at low tide. There was plenty of mud for them to build homes in, tons of little holes we could watch them crawl in and out from. I didn't take video but believe me, they were scurrying all over the place. I'm not sure what kind they were - they didn't seem to possess the huge claw of the fiddler crab. They seemed very busy - until we got too close and they scurried underground!

Crabopolis.

We ended our little walkabout atop a high point overlooking the north and east. I could spot my little wishing well from there, as well as a light farther out in the sound.

Tomorrow's Horizon from a high point.

Afterwards, we had an early dinner ("first dinner" - we'd eat more later) of bean and rice burritos with salsa, cheese, and bell peppers.

Burritos for dinner!

This was the first part of an amazing trip. It was my first take at long distance trip planning and navigation, and I learned what worked, what didn't, and what to account for once on the move. We had brilliant conditions for paddling - much less wind than expected, sunny, great visibility. It was my first really long trip of the season and I re-learned old lessons on pacing and managing nourishment.

Rollin' on the River

In case you missed it, I took a short at rolling on both sides last week.


The water is still a little chilly - I wouldn't make a practice day of it!

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.