Sept. 11 - Dust to Deliverance and my own story

I have been doing a 7 book covers in 7 days challenge over on Facebook, invited by my wonderful Aunt Kathy. She challenged me last week and I realized that my 7th day would be September 11th, and I knew what cover I would be sharing today.

In doing so, I ended up sharing a short version of my own story, so I thought I would just share that here today.

 Jessica DuLong is an old friend from my Pier 63 days. She's an engineer on the Fireboat John J. Harvey, which, although retired, served so well at the WTC site. She is also an author, and after untold hours of collecting stories from so many of us who were there on the waterfront that day, she crafted an amazing retelling of the story of the maritime evacuation that went on that day.

I had fled the WTC during the attacks and ended up at Pier 63. I was a partner at the Manhattan Kayak Company at that time, and we were based at Pier 63. I was in the subway station when the 2nd plane hit and managed to get onto a train that pulled in moments after the boom. I didn't care where it was going, it just seemed like the safest way out. It was northbound, so I got off at 23rd street, still not really knowing what had happened. I had been going into the WTC's ground-level mall from outdoors when the first plane hit, fled into the building for shelter without looking up to see what had exploded above my head, and gone into the subway station when the police began evacuating the mall and stopped me from going out the same way I came in - so all I knew was the sound of screaming engines ending in a noise like a gigantic firework, and then, a few minutes later, another boom that set everyone in the subway station running again.

I'd ducked into a turnstile to get out of the stampede, saw the train pulling in downstairs, and made a run for it. When I got off the train at 23rd street, I first stopped at the Moonstruck Diner, where I would often stop for breakfast on my way to a day of teaching or guiding at MKC. Everyone there was looking at the television and that was when I saw what had happened.

 In those days Pier 63 was like my 2nd home so that is where I went next. John Krevey, the owner, saw what was needed and called some of the party boats that would use Pier 63 as a boarding location. The funny thing there is that I didn't actually know how we ended up running a ferry to Weehawken that day until Jessica interviewed me - I think I was still a little bit in shock and just didn't even think to wonder where the boats came from - there they were and that's what we were doing. And to this day I am so grateful that I was there. It was so good to be given a purpose on a terrible day.

Full version of my own story, as written for my family that evening: Link

Pier 63: Making a Home for the Kayaks

So Eric asked, and John offered, and as soon as things started warming up enough in the early spring of 1999, the paddlers of Manhattan Kayak Company began making an odd-shaped end hold at Pier 63 Maritime into a home for the company's fleet.

Krevey's welding team had done the heavy lifting for us. The barge was an old railroad float barge.
image from WorkingHarbor.com's FAQ's - links to that & an interesting article about NY Harbor's last remaining car float operator can be found at the end of this post.


the hold 2
With the deck needing to support that kind of weight, this space was originally filled with heavy cross-bracing. When John found an occupant for a hold (and I think most of the other holds had occupants at this point - an eclectic mix of a boaters, artists & dancers, plus the public restrooms - ours was just too weirdly shaped for anything but storing a bunch of small boats!) the first thing that would happen would be that his welding team would descend & cut out most of the cross-bracing, leaving enough to make sure that the deck could still handle light delivery vans & such, but leaving a workable open space. They would also cut a more practical access - the original access being little round hatches
The Hold
For us, they also cut a hole in the end. That let right out onto a low dock - this was actually a nice change from Chelsea Piers, where every paddle began and ended with a time-consuming boat carry through a parking lot.

But that still left a lot of work to get the place ready for the 1999 season!

What a weirdly fun time that was. I went to John's viewing last night, and one of his close friends told about going down to Delaware to help John and Angela renovate the newly-purchased Frying Pan. "For a week, I shoveled sand, and scraped barnacles - for fun!"

I got a good laugh out of that because it was so wonderfully reminiscent to my own introduction to the strange little world of the barge.

They say genius is 1% inspiration, 99% perspiration. If Krevey thought you had the inspiration - oh, he'd give you (and all your friends) the place to work up the perspiration! :D

We (the 1999 MKC partners and friends) moved rusty scrap metal, and scraped rust, and painted rust. We became Rustpeople. We blended in with the barge. I don't think I've ever been as dirty in my life.

My gosh, it was fun.

rustpeople - me, Brad, Stef, Bob, Eric, Jonno, Irene & Susan

And of course we paddled too - as soon as things were cleaned-up enough to bring in some boats!

rustpeople go paddle - me, Abigail, Jeff, Eric, Irene & Bob. This may have been MKC's first paddle at the barge -

we were all giddy.

Eric

That's all I have time for today - need to run in & put in a couple of hours in the office, but I just wanted to share these pictures. This was about all I had from that time, I didn't have a digital camera yet, but I had scanned these prints in & posted them back in 2006 in a fit of nostalgia a couple of months after the barge had been shut down at the 23rd street location.

What an exciting Spring that was.

Working Harbor Committee's Harbor FAQ's, source of the working car float photo:
WorkingHarbor.com FAQ's

Read more about future of the last remaining NY Harbor railroad car float operation in the June 4 2010 Waterwire

just home...

Just home from the viewing. So good to see all my old friends from Pier 63 together again, even if the reason was terrible. What stories people had to share, what wonderful, warm, funny stories. John Krevey lived more in 62 years than a lot of people would do if they were granted a hundred and five.

Moving To The Barge - Pier 63 Maritime

I didn't know what it was for the longest time. It was just this strange place we paddled past on any northbound trip. Amazing how it became my 2nd home for so many years!



I started paddling with Manhattan Kayak Company in June of 1998. All trips set out from the SeaRay marina at Chelsea Piers, where MKC was a tenant. I did a lot of of after work "North-South Tours" that first year, and anytime the current was on the ebb, we'd pass the barge. I don't know why I never went to explore - it was always sort of an interesting-looking place; it was a little rougher-looking in those earlier days (the glass windscreen was a later installation, and I think the original shelter over the stage was less substantial) but there would frequently be a couple of people hanging out at the end, waving at us as we went by - and there was that strange statue - and if it were me paddling by now, I'd have to go check things out.

But I guess that in 1998, I was a little newer to the waterfront, and less inquisitive. Or maybe it was just a matter that paddling out of Chelsea Piers was a very self-contained activity -- you'd take the bus to right in front of the complex; you'd walk south to the sports center, you'd go to the locker room and change, you'd paddle, you'd go back to the locker room and shower, and then if it was a week night it was time to go home, and if it was a Friday "Paddle and Pub" or a longer weekend paddle, we just never thought to go further than the Chelsea Brewery.

Or at least most of us didn't. Thank goodness Abigail did. She was one of a few people who were helping out Eric Stiller, the founder, as guides that year; that was the year that NYC suddenly went paddlecrazy and he ended up needing the help that more experienced people like her were able to offer.

At some point while the rest of us were hanging out in gym-dandy splendor, with peach shampoo and a smoothie bar, Abigail decided to head up north and around the corner of the huge, Basketball-City-bubble-topped Pier 63 piershed. She'd gotten interested in outrigger paddling. I didn't even realize there were outrigger canoes in NYC at that time, let alone an outrigger club 1 pier north of where I got off the bus to go kayaking.

I think she was the first of the MKC crew to discover the wonderfully freewheeling waterfront access that John Krevey had created there, and she went back and told Eric about what she'd seen.

I don't remember the exact time sequence, but by later in the summer, with kayak fever raging on unabated, Chelsea Piers started to put some pressure on Eric to start maximizing his profit margins. They'd asked him for budget numbers for the next season for the first time; he was kind of swamped with guiding and teaching at that point, but with help from Richard(also a great instructor, totally sorted out my forward stroke for me that first year) numbers were produced. Chelsea Piers then looked at them with a business eye & said "You make the most money on short tours. Why don't you focus on those?"

Problem was - Eric, and everyone who was helping him out that year, loved helping people become better paddlers. The program for your first year was to go from your first lesson to a full circumnavigation of Manhattan. Everybody there agreed that 1.5 - 2 hour beginner trips were a necessity. Nobody wanted that to be all there was.

Somewhere in there, Eric made his first inquiries up around the corner.

I don't think I knew that any of this was going on. At that point, I was just a first-year client - one who'd taken to kayaking very fast & with great enthusiasm, but still, a client.

I found out when I got a call from Chelsea Piers in October saying that kayaking was cancelled. "You mean tonight's paddle? Well, can I sign up for next week's?"

The answer was a flat "No". Eric was gone, I was told. The kayaking program would resume in the spring under new management.

I was flabbergasted, and crushed. I hadn't been expecting to get much more paddling in that year, but I'd bought myself a fancy Henderson trilaminate paddling suit and a functional anorak & was hoping to wring as many more weeks out of the season as Richard and Eric would permit me to. I was a new addict, kayaking had filled in a big hole in my NYC life (as a transplant from Hawaii, I'd always missed being able to get to free-flowing, non-chlorinated water), and I panicked. I would never have thought of calling Eric before - but I wanted to find out what the heck was going on, so I looked up his number online & called - almost in tears.

Eric proceeded to chew my ear off for a good hour. I think that was the first time I ever heard the name "John Krevey". Eric explained the whole budget thing, and then he started talking about this incredible alternative to Chelsea Piers. Just around the corner, there was this amazing guy, John Krevey, who looked just like Hans Solo, and he had this fantastic rusty old barge that was just like the Millennium Falcon (Eric being the biggest Star Wars fan you'll ever meet), and there was a hold at the end that slanted up in a way that made it no good for anything but...

The Hold
KAYAK STORAGE!

So there was need to worry, there would be a bit of a break in the paddling but MKC wasn't gone, they were just moving north to the barge known as Pier 63 Maritime.

And that was how John Krevey's neat old railroad barge came to be home for an entire fleet of kayaks - eventually including a couple of my very own.

The Hold Dock at Pier 63

And that's enough for one night. More about the barge, and what we found there that made it me think of it as such a home for so long, to come (on my next free evening).

Farewell, and thank you for giving my kayaks a home for so many years

Can't believe the news today. John Krevey is gone. The NYC waterfront won't be the same without him.

Goodbye, John. And thank you for giving me - and so many others (like Reid Stowe, shown here talking to John, who is the one in the yellow lifejacket, on the day that the schooner Anne set off for her thousand days at sea) - a home for our boats for so many years.

I'll write more once I have had a little time to get this through my head. When I say I can't believe the news, I almost mean that.

Pier 63 meant so much to me for so many years.

Nice enough for ya?

The calm after the storm, I guess!

Pier 66, with the lightship Frying Pan and the retired fireboat John J. Harvey. I was on my way to the map project meeting, which was pretty interesting, and is the usual for me for 6:00 meetings, I was running late & hurrying to get there. I came out from the side street, saw this, and all the sudden, hyper ("I'mlate,I'mlate, foraveryimportantdate") changed to hypnotized ("Aaaahhh! Muuussssst...Taaaaake...Pictuuuure...")!

So I stopped & took some pictures & quite unsurprisingly, the meeting carried on just fine for a few more minutes without me.

(Note to Capt. JP - haven't seen the Gormleys yet but I want to!)

Sunset in Upper NY Harbor

Ho hum, how about another sunset?

Taken last night in Red Hook, from the Waterfront Museum in Red Hook, where I'd gone to listen to Captain Pamela Hepburn (a friend from my Pier 63 Maritime days) give a slideshow presenation about the restoration of the 1907 tugboat Pegasus. Fascinating talk. You can seen a lot of the photos she uses on TugPegasus.org. I've always enjoyed wandering around that site, but listening to her talk about the tug's history & the restoration truly brought those pictures to life in a most remarkable way.

Frying Pan update...

Drat.

I may not do any more posts about the Frying Pan reopening until I have actually gone & had a beer & a bargeburger (medium rare, with a side order of sunset, please).

Frying Pan Reopens!

Another WOOHOO!

THE FRYING PAN'S REOPENING!!!!!!!

Closed September 11th, 2006. Incredible...

Thanks for the news, Jack!

Lyman, and good stuff in the Hudson River Park!

Here's the tug Lyman, northbound in the Buttermilk Channel around noon on Thursday, March 27th. She's towing a really weird-lookin' thing which I put up in the gallery of the day (link to the thing in a minute).

I was totally curious about this thing. I checked in with Tugster Will 'cause I tend to think of him as the go-to guy for identifying weird floating things. Well, he didn't know but he said if I could get him the name of the tug, that might help. Fortunately I took this nice picture - there she is, the Lyman.

And a minute later I took a picture of the thing.

BTW, I think it's pretty funny that I wrote that caption LESS THAN 24 hours before I heard this news! Came out yesterday morning, first saw it in a post from Nancy, the metropolitan coordinator for the Hudson River Watertrail Association, on NYCKayaker, was in the papers the same day.

And in other good news in the Hudson River Park - I was very happy to see that the barge that practically used to be my summer home (hey, we can't all afford the Hamptons) will FINALLY be reopening! Congrats to the Kreveys & all my old friends over there - won't be paddling there much since my boats are all in Canarsie, but you can bet I'll be stopping by to say hello & enjoy my favorite Lackawanna #3 combo - bargeburger and a cold beer, with a side order of sunset!

Barge News!

My last day paddling at the barge, Sept. 2006


The barge now.

OK, it's not exactly NEW news. I've been waaaaay out of the loop since I left Pier 63, got into major disagreements with the self-appointed leaders of the sea kayak community there, and got myself kicked off the mailing list where most of the barge news had gotten cornered (still upsets me when I think about it, what a miserable few months of losing the place I thought I had had - and I'm not just talking about my storage space or water access) - but I JUST stumbled across this article, which gives a really good update.

Glad to see that there's hope for the barge to at least open for a place for people to go. Won't be quite the same, but better than the bureaucratic limbo of this year.

Pier 66 Boathouse -

I haven't posted lately about the Pier 66 Boathouse developments because, well, basically there wasn't anything solid enough to post, just ongoing rumors of "we're almost there!", "next week, really!", etc. etc. - but it looks like the New York Riversports (minus whoever those Manhattan Waterfront Realty guys were) organization (a consortium of the various groups who used to call the barge at Pier 63 home) has succesfully negotiated the bureaucratic challenges that lay between the announcement that their proposal had been chosen & the time when the permit could be signed & the keys to the boathouse handed over.

And yes, that means the business I used to be a partner in, Manhattan Kayak Company, is back in business!

They've lost half the season already, but at least there are still a couple of good months left to salvage something.

Unfortunately this only means the boathouse is open - the barge itself, I don't know what's going on.

Who Works Hard on Memorial Day?

People who work in marinas with rack storage, that's who.

Ever think about that?

I watched for a while. I was impressed. This gives you the general idea if you just pretend it's different boats, not the same one over and over again, with the owners all sitting around waiting to get going on their holiday fun. I didn't time it but it was a matter of minutes for each boat.



On the same day, where did not one single boat get launched (or burger get grilled, or cold drinks get sipped, or river breezes get savored)?

At the boathouse or the barge at Pier 66 in the Hudson River Park, that's where.

More on that when I have a little more time.

The Barge Has Moved!

Word just in from Nancy, the Hudson River Watertrail Association's Metropolitan Coordinator (who I must mention has been attending all these meetings for years due to her HRWA role - the rest of us tend to go when things get interesting, then lose track of 'em when things quiet down)- the barge has moved, everything went well, and John Krevey (the owner) is feeling good about the new location!

Thanks, Nancy, for keeping us up to date & for patiently & quietly being there representing paddlers' interests all along. Thanks, HRWA, for recognizing the need to have someone doing what Nancy's been doing down here even when things aren't so exciting.

Now looking again at the email, I see she said something about hoping people could post & share her pictures...I'd be delighted!

Photos by Nancy Brous:
a few views of the barge at the new location...