Return to the Graveyard of Ships, 7/7/2019

Me and trusty Romany with Hila (ex ATR-89). Thanks to clubmate Frank Favia for the spectacular photo! Click for a better view. Flickr album links at the end of the post. 

The poor blog has been being neglected as I've been busy with other things, and maybe had a touch of blogger's block, but a weekend of being lazy and hiding at home from the heat wave has let me do some catching-up. So hello, here I am!

City of Water day (my last post was a plug for that) was fantastic - we had beautiful weather, I helped out with our beautifully refurbished war canoe and did well enough to get promoted from bow to steerer by my last trip of the day, and I was on a break at the right time to catch the Billion Oyster Project demonstration. Not a lot of pictures from on the water but I definitely will share some photos of the oyster folks, that was very cool!

Today goes a little farther back than that, though. Sebago has not done a trip to Witte Marine Salvage, aka the Staten Island Graveyard of Ships, in several years - in fact the last trip report I can find from there was in 2010. I'd been making noises about getting back there and had been planning on looking for a good day in the fall, and then early in the first week of July, I got an email from Steve the Paddling Chef saying that Sunday the 7th looked perfect tidewise and did I want to assist?

Well, he took care of all the coordinating, all I had to do was join a lovely bunch of clubmates and a couple of guests from other clubs on a very nice paddle from Conference House up to Witte and back, with a lunch break on a little beach at the base of the Fresh Kills landfill. And everybody thanking me for helping Steve with the trip when he did all the work. Yeah, life was indeed good!

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frogma kayak smiley, patent pending

I did find I had one little bit of concern when visiting Witte's for the first time in a while - there are always rumors that there just isn't anything left there, so as one of the organizers (not that I did any organizing) I did kind of find myself thinking "What if we drag everybody out there and there's nothing to see?". Of course I've been hearing rumors like that pretty much since I started my NYC kayaking career with a paddling lesson at Manhattan Kayak Company back in (yikes) the late 90's. I know I missed the heyday of the place, and it's true that there aren't as many boats there as there used to be, even since my first visit; Witte's is a salvage yard, not a museum, and with NYC's construction industry booming they're selling all the scrap metal they can. In addition, the Army Corps of Engineers has been doing some clearing out to keep pieces of the boats from coming loose and becoming hazards to navigation as they float off into the shipping channels. Folks who have been visiting for a while may find old favorites gone, but there's still enough there for first-time visitors to be impressed.

Here are a couple of old favorites of mine that I didn't see this time. This old Astoria ferry was not actually at Witte's, it was off by itself a little ways south. I did hear a rumor that this one got cleared out because a development went in and the developers didn't think condo buyers would want to look at a junky old boat. Personally I think it would be cool to have a condo with a view of a sunken ship, but I'm guess I'm probably not representative of your average Staten Island condo buyer.

And I think this tugboat is gone. Kind of sad as it was fun to see these old wooden tugs, even rotting away in the mud like this - but here, I think you can see pretty well how if pieces of this old vessel were to break loose and get out into the shipping channels, they really could be a hazard. The paddler disappearing behind the bow gives you a little sense of scale, this was a good sized boat and constructed of some big, solid timbers. It's also possible that we just missed it somehow, but at any rate, I'm glad I took the photos I did. 

So yes, there are some that are gone, but it's still a fascinating place to visit by kayak. And of course I came back and put together a new Flickr album - actually two Flickr albums. For the "blog version", click here. This one is 25 of my favorite photos from the day. If you were on the trip, or are just some kind of glutton for photographic punishment,click here for the extended version (39 photos, with most of the additional photos being pictures of the paddlers on the trip).

Want to learn more about the Staten Island Graveyard of Ships? Get yourself a copy of the short documentary Graves of Arthur Kill, produced by Gary Kane and directed by my good boatblogging friend, "Tugster" Will Van Dorp.  

Evening in Staten Island

A few more shots from last weekend - twilight through nighttime. No more writing, click on the first picture for a slide show view. It was a lovely evening. 

In Staten Island, They Have Rainbows In The Showers

and they roof them with a canopy of blue sky and flowering trees. Sweet.

And they were hot! Lovely surprise when I was fully expecting to spend the weekend marinating in an unsavory glaze of sunscreen, sweat, and salt. Clean and dry, ahhhh. Hey there Steve the Paddling Chef, this was another great trip you cooked up here. Thanks! 

And here's a photo clubmate Minh just sent, which I think will make the perfect initial Northeastern urban environmental fieldwork submission to the study recently proposed at the Coast of Illinois, a "comprehensive, real-time analysis seeking a direct correlation between morbid lethargy proportional to repetitive tasks and its resolution when treated with random, pleasure directed activities". Yes indeed.

Singing In the Solstice at the William Main Doerflinger Memorial Shanty Sing

Didn't take me long to return to the John A. Noble Maritime Collection at the Sailor's Snug Harbor Cultural Center on Staten Island - a little less than a month after TQ and I chose that as a nice quiet Escape from Black Friday location, I was back with some friends for their monthly William A. Doerflinger Shanty Sing, which runs from 2 pm to 5 pm on the third Sunday of each month. Blogging friend Rick Spilman over at The Old Salt Blog has a new book called The Shantyman coming out soon and in honor of that he'd given an excellent talk about shanties at the NY Ship Lore and Modelbuilding Society back in November; I'd mentioned it on Facebook, with some reference to the monthly sing, and a couple of friends perked up and said, "Let's go!".

I'd never been to a shanty sing before, but I enjoyed it and I think I'll be back. The group was friendly (there were a couple of instances where people spaced on words, and I didn't pick up any sense at all that anyone was looking down their noses at that, which is nice), the choruses were easy enough to sing along with, and although I'd told a clubmate that I wasn't sure that the harmonies would be quite as harmonic as this, there was some good singing. I was able to get a few licks on my tin whistle, and of course joined in enthusiastically on "Mele Kalikimaka" - not a traditional shanty but good grief how many times did I sing that song as a kid??? I was tempted to lead 'em through the Hawaiian Twelve Days of Christmas (Numba One Day of Christmas My Tutu Give To Me, One Mynah Bird in One Papaya Tree) but as a first-timer I felt like that might be a bit much. Maybe next year. Another singer sang The Parting Glass (the hearty version, not the plaintive one), which we sang back in Jerry Kerlin's Irish Song classes at the Irish Arts Center - there are actually a couple of songs I know from there that I wouldn't be surprised to hear at this session.

My friend Gail and I rode the ferry over and then walked up to Snug Harbor. I was a little disappointed in the weather, forecast had called for partly sunny and low 40's and instead it was slate-gray and hovering in the low 30's, but it was still fun walking along the Kill Van Kull and watching all the ships go by, plus we had to stop and smell the Christmas trees at Gerardi's Farmer's Market, which was right along the way. Actually you could see the container ships going by from the room where the session is held - that lent some atmosphere!

Victoria and Steve from the Long Island City Community Boathouse joined us there and had a very good time, and then the four of us ended up going out for a rather spontaneous dinner at Pasticceria Bruno on Forest Avenue, which turned out to be pretty darned good (lovely appetizers, unfortunately gone before I remembered to take pictures).

Photos from the day - click for slideshow view, this is the end of the write-up!

Music Video at Witte's ("Staten Island Graveyard of Ships")

Enjoy!

Thanks to my old friend Jack G. from Yonkers for the great link.

I Did Not Sail To Tottenville Today.

No, I did not sail to Tottenville today, on the Rosemary Ruth or any other sailing vessel.

But I had sailed there a little over a month ago, and I had had the most marvellous time writing up the trip report as far as the Verrazano Narrows Bridge. I'd closed that with the promise, "Part II To Come!"

Well, sometimes it takes me a while to get back to it - but this seems like a good evening to take a break from all the political stuff & wander back through the rest of my pictures, see how much I can remember!

When last we left the charming schooner, after patiently await the passing of a parade of behemoths, she was crossing the Verrazano Narrows to the Staten Island side.

And now - under we go...


and away...


into the Lower Harbor.


Green "21" to port. Lightly frosted with ice, as the shoreline's been all along. Yes, you're right, it's red-right-return, but there's a fair amount of room between this marker and the end of the deep water, we're fine. LOOK at that current! We're ripping along!

The Verrazano recedes in the distance as we head south into the quiet of the lower harbor. Tugster is our tillerman.

These are Hoffman and Swinburne Islands, two of the many tiny islands scattered around the waterways of New York City. These two are entirely artificial, having been constructed of landfill in the 1870's; like so many of those little islands in the "Manhattan archipelago", these two have their history as a place of quarantine. In that respect, they are linked directly with a far more famous pair of little islands - Liberty (once Bedloe's) and Ellis - this was where immigrants who were denied entrance to the country because of disease - either active or feared to be highly possible due to an immigrant's country of origin - were held. You can read an interesting post on the subject here, on Google Earth.


Here's a slightly closer view of the ruins on Swinburne. Today, the only inhabitants are various birds - these little offshore islands make wonderful nesting areas where they can raise their young well away from all us troublesome human-types. There are some seals who've also come to appreciate that privacy in the last few years, although their basking is sometimes interrupted by fascinated kayakers. I haven't heard of any seal sightings yet this year, though - it seems as though perhaps with the winter being as bizarrely warm as it was up until a couple of weeks ago, the seals may not have travelled as far south as they sometimes do.

And that, by the way, is about as close as we can safely get to those islands in the Rosemary Ruth. I noticed that there's a lovely surf break between the two - that's the shallowest spot in the area - that turns out to be indicative of the entire south shore of Staten Island. I was actually surprised just how far we held a course that was nearly due south - my only other boating experience in this area was the kayak circumnavigation of Staten Island for which I joined the Rustbucket Adventure Squad a couple of years ago. In a kayak, you just don't notice the extent of the shallows that border the southern shore of Staten Island, but in a schooner, even a small one, you have to respect the limits of the Old Orchard Shoals, which extend nearly three nautical miles out from shore at their widest point. For ships like the big freighters and car carriers and tankers we were waiting for at the Narrows, the navigable waters are even more restricted - looking at a chart, you can see them laid out like roads, taking the giant ships straight to the ports. The channels are well marked, but being a harbor pilot for those behemoths has got to be a hair-raising job at times. The chart itself speaks to that. In the shorthand language of charts, "obstns" stands for "obstructions", and "wk" stands for "wreck". I see that and it leaves me wondering - is there a story behind it? It must be written down somewhere - even if only on a page somewhere in the dusty old archives of an insurance company.

At any rate...there's the West Bank Light - and we're close enough that Richard's ready to change our heading & sail for the Old Orchard Shoals light. A freighter or bulk carrier, for example, wouldn't be able to cut the particular corner we're cutting - but the Rosemary Ruth draws little enough water that we can get away with it.

And looking at the clock now, I'm afraid that's all I've got time for tonight.

Part III to come!

Photo trip report, Liberty Harbor - Tottenville, 1/28/07

The invitation came in in the middle of last week. Sunday Sailing! Clicked on the evite & there it was - sailing the Rosemary Ruth to Tottenville!

I couldn't accept fast enough - that is, once I'd looked at the forecast & seen temperatures slightly above freezing & wind of 5-10 kts. Nice sailing weather! I hadn't heard much from Richard this winter, and had assumed that he was doing work on the Rosemary Ruth that precluded sailing. He's eventually planning on taking her cruising in the Baltic, so every step of the refurbishment of his "charming pinkie schooner" (to borrow Tugster's phrase) I think I like the word "charming" better than "cute" - "cute" is sort of dismissive, somehow) has to be done right. Turned out that the real problem was a messed-up knee - but Richard's all better now & it was time for the Rosemary Ruth to go the boatyard in Tottenville to put on a few pounds of ballast. Am I remembering right when I say 1,600 lbs? Steel, attached to the keel. Wish I'd thought to take a picture of the diagram - Richard's found another pinkie schooner owner who had done a similar addition of ballast to his & the guy had taken some pictures of the RR's hull & done a little photoshopping to erase the stantions & show exactly where the steel beams needed to go. Richard had already added some ballast, but Richard had not quite interpreted the directions right the first time & ended up with not quite enough weight overall, but too much of what there was aft.

I had been invited on that first Tottenville trip - can't for the life of me figure out why I didn't go, but it was something beyond my control...

So this time - yes yes yes!

Richard emailed me to let me know I could bring someone - TQ had to work, we'd used up his January Sunday off with that glorious Silvermine Tavern/Norwalk Islands paddle, and plus he's not as into sailing as he is into paddling, and I didn't think that an all-day trip with no way to escape if a person were to get cold, bored or both was the best intro to frostbiting. But...hmmm, bet the Tugster would LOVE it. I'd already had the fun of introducing him to Richard when he'd first posted a picture of the RR. He'd clearly had the same response to the sight of this lovely little schooner as I did - plus we'd figured out last year that we have a mutual friend in Brian (remember Brian?), who I thought might come. And having enjoyed his meditations on the various working vessels in the harbor, I thought he'd be a great person to have along on an all-day sail. Think I was right, too! Turned out that Brian's daughters had a concert (now that's a good dad!), but I forgot that as a volunteer on the old boats at the South Street Seaport, of course he would know another friend of Richard's - she's an educator there, and it turned out she was the 4th & final person on the crew roster du jour.

Tugster & I met up succesfully at the Path station. We negotiated the icy streets of Jersey City only to find a locked gate & an apparently deserted Rosemary Ruth. Well, it was a little early...we renegotiated the icy streets in search of hot drinks, found 'em, and returned to the same scene...oh jeeze, had I somehow mistaken the date? Was this going to be one of the more mortifying moments of the winter? Well, I borrowed Tugster cell phone & of course Richard was down below, with an electric heater on and all the hatches closed. Phew. Maggie turned up shortly thereafter. The morning was glorious, but apparently everyone else was scared off by the cold!

Of course we owe them a debt of gratitude - it was only because so many people passed & were going to wake up, look out the window & kick themselves soundly that it was so nice...

Whatever the reason - we were all there & ready to go!



No dinghy needed at the Tottenville Marina - we'll leave that here...


When I'd left Brooklyn in the morning, there wasn't a breath of wind. I figured we'd be motoring - but as we got ready to go, a nice little breeze began to stir in just the right direction to sail off the dock. Sweet! I'd never done that in a schooner! Off with the sail covers, then up with the...CLUNK! What was THAT?


Oops. Right. That would be ice. Formerly water, in a bucket, on deck - introduce one reefing line & a couple of nice cold days & there you go.


Canadians aren't scared of ice. Richard had this one beaten into submission in a jiffy.


And up with the sails, and off we sailed - oh, ok, after a brief interlude of unfouling the mainsail topping lift from a tall piling, and a retrieval of a fisherman halyard that I nearly let get away...oops. Little rusty. Fortunately Richard's very nice to rusty crew. Anyways, topping lift freed & halyard retrieve, off we sailed into a perfect morning -


And I mean perfect. I mean, look at this - could you ask for a more promising morning for an all-day sail in January? It was definitely still below freezing, but not by much, and the breeze being considerate enough to be from the NW meant downwind to reaching most of the way - upwind could have gotten a little on the chilly side! As is was, once we were headed for the Narrows, Richard decided to raise the fisherman (that sail that you see stretched between the masts in those 3 sky shots earlier this week) - that sail goes all the way up to the head & catches the breezes in the lightest of air.


Richard gave me the helm while he helped raise the fisherman. Between the breeze & the powerful ebb, it seemed like we were flying south. We were the only recreational boat out that morning, but there were plenty of "big guys" - freighters and tankers and barges, oh my!

I handed the tiller back over to Richard shortly before we got to the first of the assorted vessels -


The first one we passed was a moored tug and barge. The barge guys looked like they really liked the RR. She has that effect on people.

We worked our way on over to the Brooklyn side of the channel - and we were happy to be there because suddenly, it seemed like morning rush hour, harbor style, had broken loose!

Here comes a car carrier, heading for the Kill Van Kull -

By the time that one had passed, this freighter was in the Narrows - btw, when a freighter's this far away & heading your way, it's WAY WAY WAY too late to think about crossing in front of it - we were very happy to be out of the channel nice & safe on the Brooklyn side.

Looking back up north - there goes the freighter, here comes a container ship out of the Kill - moving pretty fast - the tanker with the orange superstructure was also showing signs of stirring and I think there was another one in the anchorage that also had some smoke giving evidence of engines being on...this is why crossing the Kill van Kull is not one of my favorite things to do in a kayak in New York Harbor - it gets like this pretty often! You just have to wait & be patient, eventually there will be a break - but there's just an awful lot of gross tonnage passing through this narrow channel.

Tugster's camera was getting a good workout too - he seemed to be having a great time & I was already wondering what sort of meditations these would inspire.

The container ship blew past us - they were flying, look at that bow wake, and I WISH I'd taken a picture of their wake as it rocked the RR wildly, then traveled on to crash on the bridge footings & the Brooklyn seawall.

Finally, as the containership passed beneath the Verrazano Narrows Bridge, we saw our chance to cross, and grabbed it -

and on we went, under the bridge and out to the Lower Harbor!
part II to come!