7/31 - First evening paddle of 2020

Boy, can't believe this was two weeks ago! on the way home I just couldn't wait to do a blog post, but I didn't get to it fast enough, and this is one of those times of year when work gets a little bonkers and I just didn't have the energy to blog after long days of number crunching. Wrapped up the last of the gauntlet of deadline projects today, though! 

I'm just doing a writeup here but of course I took photos - click here to visit my Flickr album from the day. 

So this really wonderful paddle was my first evening paddle of the year. I've been getting out on the water pretty regularly, but since I'm staying off the bus and don't feel like I have enough biking experience in the city to be out at night, evenings haven't really been an option - so when clubmates Etan and Andrea got in touch with me, invited me to join them and one more clubmate, Dan, for a Friday evening paddle, mentioning they had access to a car for the evening and could get me and TQ's bike home after the paddle, I was delighted to take them up on it. 

It was a beautiful evening, nice temperature, very light breeze, high water and a nearly full moon rising. The plan was to paddle to Four Sparrows Marsh for some evening birding, but our first stop was at the "Jeep Marsh", a small marsh partway between the club and Mill Basin, nicknamed by club members after an engine block in the inlet that's visible when the water is lower (that's urban paddling for you). As we were paddling by, Dan or Etan noticed some interesting activity in the marsh, lots of tips of fins breaking the surface of the water, so we went in to see what we could see. Turned out to be a school of rays, probably cow-nosed - very cool to see! TQ had seen a school once a couple of years ago, so I knew they were out there, but I'd never seen them. Unfortunately I wasn't able to get any pictures, the wingtips would only break the surface for a moment, but they were all over the place in the marsh and it was great to encounter a new critter in the bay.  

oof, reminds me I had made a couple of promises about this Inktober drawing from last year that was very popular among the paddling groups with whom I shared it. I had "find a place that can do a really high-quality scan" on my to-do list early in the year - then of course all plans went off the rails. Things are opening up enough now that maybe I can resume that search. We didn't have this many rays, and they were swirling around hunting in the marsh, but still reminded me of drawing this, and I wonder what it would've looked like from above. 

 
We hung out watching the rays for a while, then headed on to Four Sparrows Marsh, where a variety of egrets and herons were settling in for the evening. Etan spotted one very large object in a dead snag at the top of a tree as we were approaching the marsh; I'd brought binoculars along so he asked me to see if I could tell what it was. When I first looked, I thought it might be a very large raptor, but then it wasn't moving, and I couldn't see any details, so I downgraded my guess to Hefty bag or some sort of similar trash, blown up there by the storm earlier in the week. Wish I'd handed the binoculars over to Etan at that point for a second opinion - a moment after I'd said I thought it was just garbage, it turned its big raptorial head and spread its big raptorial wings and flew off to another tree further away from those nosy paddlers.

Still not sure what it was but it looked bigger than our local hawks, and darker then an osprey - really wondering if it was maybe a juvenile bald eagle. A friend and I had seen an adult near Floyd Bennett Field in March, and then during the Breezy Point Light paddle a couple of weeks ago, Dottie had spotted a pair of very large, dark raptors over the Rockaway Inlet (really not too far from Mill Basin, at least as the crow - or eagle - flies); she pointed them out to me and we agreed that they were too big & dark to be ospreys. It's possible we've got some young bald eagles in the area - it would be very cool if that was the case!

Click here for an excellent photo series showing bald eagle plumage from first year juvenile to adult. 

We got well into Four Sparrows, the moon was rising, it was absolutely beautiful and we paddled around in there until we started getting chewed up by hungry little flying things. We paused outside the marsh to put on decklights and then headed for home under a beautiful sunset sky. What a perfect evening! 

Perfect Weekend - Saturday: To The Lighthouse!

OK, circumstances are still far from perfect, but hey, it was a fine, if hot, summer weekend and I absolutely milked it with paddling on Saturday and the greenmarket and my first real swim of the summer on Sunday.

I was absolutely delighted with Saturday's paddle, because in addition to it being a good day to be on the water and a very nice group of folks to paddle with (grateful to the friend who's been pulling so many of these together, I've been utterly disorganized about planning paddles myself, so it's great to have things to jump in on at the last minute), this one finally broke out of this weird 6-mile paddle thing I was complaining about in my last trip report.

Saturday's destination wasn't really clear when we set out, except that because it was hot we knew we wanted to head out to the Gil Hodges Memorial Bridge (aka Marine Park Bridge) to get to some cleaner water to play in. We ended up going pretty close to 14 miles and despite the health issues that have me not feeling quite at 100%, I still felt good all the way through and even had the energy to run after some of the surfable wakes. I was absolutely delighted, I wasn't sure how I would hold up for a longer paddle.

We launched at 9:30 am and had a fine ebb-assisted paddle to the bridge. We took a nice leisurely snack break with much floating in the water without our boats at Riis Landing, just past the bridge on the Queens side (Rockaway Peninsula). We got back on the water around noon. Flood was going to start around 1 so we decided to paddle a little further down towards Breezy Point.

At one point the paddle nearly turned into a restaurant paddle when one of our group recognized Kennedy's, a waterfront establishment where he'd had some really good mussels. He suggested stopping and getting a couple of orders to share. I'd actually packed myself an unusually good box lunch of fruit, cheese, crackers, and prosciutto, and had grazed pretty heavily at Riis Landing, and there were a couple of others who were also not ready for more food. It also turned out that one of the latter group was really interested in paddling on down to the "lighthouse" - she's a strong paddler and has been a club member for years, so I was surprised she'd never been, but that sounded like a perfect destination! So we agreed to skip the mussels, go on to the tower (just a little ways further on), and then come back and meet the others for the paddle home. I went in to let the diners know what our plans were -- just in time to see a resident walk up to them to let them know that this was a private beach.

That wasn't really surprising. The Breezy Point communities are protective of their beaches - no problem with paddling by, people in boats will say hi (oh, and everybody out in boats yesterday was SO happy to be out in boats that the greetings were even more friendly than usual - we all agreed that on the water was the only place to be and we wished we could stay there all week), but they don't want non-residents landing there, even if it's just to run up to Kennedy's for a couple of orders of mussels. So the disappointed diners rejoined us, we went on down to the "lighthouse", got there right at slack water, and then turned around for a good flood-assisted ride back to the club. We couldn't have timed it better if we'd actually planned it - darned good winging it!

The "lighthouse" is an interesting piece of local history. It was actually built as a fire control tower for the Fort Tilden gun emplacements - click here to learn more about it. That's an old, old, archived web page and doesn't look very pretty but it's the most informative thing I've found about the tower.

All pictures after this, more than I would usually post but it was fun getting out of the bay, and it was another really photogenic day. BTW the thing that looks like the top of a clay pot is actually a "sand collar", which is a thing that a certain type of snail (moon snails) make to protect their eggs, which are embedded in the sand/mucus construction. Interesting thing to find!

And although I didn't get any photos, we may have seen two young bald eagles flying over the inlet - they were bigger and much darker than the distinctively-marked osprey that we see on almost every summer paddle. Oh - and the fishing chatter on the VHF channel we were using said that there were sharks, dolphins, and a whale in the area! Busy waters out there!

OK, now on to the photos - click on the first one for a slideshow view. Enjoy! 

Sebago Dawn

sebago dawn from Bonnie on Vimeo.

Here is something peaceful for you. Dawn at the Sebago Canoe Club. I am not an early riser as a usual thing, but I got an invitation to try kayak fishing yesterday. I got a ride to the club with TQ, who leaves for work at 5 am.

There was this big peachy nearly full moon setting (sadly no pix, I just glimpsed it as it went down behind some trees across the basin) and a mockingbird performing his Concert To Greet The New Day. 

 My NYC fishing record continues to be "has yet to harm any fish" but I did get to bring home some good fresh fluke - one of the experienced fishers who took me out caught a great big one and was leaving town today. So at least I got a lesson in fish cleaning - and a delicious dinner of fresh fluke and fluke roe sauteed in butter with rice and steamed zucchini. More filets in the freezer, too.

Not many pix from the day because I had my hands full with fishing gear - but it was another beautiful day out on the bay.

Memorial Day Weekend Birthday Paddle!

All things (particularly cancer and coronavirus, fie on both of them!) considered, I've really had a wonderful Memorial Day + Birthday Weekend. There was enough good food that I may do another post about that, but the best part of the weekend was that by pure coincidence, the Sebago Canoe Club reopened after 62 days (not that I was counting or anything ;-D ) closed while the city and state dealt with the initial onslaught of COVID-19. Marinas were among the facilities closed by order of Governor Cuomo, and although I don't think of our club as a marina, that's the category under which we fall. The club closed on March 22nd, as I vividly recall because a friend and I happened to sneak out for that one last paddle that day and only found out about the ruling when we came back to find the gate sealed with a lot of packing tape wrapped around a sign that said "CLUB CLOSED". Oops.

Anyways, things are gradually opening up again here in NYC - "returning to normal" would be a stretch, but as we've gotten past the awfulness of the first wave of the virus, people are now carefully figuring out how at least some commerce and recreation can resume. As NY State allowed marinas to reopen, NYC parks followed with particular guidelines for city marinas; unfortunately those were aimed at more traditional bigger-boat marinas, so Sebago at first wasn't able to, but our board went to them and talked to them the difficulties things like only single boats being allowed to go out posed for a paddling club.

We've been a tenant of the parks department for a very long time, and Parks listened to the board and asked the board to come back with a management plan addressing various concerns. The board worked with them, and although the final results unfortunately mean only those of us with our own boats get to paddle or sail until further notice - at least we have that, and I'm grateful to the board and the parks department for working that out.

Official reopening was actually the 23rd, but it poured all day that day so TQ and I stayed home and read and messed around on our computers all day - quite relaxing. If anyone paddled in the rain, more power to them!

The 24th was my birthday and TQ took the day off to take me paddling!

It wasn't the most beautiful day ever, a little gray and overcast, but oh, was it beautiful. The water's still pretty cool - TQ and I both got a little warm and ducked our heads using each other's bows for support and had ZERO desire to roll after that, partial dunks were plenty. I was delighting in NOT being in a drysuit since the water's up around 60 now and a wetsuit is sufficient - but I didn't quite want to get that all the way wet. I'll let the water warm up a bit more!

My last paddle, some of the summer denizens were just back, now the bay is thoroughly into the Spring swing. Laughing gulls laughing, brants still here but discussing their flight plans for their travels to their northern nesting grounds (hrrnk hrrnk hrrnk!), sandpipers and swalllows flitting by, ospreys tending their little ones (we could see little heads popping up in the nest at Canarsie Pol while one of the parent perched nearby).

And of course oystercatchers - one of my favorite moments of the paddle was when a pair of oystercatchers took off from Canarsie Pol as TQ and I were paddling parallel to the Pol's north shore, maybe 30 yards out. The pair flew a big circle around us, wheet-wheet-wheeting all the way so easy to follow - first crossing behind us, then flying past us well off on the Brooklyn side, and then coming back in towards the Pol and then, wheet-wheet-wheet, right past my bow! Felt like the perfect welcome back to the bay. Also possible we were being cursed out but hey, it's my projection and I'll make it chipper if I want to. Yougottaproblemwiddat? 

    O

:D />

O

We kept it on the short side, around Canarsie Pol, over to the Duck Point Marshes, and then home again. I'd thought of going through the marshes to see what was stirring there but as we approached the break between the marshes, we could see that there was a huge flonk of brant relaxing in there. Hrrnk hrrnk hrrnk. Jamaica Bay's bird life is so rich that it's really hard to paddle without putting up some birds, but I didn't want to wilfully disturb a flock that big, and there was no way to go through without spooking the entire gang, so we scratched that leg. Ended up doing about 6 and a quarter miles and that was good; we were both feeling OK in our boats despite the long break, but there's this "Sunscreen" thing we'd both forgotten, and although it wasn't bright and sunny, it was that thin cloud cover that lets the UV rays right through. So we're both feeling slightly overexposed today.

And we got back in time to say hello to the larger Usual Suspects gang who'd gone out earlier - I'd bailed from that paddle when TQ told me he was taking the day off because we're not fast starters, and although the group start time was hardly crack o' dawn, we were still going to have to hustle ourselves a bit. It was really nice to just go when we were ready to go, but it was also SO nice to actually see folks and get some in-person birthday greetings, even with face masks and social distancing. Really couldn't have asked for a nicer day under the circumstances!

And today I did an exploratory bike ride to the club; I can get there in half an hour without even pushing too hard, so that'll work great! I didn't get going early enough to actually paddle (partly to stay out of the sun), but it was a nice ride, I went on over to Canarsie Park after the club, they've got nice bike trails there that link to the Brooklyn Greenway bike trail, so I got in a nice leg along Jamaica Bay. Looking forward to some biking/kayaking crosstraining - that's actually great for fitness!

Just photos now - click on any photo for a slideshow view. 

More from Mother's Day Weekend in Prospect Park

Oof, I had a very busy work week! Surprise, surprise, working from home hasn't made any difference in the usual timing of times when I have too much to do. Got a couple more forecasts this week then hopefully will quiet down. Anyways, had more pictures from my Prospect Park walk on the 9th - I'm just going to share those today. Pretty day, I decided to walk instead of bike because it was really breezy and I still don't trust myself on a bike that much.

I wish I'd taken my Lumix with the zoom lens because it turned out to be a good bird day - in addition to the robin I shared on Mother's Day (ok, truth is I don't know whether that was Mom Robin or Pop Robin, but I loved sharing that), I also saw a Hairy Woodpecker, a Black and White Warbler (first time I ever saw one of those, neat looking bird, looks like a high-fashion sparrow!) and 2 ospreys fishing the lake. The ospreys were a surprise - I expect them around salt water but I don't think I've ever seen them in Prospect Park - heard their call though & saw them a minute later. I guess freshwater fish are just as good as salt. And there was an unusual boat getting ready to go in the lake - the Floating Goat! So there, phew, I can keep calling this a boat blog, even though I haven't been on the water in weeks now.

SOON though! Can't wait!

All pictures after this - click on any photo for a slideshow view.