Strange times, and a social isolation paddle

Interesting times continue. This was my last look at the intersection of Broadway and Houston Street in SoHo on Tuesday, St. Patrick's Day. It had been a drizzly morning but was clearing up nicely by the time I was heading home, and ordinarily this would've been busy, but things were already well wound down. 

This was my office earlier in the day. There were actually a couple of people besides me on this floor, but it was definitely a ghost town. Scholastic had encouraged staff to start working from home starting the Friday before; I was a little behind the curve because although I wouldn't call myself a technophobe, as far as connection speed and upgrades and what have you, I'm definitely a techno-meh. I've also resisted the work-from-home thing for my entire business life; I know a lot of people who like it but I've always preferred to keep a very clear boundary between work and home. That all being the case, it took a couple of extra days. I'd meant to start on Tuesday but couldn't get onto TQ's wifi, and after a good honest attempt with him trying to help me from work, I decided I would just go on in (we were encouraged to work from home but the office was open, so that wasn't any trouble) and we could sort things out when we were both home in the evening. That worked out fine and I'm now 2 surprisingly ordinary days into working from home.

Strange seeing such an empty SoHo.

Also strange suddenly having the Sebago early season go away - April is usually the time when things start happening, but of course big gatherings in the clubhouse are off the table for the time being.

Paddling is still a fine social distance type sport, though, and I did jump on a very empty bus to Canarsie on Sunday. The week before had left me seriously on edge and very worried about the working from home thing. I barely did anything on Saturday - maybe laundry? - but I'd been itching all week to get out on Jamaica Bay and on Sunday afternoon I managed a most satisfying Social Isolation Paddle. I wouldn't actually have been opposed to having friends join me, but I just wasn't organized enough, and sometimes a solo paddle can be the best unwind - you do have to be more careful, but you can just go as far as you want, at whatever pace you want.

We've been seeing seals at Ruffle Bar regularly, and during the week I'd been thinking I would take my binoculars & go see if I could watch them without disturbing them (they are very skittish about kayaks when they're hauled out), but I ended up deciding not to bother them and go look for spring birds on Canarsie Pol and Broad Channel Island instead. Oystercatchers could be back already, but I didn't see or hear any. It's definitely a little bit early for the ospreys who use the Canarsie Pol nest platform, and I could see from halfway down the island that they weren't back yet, the cormorants were still hanging out on the pier next to the platform. They like that as a nice spot to perch and dry their feathers in the wintertime, but the ospreys are very territorial and once they get back those cormorants have to find another spot.

But it was still a lovely day, and it was great seeing the new flowers at the club (the daffodils, crocuses, and cherry blossoms in the last post were there), and hey, you can't get much more socially isolated than this without actually leaving NYC.

5 Years Ago Today, We Had This Thing Called "WINTER"

Wow! This popped up as today's FB Memory. Impressive to see because winter just hasn't really wintered this this year, we've more just had this long slow segue from fall to spring. There were a couple of short cold snaps but just a few days each, and I don't think we've been below 20 degrees all winter.

This was on March 7th in 2015. I'd gone to the Caribbean earlier in the winter, come back, and gotten a cold that took weeks to get rid of. I'd gone to the club and discovered that I apparently hadn't missed out on too much paddling in that time!

I don't remember the specific statistics for the winter of 2015, but it must've been a lot winterier than this winter has been!

I'm frustrated that I haven't done more paddling this year - temperatures have been positively balmy but weekend weather hasn't been conducive, windy and/or rainy. Hope to get out there more in March! 

Presidents' Day Paddle 2020 - With Seals!

I couldn't have asked for a better kickoff for my local 2020 paddling year! I do have a little more Florida to share, including my 2nd and 3rd paddles of the year (no pix from the 3rd but it was very similar to the 2nd), but the Presidents' Day Paddle I called for was so spectacular, I have to share a few pix now.

Took a while to get to this first paddle out of Sebago - 2020 had so far been teasing us year-round paddlers with lovely paddling weather on work days and weekends of high winds and/or heavy rain. I have been heading for work wanting to play hooky so many times this year, but we finally had a day off coinciding with wonderful weather. Hooray!

Forecast was for temperatures in the mid to high 40's, and winds...well, as shown above. Sweet, huh? I put out the suggestion to gather at the club at 10, launch at 11, and head out to Ruffle Bar to check in on the seals we've been seeing out there regularly this winter. I had a number of "oooh sounds great but..." emails but by Saturday night I had a couple of friends interested - and what fun, it ended up being the ROMANY GALS (won'tcha come out today, and dance in the sun on the bay)!

It's a little silly but I do just love the look of multiple Romany kayaks out on the water together, plus Chris and Lori are just lovely people to paddle with. Lori's actually gotten a Rebel kayak that she mostly paddles these days, but she still has her pretty powder-blue-decked Romany, and with the Rebel being a lower-volume boat, and winter gear (even on a nice day) being pretty bulky, she decided to bring that one. So that was a silly little thing that I was gleeful about! 

The air was so clear we had beautiful views of the Manhattan skyline - Chris took this one, I took a similar one of her and Lori, and then after the photo break we headed on to Ruffle Bar.

Beautiful wispy clouds and reflections - 

And then when we got out to Ruffle Bar, we couldn't quite figure out what was going on on the sandbar here. We've gotten accustomed to seeing one or two seals hauled out here on the sandbar - this turned out to be six seals all snuggled up together in the sun. Unfortunately, because we weren't understanding what we were seeing, we got a little too close and it became six seals stampeding for the sea. :( 

As we were watching the seals, we saw another paddler approaching - he had a good forward stroke and we were expecting it to be someone else from the club, but it turned out to be a Manhattan-based paddler who owns a Pakboat and can jump on the city's ferry system when he feels like seeing someplace new. He's actually friends with 3 other Sebago paddlers who were formerly at New York Kayak at Pier 40 on the Hudson (boy do I miss having that shop so handy) but was just out exploring on his own, launching from the Rockaway Peninsula (possibly at the suggestion of Johna at Wind Against Current). As we were chatting with him and watching the seals head back towards the sandbar, another strong paddler came into view from the south side of Ruffle Bar - this did turn out to be a clubmate, Derrick, who'd decided to join us only left home too late to make our launch time. He actually saw us paddling out of the basin just as he arrived - we didn't see him but he's a fast paddler and our pause at Ruffle Bar was long enough for him to catch us. 

After a couple more minutes, we said goodbye to the visitor and the seals. My original suggestion had been to just go around Ruffle Bar, but we all seemed to be veering off towards the east side of Canarsie Pol, and when I suggested we could go around that, too, everyone agreed. 9.2 miles and just as nice as we could've hoped for. Lovely, lovely start for my NYC paddling year!

BTW, if you enjoyed these and are a glutton for er I mean and you'd like to see a few more photos, and in slightly better quality, I've put up a Flickr album. Click here to visit.  

What's Wrong With This Picture?

Remember the "One Of These Things Is Not Like The Other" song from Sesame Street? Hum that song while you review (click on the photos for details as usual)...

Hint #1

Hint #2

Hint #3

Did you guess?

That's right - NO TRUSTY ROMANY. Boo. It was a beautiful, beautiful day on the Paerdagat Basin today, temperature in the 60's and sunny, but just howling winds. See those light streaks on the water behind the docks in the neighboring boat club? That's the difference between the areas protected from the wind in the lee of the docks and the surface that's feeling the 25 mph winds.

The weather gods have been teasing me unmercifully since the holidays ended and work is back to normal - we are 7 work days into 2020 and I swear that half of those would've been beautiful paddling days (remember, a careful paddler is going out waterproof this time of year so a little rain is no trouble at all - freezing rain is icky but plain old watery rain is OK). But the weekends have both been busts. Boo! After all the great paddling I squeezed into December I'm really missing being on the water. Hope things improve!

I was at the club for an instructor meeting - summer seems so far away but it's time to start making plans for the 2020 season. The meeting was at 10 and I was really, really hoping that it would work well to go for a paddle afterwards - but nope, not for me, not today.

Oh well. I guess being forced to kick off one's paddling year in Florida is not the worst thing in the world.

January 2019...repeating soon!

1/13 update: This Afternoon: Mostly cloudy, with a high near 47. Northeast wind around 6 mph.

Tuesday: A 30 percent chance of rain, mainly after 3pm. Mostly cloudy, with a high near 46. East wind 6 to 8 mph.

Wednesday: Sunny, with a high near 49. West wind 7 to 9 mph.
This is what I'm talking about  - howling winds all weekend followed by 3 days of perfectly fine paddling weather while I'm at work. BOO! Come on 2020 weather, shape up! 

New Year's Day with the Sebago Canoe Club

Happy New Year from Brooklyn!

Sad to say I did NOT join this salty crew on the water today - there was a small craft advisory, and I've gotten in so much really beautiful paddling in the last few weeks that I just wasn't inspired to deal with all the winter gear for what was likely to be a shortish paddle with a hard slog back home at the end. I'd already been on the fence and then when Mary, one of the club's avid birders, proposed a morning walk in Canarsie Park, I decided to join her instead. We started out at the club just in time to see these guys off, though, so that was fun. 

They did have a good time, they went to Mill Basin, which affords some protection from the wind, and they had a seal following them for a bit, always neat, but it was pretty gusty out there, and I did enjoy the walk -- Canarsie Park is so close to the club but I've never really spent a lot of time so it was fun doing that. We started by walking straight down to the basin and out along the shoreline of the bay, then we came back and walked around the pond. Not a lot of birds (I guess they're not crazy about gusty high winds either) but the sky was providing some dramatic views and it was good to start the year outside. After that, it was back to the club for the usual great potluck lunch and hanging out with clubmates, with a meeting called to order at 2:00 to discuss achievements of 2019, plan for 2020, and vote 3 great Conditional Members in as Senior Members. A good start to 2020 even it I didn't get on the water. Hope everyone reading had a Happy New Year too!

All pictures from our walk after this - click on the first one for a slideshow view. 

Christmas Bird Count Part 3 - Christmas Seal!

I'm being followed! :D As usual, click on any photo for a slideshow view.

Merry Christmas! Finally finishing off my Christmas Bird Count posts a week and a half later. I enjoyed these ones, such a different focus from anything I've done before. However, I think I'm giving myself away as still far from a Real Birder by admitting that I became very distracted from birds when this seal started following us around.

I've seen plenty of seals out kayaking but never had one quite so interested. We first spotted it near Ruffle Bar, where we'd seen the oystercatchers. 

Seals are frequently curious about kayakers, but this one followed us for 20 minutes, waited in the water while we took a shore break on Little Egg Marsh, and then joined us again for a little bit longer! First photo (the one immediately above) was at 10:52, last one (final one on this post, these are all in order except the first one and the one from the 21st, next shot down) at 11:08, which was before our shore break. I thought it had left when we got out, because as we beached and started getting out of our boats, there was a big splash right behind us - it must not have expected that, but then we could see it nearby from time to time while we had our tea and snacks, and then it came right back when we got on the water again. With that thrown in, that seal stayed with us for probably 40 minutes. It was the only one we saw, so although maybe it's unscientific, I'm a layperson and I'm gonna say it was maybe a little lonely and looking for company. Neat encounter, but felt a little sad, too.

The Christmas Bird Count is a great piece of citizen science coordinated by the Audubon Society, and with this seal posing for pictures so nicely I was also able to make a contribution to Gotham Whale's work to catalogue and track our local marine mammals. If you are a NYC area boater or frequenter of the shore, and you spot a seal, dolphin, or whale, try to get a picture and report it - the more sightings are reported, the more accurate a picture Gotham Whale gets . It's great that our local waterways are now healthy enough to support a growing population of these creatures - if you'd told me 10 years ago that at some point I was eventually going to be going whalewatching out of Queens at least once a summer, I'm not sure I would've believed it. Good stuff, right? click here for the report form.

I got a really nice thank-you note for my submission saying that this was my 2nd submission and I'd been one of their first reporters in the earlier days of the organization. I have not been good about reporting since then - part of it is that it's not always easy to get a photo, most seals are not as friendly as this one was, but I am going to try to get better about reporting when I can get a picture. I actually have one from my solstice paddle on Saturday, when 2 were hauled out on the sandbar at Ruffle Bar - that seems to be the center of operations for our J-Bay phocidae. Supporting my looking-for-company theory - although one of the 2 seals was thoroughly unskittish about our presence, which made me think maybe that was our kayak-confident one, neither of them had any interest in hanging out with teh hoomans.

Solstice Seals, 12/21 - same area as where we picked up our bird-watcher-watcher on the 14th.

That's actually good, I worry about seals that are too interested in people - there was a Jersey Shore one who had to go to a zoo a couple of years back because it got too comfortable with us. It sounds like it settled into zoo life well -- click here for that story -- but it still just seems sad for a wild seal to end up in a tank. So, if that was our same seal, good to see it preferring to sunbathe with a seal friend than come say hello to the paddlers.

Here are the rest of the seal photos from the Christmas Bird Count. What a lovely encounter!