Best Laid Plans

Monday - The Rough Plan.



Monday - The Actual Paddle, roughly.


Pretty nice day out there, y'know?

Days like that are another good reason to always take more water than you think you'll need. That way, when one of your friends says "It's too nice to stop, why don't we keep going?", at least you don't have to figure out where you're going to stop for a refill!

Hudson River Pageant & Water Dance Of Boats - Gallery Done!

I had gone to see my friend Laurie performing in the Alice Farley-choreographed "Water Dance of Boats", the grand-finale of the Hudson River Pageant earlier in May - between that (which was extremely photogenic) and the Laser regatta I've just had way too many pictures to sort through & not enough time, but I finally finished the Hudson River Pageant gallery! Got the parade, got the Dance, and lots of backstage after-the-show shots!

From Hudson River Pageant

Thought I was actually going to have a nice little video after I figured out how to stick QuickTime clips together last night - I'd cobbled together six and a half minutes or so of parade & boat-dancing, then set my computer to work uploading my creation to YouTube, feeling ever so clever. Many many hours later, YouTube said "Here you go, Your Cleverness" - and it was only the first clip. Bah. So much for my dreams of becoming a video editor. Oh wait, that was never one of my dreams. Phew, what a relief!

I'm uploading the individual clips now. That should go better. In the meantime, enjoy the pix & have a very happy Memorial Day weekend!

Caption Contest At SF Sailing Examiner -

Too strange not to pass along, and I couldn't resist giving the captioning a shot.

Thanks for the oddity, Ed!

Sebago Laser District 8 Winner's Report

Blake Marriner has put up a VERY nice Winner's Report about our regatta over on the Laser District 8 site. Thanks, Blake! I think we all had a great time doing this.

I'll add that I've posted pictures too, but right now it's just a completely unedited mess in my Flickr photostream, not quite ready for general viewing. I took out the ones where the camera didn't focus & most of the "incinerating tent caterpillars while we wait for our guests to arrive" series, but that was about the extent of the first cut. I'll be picking my favorites for one of my photo reports with captions over the next couple of days, and I'll post a link here when I'm done. However, If you were there or are otherwise specifically interested in seeing a hundred-plus uncaptioned random pictures of the regatta, clicking on the picture of Blake will take you to Flickr.

Pretty Good Name For A Boat.

At least I liked it.

Taken on board the RC boat.

Pea-Soup Sailing at Sebago's First-Ever Laser District 8 Regatta!

What was I saying the other day, about always carrying a compass because of Jamaica Bay's ability to occasionally cough up a proper pea-souper?

Saturday's was pretty good!

The weather may've scared off a few potential participants (or more like "given them the excuse they were looking for not to drive into the wilds of Canarsie" ;D, c'mon, we all know that Laser racers don't scare that easily), and I think a lot of us were starting to get that slightly queasy what-if-we-had-a-party-and-nobody-came sort of feeling, but then, phew, the doorbell started to ring, so to speak. By nine-thirty or so, we had enough to make a proper race of it, and then, with a couple more late arrivals, we had enough to make for a very nice day of racing at the first-ever Laser District 8 regatta hosted by the Sebago Canoe Club. A good start for an event we hope will get bigger & better!

Here was one of the early first-place finishes by the gentleman who eventually took home the first-place plaque. Sorry about the big wobble at the end, I was the recorder & I forgot to stop the camera as I went for my pencil!


Lots more pictures to come!

p.s. - Joe Joe Joe! Today's picture? NOT MY FAULT! The Puffin made me do it!

...O
:D/>
.O

Cross-posted at the Sebago Canoe Club Blog.

List #2 - 10 Things I Won't Leave My Urban Dock Without Having In My Sea Kayak,

Even Though the Coast Guard Doesn't Say I Have To Have Them!

Part 2 of my participation in Tillerman's Group Writing Project, "Lists".

Actually this was the list I'd first set out to do on Tuesday night, but then I decided that maybe before I talked about the things I always have even though they aren't required, it would make sense to talk about the things that ARE required, particularly since there just aren't that many of those.

Tonight it's on to 10 of the non-required things that I always always always have along.

Really, they all just make sense & almost all of them are going to be items that most conscientious kayakers (maybe even conscientious boaters in general) carry, so there won't be a lot of explanation (sorry, Tillerman, this isn't going to be nearly as interesting as you might have thought it was).

You'll notice a little overlap with Tuesdays post, because some of these items are items that aren't required ARE recommended on your VSC. Actually, when I first mentioned this idea to Tillerman, the list name was "Ten Things I Won't Leave My Urban Dock Without, Even Though The Coast Guard Doesn't Care" - but looking over the Vessel Safety Check checklist, I realized that that wasn't quite the case. I think there's a difference between "not caring" and "not requiring". As I mentioned on Tuesday, the Coast Guard isn't out there to play nanny - they require the most key items; everything else, they leave to your discretion. Personally, I appreciate that.

BTW, this isn't everything I always carry - just the first 10 that spring to mind.

So without further ado,
here's list number two!
Whoop toodle de do!

1. A VHF. First & foremost, it's a lifeline. I hope to god I never have to use in to call for help - kayakers are a self-reliant lot & for one of us to hit that red key, things would have to be pretty awful - but if I do, I have it. Less dramatically, but still very nice - in more trafficked areas, it saves you the stress of guessing who's going where when. Recommended, not required, but it's always charged & with me.

2. Extra lights, on deck & lit before twilight. CG regs are one white light, ready to show in time to avert a collision. If you were trying to do that on the NYC waterways, you'd give yourself an ulcer keeping an eye on all the boats around you & trying to figure out when it was time to show the light (not to mention that to show the light, you have to stop paddling). I carry a split red-green light for my bow (that's nice where there are lots of headlights & streetlights & stuff, people see that & they know you are a boat, not a reflection), a headlamp that I wear facing backwards, and a 360-degree white stern light that sticks on my back deck with a suction cup. Might be overkill some places, in NYC it just makes sense to totally over-light.

3. A tow rope. Not even mentioned for the VSC but it's a nice long piece of strong line (mine's Spectra, oooh lar lar) neatly stored close at hand & what boater in the world doesn't understand how handy that can be? Sometimes I even tow things with it.

4. A spare paddle. Paddles break, and although you could theoretically get yourself home paddling canoe-style, it's a heck of a lot easier to just pull out the extra paddle.

5. A space blanket. It lives in the first-aid kit bag (actually another recommended, not required item I always have along). In ten years I've only broken mine out once but that one time - boy, was I happy to have it! I usually have some extra outer layers along - but that day, it was one of those gruesome, humid NYC scorchers, the paddling plan wasn't particularly ambitious & a windbreaker just slipped my mind. We ended going ashore on Canarsie Pol to wait out a thunderstorm we'd been silly enough to get caught while chasing fish. One of us had a jacket which he put on. The other two of us got drenched. Felt fabulous at first but then we started to actually get chilly, at which point it hit me that of course I had my space blanket, which turned out to be big enough to share. Made the wait much less miserable & I was very glad I had it.

6. A compass. I have one that's supposed to mount on the deck that I've never gotten around to mounting. In the multi-year interim, I have a little Silva orienteering compass that lives in my PFD. The NYC area isn't as notorious for fog as, say, Maine, but every once in a while you can get a proper pea-souper.

7. Food & drink. At the very least, no matter how short the paddle, there's always at least an energy bar in my PFD. Smart motorboaters always make sure they have more fuel than they need to get where they're going, right? Food is kayak fuel. And cookies are good for morale. On the drink side - as much water as I think I'll need & then an extra bottle or two so I won't run out & have some to share if somebody else doesn't. I'm not saying I'm always smart enough to remember to drink enough of it - but I don't leave the dock without it. In the winter I add at least one thermos of something hot & sweet (the sugar's good for energy); preferably hot cider, the unfiltered kind, with a cinnamon stick in it. If I forgot to buy cider, then it's hot tea with honey, or cocoa (none of yer watery Swiss Miss crap, either, I make my cocoa with milk and Ghirardelli Chocolate Hazelnut Cocoa). Again, I try to bring enough to share - in this case, it's not just about morale - hot sweet drinks help the body handle cold.

8. A small repair kit. OK, for shorter paddles sometimes that consists of duct tape & a knife. But with that & a couple other items that I usually have, if I happened to hole my boat on a submerged piling or something, I'd be able to patch things up enough to get myself back to the club.

9. A pump. I may not have it out on deck if I'm paddling with a group of friends, but it's always in one of the hatches.

10. Last but not least - and maybe the most specifically urban of all the non-CG-required things I carry - money. Actually, it's my whole purse now that I've gone to Sebago, where there are a lot more people coming & going, gates & doors left open - I've never had anything stolen at Sebago, knock wood, but my purse is only one non-paddling item I take to the club that would both really tempt a person to swipe it & it would wreck a nice day if they did. So I just take the whole thing with me. It's also actually quite a good way to keep my keys close at hand & easy to find on land (you need them for the padlocks on the clubhouse & the containers) but securely stashed, zipped in & very unlikely to go in the water when I move to the dock. In Manhattan, the situation was a little more secure & the locks were combination, so the main thing was cash. I always carried a twenty in a lifejacket pocket & I would joke about it being my urban emergency kit. It wasn't really a joke, though, the idea was that if I got in real trouble, I'd take out somewhere & use the cash to get home. I only ended up having to do that once, with a friend on a trip that went quite badly wrong. Complicated story, Murphy's law was in full & frightening effect that day. I have never in all my life been quite so happy to throw in the towel as I was that day. What a relief it was to get my totally wiped-out friend/client off the water at the South Street Seaport. We got permission to leave the boats until we could retrieve them, we packed up our stuff, grabbed our paddles, I pulled out the "urban emergency kit" and pretty soon we were back at Manhattan Kayak. Good end to a bad day.

And that's it for the list, too! There's definitely more stuff I carry - but it's past my bedtime & I actually think that this list of 10 does cover the stuff I really do always have along, even on the shortest paddle.

At least in my sea kayak.

Due to the complete absence of hatches, surfski's a different matter entirely!

Orion Skyblazer Safety Notice Update & Clarified Instructions

Here's that post I said I was going to do about Orion Skyblazer red aerial flares. This started out as an editorial aside in the Visual Distress Signal of yesterday's post, but then I decided it was worth a post of its own.

This is one of the flares in question. These flares are a popular choice for a lot of sea kayakers - they're relatively inexpensive, they're compact, they float, they're waterproof (although I keep mine in a little drybag of their own, and they come home with me between paddles, along with the VHF & a few other things that will last longer if they're stored someplace dry), each flare is a self-contained unit (the one I'm holding is in what I guess you could call storage mode; that's a double tube & telescopes out to become the launcher for the flare when you need to use it), and the three or four flares that come in a pack barely takes up any space in your dayhatch or deck bag. I've been carrying these as part of my kit pretty much since I got my first boat 9 years ago.

Last year, though, there was some alarming news about a number of injuries suffered when people used these flares. Sales of the product were frozen while Orion researched the matter.

Well, maybe everyone else in kayakland has been more on top of things, but I'd never seen the final verdict until last night, when I was browsing around various Coast Guard safety sites to make sure I wasn't posting too big a load of hooey (I really try very hard to keep the hooey to a minimum when I write about safety issues) & stumbled across an update which I was VERY happy to see. I'd read the warning about the product last year, but for a number of reason, beginning with the fact that the injuries were of the "bruised knuckles or lacerated fingers" type, sounded like they'd hurt but they'd heal, I chose to gamble a bit keep & using those as my night VDS.

So I was very pleased last night to find out that the freeze had been lifted & the flares declared safe to use as long as you follow the instructions perfectly.

Couple of possible hitches there, though.

There are instructions are printed on the side of the tube, but as you can see above, where I'm holding the flare so the instructions show, the lettering isn't exactly Easy Reader size. You just wouldn't want to be trying to read them for the first time in a situation where you actually needed to get some help. On top of that, it turns out that the instructions on the flares manufactured prior to September of last year aren't quite as clear as they could be about how exactly you are supposed to hold the device when you fire it.

They've rewritten the instructions & redone the diagrams & those are available on line for those of us who have pre-freeze flares. Flares expire three and a half years after manufacture, so there will be flares with the old instructions out there in people's kits for a couple more years. The new instructions really are much clearer than the ones on mine, and I'm glad I've reviewed them. Click here to read them for yourself.

In addition to the VDS page I linked to in yesterday's post, Atlantic Kayak Tours' Expert Pages also has some good kayak-specific info on emergency signalling devices. Worth a read. The main caveat you always hear about Skyblazers is that they just aren't as reliable as bigger, more expensive flares - that page discusses that. If you're paddling someplace that's sheltered & heavily trafficked, like Jamaica Bay, and you only get one of your three-pack to work, that will probably do still do the trick (especially if you've already called for help on your VHF & are just using the flare to help somebody pinpoint where you are), but the AKT page discusses some pricier options that would be seriously worth the investment if you were heading off to someplace more remote & less forgiving.

Oh - and remember how I closed yesterday's post with a warning that what satisfies the Coast Guard isn't going to make your BCU instructor happy? The 2nd paragraph is a perfect case in point!

Frogma List #1 of Tillerman Group Writing Project "Lists": Gear A Sea Kayaker Needs to Pass A CG Auxiliary Safety Inspection

UPDATE JUNE 2015: I am adding this update because this post suddenly seems to be seeing some activity and there's been an excellent change in the Vessel Safety Check world since I wrote this in 2009. At that time, vessel safety checks on human-powered vessels were performed using the same form as any recreational vessel, and down towards the end of the post, I refer to things that were on the form that weren't relevant to paddlecraft (engine requirements and such) and also things that weren't on the form that a kayaker should have. Well, the ACA saw what was going on there and went to work with the CG Auxiliary to fix it and in 2011 I was absolutely tickled to see the first Paddle Craft Vessel Safety Check Form. The actual requirements are clearly stated, the non-relevant things are gone, and there's a list of suggested stuff that's so good that I've used the form as a handout in classes. Click here to view .

Ah, doesn't 2009 royal blue look nice on that banana-yellow deck? Matches my decklines too!

Annual safety inspections aren't a legal requirement for kayaks, but this year and last year, I've taken advantage of the free public service provided at Sebago's Opening Day (and this year at our Dock Dedication in April) by some of the members of the neighboring Midget Squadron Yacht Club (a club that's also playing a very important & very appreciated role in our upcoming Laser regatta, providing motorboat support). These folks are volunteers in the U.S. Coast Guard Auxiliary, and every year they come to one or two of our big public events and do official safety inspections for anyone that wants one. Both years, I've passed even though I didn't particularly go to the club thinking "Ooh, safety inspection today, better make sure I've got all my stuff". Not being in the nanny business (thank goodness), the Coast Guard's safety requirements for kayaks are pretty much a bare minimum. Things you'd just be pretty dense to be out kayaking without anyways.

Now it happens that I'd been thinking about writing a short post about my Vessel Safety Check, but I wasn't sure how to approach it. But then I saw Tillerman's latest Group Writing Project.

"Lists".

He's challenged us to write posts that are lists.

Well, your basic Vessel Safety Check is all ABOUT a list. The examiner has a list of requirements in hand. If you get checked off as having the right stuff for your kind of boat, you get your sticker.

The trick, for a kayaker, is looking at the list of federal requirements & sorting out what applies to a kayak, and what doesn't.

So although I might do another list or two (I had some more entertaining ideas than this one), I thought "What a kayaker needs to pass a Vessel Safety Check" would be a perfect topic. It's a useful list, I just did mine recently so it's pretty fresh in my mind, so I'll start with that.

Please note that this is something of a condensed version. Check out the USCG Boating Safety site for a much more complete version. Also be aware that these are the FEDERAL requirements - state by state requirements vary, best thing is to get your hands on a copy of your state's boating regulations (I know for a fact that NY & CT both have nice little booklets that are available for free at most clubs, outfitters, and marine supply stores & somehow I suspect that's true of most of your states with actual coastlines).

On with the list!

Required Item #1. A Personal Flotation Device. Of course! Must be CG approved for the use to which it's being put (Type III is the right sort for sea kayaking), in good condition (no innards showing through splitting seams, all your straps & buckles & zippers securely attached & functioning) and properly fitted.

Required Item #2. Visual Distress Signals: Required on any vessel operating in waters more than 2 miles wide. Human-powered vessels are exempt from carrying day signals but we have to carry night signals. Full details here. VERY worth a read. If you are using flares like most kayakers, be aware that flares have an expiration date & your inspector WILL look at that. Old flares have a higher chance of being duds.

BTW I am going to do a short post about Orion Skyblazers VERY soon, those are the flare of choice for most sea kayakers, there was a safety-issue driven product freeze last year & I have just found some information that absolutely, positively deserves it's own separate post.

Required Item #3: Sound producing device. Most people I know (including me) just have a whistle on a lanyard permanently attached to the flap of one of their lifejacket pockets. My friend Stevie has a StowMaster horn, which is a funny little thing that looks like a stubby little pipe:
Makes a big loud noise! He was behind me one time on a paddle & he blew that thing for some reason. I almost jumped out of my kayak 'cause I thought that somehow a big boat had materialized right behind us without my ever spotting it (and I'm usually pretty sharp about being aware of boats in my vicinity)! Your examiner will be perfectly happy with the standard safety whistles you can buy at any boating supply store, but there are other, louder options that might be nice if you paddle someplace with a lot of fog or something.

Required Item #4: Navigation Lights: Kayaks are only required to carry "a flashlight or lighted lantern that can show a white light in sufficient time to prevent collision." I do have to say, though, that the auxiliary folks who've examined my boat & kit have been very happy to see that I carry lights closer to the sailboat plan. See full details in the navigation regulation section of the Boating Safety page.

Required Item #5: Boat condition: Your examiner will look your boat over to make sure that it's well-maintained & in good shape. Repaired damage is fine (I have a fiberglass patch on the bottom of my boat where I got driven onto a piling & holed doing kayak support for a swim race one time, that hardly gets a second glance); cracks, holes, or other obvious, unrepaired damage won't pass. Your boat has to meet state & local safety requirements too - generally for kayaks, I don't think that's going to be much beyond the well-maintained condition that the examiner's going to look for anyways, but again, it's worth getting a boating regs booklet for your own state & looking that over just to be sure.

And rather amazingly, that's pretty much the minimum REQUIRED stuff for kayaks. I always liked the simplicity of kayaking. How's this for simple?:

PFD
Visual Distress Signals
Lights (at least one white light)
Whistle or horn
Boat in good condition.

So simple, it's practically Amish.

Of course, there is a second category of stuff. These are items that your examiner will be quite pleased to see, but aren't required. Nice thing is, the "recommended items" list, pared down to the kayak-relevant subset I've been asked about at my two VSC's, are very standard components of the average educated sea kayaker's kit: A VHF, a first aid kit, and a pump.

They'll also ask about boating safety classes. As kayakers, most of us haven't taken offical CG Auxiliary-run safety classes, but if you've taken classes from a legitimate club or kayaking school, that does count.

Now - that's all I've been asked for in either of my Vessel Safety Checks, but there are a FEW more items I see on the full checklist that an examiner could theoretically ask about, and even if they don't, are good things to think of for your own boating safety. You can see the full list here.

A lot of the list is just obviously not applicable to kayaks. Then there are things that could change from state to state, like display of numbers & documentation - those don't apply here in NY (although my examiner did make a note of my hull identification number), but I don't know if that's true of the other 49 states.

The interesting thing I'm noticing on that list, though, looking closely, is that there are a few items on there that my examiners didn't ask me about either time, but they could have - nautical charts & navigation aids, float plan filing and weather and sea condition, and survival & first aid ALL jump out at me as items I didn't get asked about, but are as relevant to kayakers as they are to any other recreational boater.

They may've just figured I was obviously a responsible, well-equipped, well-trained paddler & that they'd seen enough to give me my sticker & move on to the next boat, but if they'd had more time, or I'd been iffy on other stuff, they definitely could've kept going on me. And I suspect that how many questions get asked has a lot to do with the individual examiner's personal preferences, too.

But getting the kayak-relevant basic requirements, plus a few of the recommendeds, isn't too hard.

Just don't forget - you'll need quite a bit more stuff to make your friendly neighborhood ACA or BCU instructor happy!

Next day addendum - The comments are quite worth checking out today - Carol Anne of It's Five O'Clock Somewhere checked in with some specific examples of things she, a sailor in New Mexico, would be required to produce at a Vessel Safety Check in her state that I, a New York State paddler, was not required to produce in mine. I almost chickened out of writing this post because of those state-by-state differences - I was worried about somebody reading my New York list & not realizing that they might have additonal requirements, but then I figured if I just said clearly, "Hey, these things vary from state to state" that would be fine. So I did, and left it at that, but I really enjoyed seeing some specific examples from another state. Thanks, Carol Anne!

One Last Cherry Blossom Post!

Honest! Then it's back to boats! I swear! Actually I had about as boaty a weekend as I think I could imagine having without actually leaving the dock. Tons of fun, learned a few things, was entertained by a few things, repaired a few things, planted a few things, and did a teensy spot of plotting - just no actual on-water time. Super gusty, there were practically combers rolling down the Paerdegat. I coulda gotten out my surfski & actually surfed. Things had actually settled down a bit by the time the Laser regatta prep meeting was over, and I did actually reconsider my reconsideration of pulling out the ski. We'd had a lot of rain this week & when I walked down to the (fabulous new) dock to scope things out, I noticed that the water had this sort of opaque light-green tone & distinctive reek that's a pretty surefire clue that the holding station at the end of the basin got overwhelmed & stopped holding. Inauspicious circumstances for the first run of the season in a boat that soaks your okole for you. Might try to sneak in a quick spin after the Laser regatta next week.

Well, I got kinda sidetracked from the Final Cherry Blossom Post of 2009 didn't I? As long as I'm digressing -

Check Out The DOCK! Is it not fabulous and new? It's U-shaped, I'm standing at the end of one of the arms of the U. We're gonna be able to launch a 10-person tour simultaneously. The ramp is at least twice as wide as the old one, and much longer, so it won't require Sherpa genes to get your boat up the ramp on your own at low water anymore (er, um, not that you should be paddling on your own or anything like that).

OK, now back to my last Cherry Blossom post. I know I got a little obsessed on that last week - that was partly because we had a much harder work week than I'd expected last week, plus I had to go to a City of Water Day planning meeting on Tuesday, so I was partly just being lazy & slapping up videos. But I was also just really excited that I made it, I've been living in Brooklyn for a long time & although I do go see the cherry blossoms almost every Spring, I've never managed to make it to the festival. I've always either had a conflict, or forgot about it until the week after it happened, or both. I think my list of Things I've Really Wanted To Go See While I'm Living In NYC But Never Managed To is down to:

The Coney Island Mermaid Parade (June 20th this year, I'll be missing it again, although I should mention that went to something on Saturday that I think might be an acceptable substitute - less crowded, too!)
The Coney Island New Year's Day Polar Bear Swim (unlikely to happen, that's one TQ doesn't think sounds as interesting as I do & as long as our New Year's Day date is a paddle, I'll compromise on that one)
The Working Harbor Committee's Hidden Harbor Tour.

I'd like to have another go at the annual tugboat races, since stupid kayak-storage politics, run afoul of quite unexpectedly & while still in a woozy state of recovery from a bad bad flu that day (the only reason I wasn't working on the Adirondack that day - I wasn't fit to sail yet), managed to dump some serious rain on my tugboat parade the one time I did make it.

This year I FINALLY got to the Sakura Matsuri festival, though, and I was really happy about that! I promise that after today I'll resume my more typical topics, though, I think I've satisfied my yen (ha ha) to recount the fun of the day with a full Flickr gallery!

One more video too. Ever hear a koto ensemble? Pretty neat sound, although captured by a digital camera that's not designed to do justice to something like this. I hadn't actually planned to go hear this one. I was going to go see the wisteria colonnade up by the Eastern Parkway, which would be beautiful this time of year (even the wisteria spilling into the subway cut from somebody's backyard on my way to work is breathtaking this time of year), then return to the tent for the folk dancing & stay for the Samurai Sword Soul performance & the grand finale Kimono Fashion Show. Well, I headed for the the wisteria but I never made it there because there was this amazing sound pouring out of the tent & I just got drawn in. Recorded it until I literally couldn't hold up my camera any more. Maybe you had to be there - but here's what I can share.

Another sign I'm ready for summer -

I dreamed about paddling my surfski last night!

Funny dream, too. It reflected reality insofar as the air was warm, while the water was still quite chilly. It was the first surfski run of the season. I went off to do my standard post-work 8-mile run to the bridge & back, but all the sudden, a few minutes outside the basin, I realized that I'd set out dressed in the same getup as I'd been wearing on the Clarion - swimsuit & shorts - and I'd totally forgotten my lifejacket! Eek! That was fine for a 2-foot deep river but for urban paddling, apparently my never-go-out-in-NYC-waters-without-a-lifejacket rule is so hard & fast, it even extends to the REM phase of sleep - the minute I realized that I turned around to head back to the club.

Then I heard some sirens go off & I was afraid it was the Coast Guard coming because I wasn't wearing a lifejacket. It was the harbor patrol on their way to something else, but I decided that since I was not far from the basin, I would just walk back. I didn't have a tow rope & the ski is a little awkward to carry, but it was a flood tide & when I got off the ski & let it go, it went floating along in just the right direction, so I decided to walk along keeping an eye on it. This goes fine all the way back to the basin, where it turns the corner a little ahead of me. I lose sight of it & run to the other side of the bridge over the basin, afraid that I'm going to have to swim after it to keep it out of the channel (the universal Sebago reaction of complete disgust at the thought of swimming in the Paerdegat also carried over into dreamland).

Well, when I get it back in sight somehow my poor old beat-up surfski had turned into a 32-foot sailboat and there are three or four guys in a motorboat moving in on it because they think it's untended!

I'm mortified at having to explain why my boat is drifting up the Paerdegat with me running along the shore behind it instead of being on board, but I manage to convince the powerboaters that the sailboat's really mine & everything's completely under control (even though I'm actually totally confused about what had happened to my surfski & not feeling like I had things under control at all). I get on board, turn on the motor & am motoring along trying to figure out what I am supposed to do with this thing that I suddenly can't land at the Sebago dock when I woke up & realized that the whole thing was just a dream.

Not sure whether that realization was more of a "phew" or a "awwww shucks" variety!

Beats me how I manage to have a dream where my thirdhand, extremely used surfski turns into a bona fide cruising keelboat, and yet still manage to make it into an anxiety dream.

:D

Did give me a great idea for the weekend though. Sunday, the sailing co-chairs are having a practice to make sure everybody involved directly in our May 16th Laser regatta knows what we need to do to make everything go smoothly. I'm in that since my volunteer assignment is something where it would be TRAGICALLY obvious if I screw up. I was planning on getting in a paddle afterwards anyways - but I think if conditions are good, I might just modify my plans from pulling out the trusty Romany - it's about time the surfski saw the light of day in 2009! Woohoo!

Will DEFINITELY wear a wetsuit, and although it may mean the ski never gets that magic moment alone it needs to turn itself into a small cruiser, I promise I won't leave my lifejacket behind!

Saturday evening addendum: Oops. This kinda puts the kibbosh on the break-out-the-ski idea:

SMALL CRAFT ADVISORY IN EFFECT THROUGH SUNDAY EVENING

TONIGHT: SW WINDS 10 TO 15 KT...BECOMING W 15 TO 20 KT WITH GUSTS UP TO 30 KT. WAVES 1 TO 2 FT.

SUN: W WINDS 15 TO 20 KT WITH GUSTS UP TO 30 KT. WAVES 1 TO 2 FT.

arrrrr...

Singing Silver Swords of Sakura!

OK, so the first ones here are bamboo. Oh well! A couple more short clips of the goings-on on a rainy day of the Sakura Matsuri Festival 2009 at the Brooklyn Botanical Garden:

"Kinda Kendo":

Fencing for fun in the rain. "Kendo?" a passerby asked the duellists. "Kinda..." they replied, with a laugh.

Samurai Sword Soul Snippet:



A lot more choreographed than the first - Just a quick bit of the opening of Samurai Sword Soul performance. Oh - notice the front-row seats here? It definitely pays to not be afraid of the rain! :D

The fighter with the staff is Japanese actor/comedian/martial artist Yoshi Amao - he was the emcee for the Brooklyn Botanical Garden's Sakura Matsuri festival 2009. He was the "instructor" in "Advanced Japanese" clip I posted earlier this week, and he's also the founder & producer of Samurai Sword Soul. They have classes - maybe my next hobby will be samurai sword fighting!

That will of course happen the day after I get bored with boats, which is to say probably never. But it does look like fun, doesn't it?

Ready for Summer.

You know you're ready for summer when you develop an allergy to socks.

(I wish I was kidding!)

Natural History Moment

And now, from the Division of Learn Something New Every Day, Department of Molluscidae:

I never thought of barnacles as having any particularly interesting secrets.

But then, Rosie enlightened me.

tee hee hee.

And Now A Little Fun - "Advanced Japanese" at Sakura Matsuri 2009, Brooklyn Botanical Garden!

Japanese Meets Brooklynese!

That Was The Week That Was.

Last weekend was fantastic. My first trip out to TQ's new place since he moved - it's farther away but I found a bus that makes it possible to get there for a weekend (although I think I'll try to arrange for future trips to be long weekends).

He's inherited a great pair of dogs - the way he got them was very sad, the friend to whom they belonged was far too young to go, but they've settled in well with TQ & on Saturday, we took them for their first longish canoe trip - 10 miles on the placid Clarion River. Great fun.

Oh, I know I'm going to get grief about the lifejacket - the river's about 2 feet deep, slow-moving, has already warmed up a bit, and on this hot, hot day, people were swimming & splashing all along the shore. I couldn't believe we were paddling in t-shirts & shorts while it was still April but I would've done well to jump in the water for a cool-down myself, it was a fabulous day & would've been even better if I hadn't ended it with one of those needly heat-caused headaches.

My dad happened to be in the area for yet another tower-bell thing, so on Sunday he came out, we fixed him brunch & then took him for one quick walk to see TQ's property, and another to see some of the cascades in the area. Here we are looking out over TQ's land.

So that weekend was great -

And this weekend wasn't too bad either - hey look, I still managed to place in the overall-women's division at Empire Kayaks May Day On The Bay Race, despite the fact that I've basically been chained to my desk for the last month.

Of course it turns out there'd been a challenge laid down to Sebago by the North Atlantic Canoe & Kayak Club - too bad it didn't get passed on, surfski would've been a gamble since I haven't been on it all winter, but it was a nice placid day & the ski might at least have given me a shot at at LEAST giving the woman from who took first a LITTLE trouble!

Although there still would've been this matter of she'd actually trained.

It was a fun day, though. I'd been undecided up to the last minute, but I did have a very good time, and Walter & I left talking about how it would be fun to try to have a little more interaction with other clubs in the area.

The week between was really pretty bad - hence my absence. As I may have mentioned here, our budget presentation to the Board of Directors was on April 23rd. I had been given another rather large reporting project due on the following Wednesday. Sort of like telling somebody who's in the middle of a marathon, "OK, so when you finish this marathon, I need you to report to the local track for the 400K." The report was based on something I'd done before, but they wanted things split out differently, and it ended up being a lot more time-consuming than I'd expected. I'd run some of the background reports during the budget process, when I was between assignments, but I basically had Monday & Tuesday to put things together. Those were a couple of late nights. Wednesday, I delivered what I'd done; the folks in charge of the project decided that some of the numbers weren't as useful in the new form as they'd been in the old form so Wednesday night was another late one putting those back the way they were. Thursday we had another review, and they left me with more changes, and thinking it was going to be another horribly long night - but then they called to say that they'd decided to just skip the numbers part & talk marketing plans, etc.

These things do happen sometimes, and I was awfully glad that they'd made their decision before I'd put in Late Night #4 - but it was still a bit of a bummer to discover Late Nights 1 through 3 were wasted. I was particularly bummed because I'd gambled my garden on getting a couple more hours of sleep during those days - the mini-heat-wave went through Tuesday, when it was up around 90; I was going to get up early on Wednesday morning to go water but I woke up around 4:30, looked out the window & saw that it had rained & went back to sleep. Wasn't sure it had rained much, though. Thursday there was rain in the forecast, so again I gambled that the rain would turn up before all my plants were totally dead.

The rain didn't get going until I think maybe early Friday morning. I was really afraid that I was going to go to the club to find a bunch of dead seedlings. Not too late to restart, but things had gotten going so nicely.

Fortunately, though, my fellow Sebago Diggers knew that I'd been crazy busy at work & I think more thanks to them than to the rain, my garden is fine! Hooray!


The unsettling part of the week, though - in fact going back a couple of weeks, and I think part of what had me singing "New York I Love You, But You're Bringing Me Down" was that co-workers have, in the midst of all our work craziness, had some unexpected losses among their friends. Accident, disease & illness took those young people. So hard. Listening to my co-workers (all very good people) of course reminded me of the former owner of the dogs (heart attack at 40) - and then of course all the former co-workers who didn't make it out on September 11th. That's getting to be a long time ago, but it still hurts to think about.

The person there who tends to stick out in my memory more than most was a woman by the name of Susan Getzendanner.

If I remember correctly, she had at one point gone through a really bad divorce. She'd fought through the aftereffects of that, though, and by the time I was working with her, she was a cheerful & confident business manager. She took her job very seriously, but there was more to her life than work - she sang with a Gilbert and Sullivan group, and once a year she would go trekking in Tibet.

Despite holding a pretty high-level position at the bank, she made sure that her time in Tibet was HER time in Tibet. If you were working on a project with here, she'd start giving you warnings about a month in advance, saying "If you have anything urgent, please make sure you've let me know so that we can wrap it up, as I am leaving for Tibet on x-and-such day. Anything that is not done by that day will have to wait until I return." And she stuck with that. She was a hard worker, but she made sure that she carved out that time for herself.

She was among the lost on September 11th. Another fellow former Fiduciary employee & I talked about her quite a bit after that - we somehow pictured her as being able to face what was happening with a lot more peace in her mind, because she'd MADE that time to live for herself, even if people didn't always understand how she could.

How much more terrible it would have been if she'd been putting off that time for herself for some point in the future - stashing money away for a grand tour of Asia the year after she'd retired or something, taking vacations closer to home & staying on the pager leash like a lot of people do.

Since then, I've always thought that I should try to live my life a little more like she did. Not that I want to go trekking in Tibet (for starters, I'm in children's publishing now & the pay scale falls a bit shy of the high-net-worth-individual private-banking pay scale; secondly, obviously my dream vacations are more along the lines of the sort of thing TQ & I do - our kayak, camp & catch up with old college friends vacation last fall was just about perfect, as was our week in R.I. the year before) - just that I want to make sure that I keep time carved out for me.

It's easy to forget that, and it's harder than ever to do these days. I seem to spend a lot of evening hours in my cubicle, hours that I would rather spend paddling or gardening - but when I know so many people who are out of work & not getting so much as a nibble, I guess I feel like what I sometimes have to do to get my work done is worth it.

Or at least it's what the times demand.

My weekends are still mine, mostly. I'm not sure how long I could stand it if work started slopping over into weekends on a regular basis.

But I am feeling like a good goal for this summer would be to try to get my job under enough control that I can actually get out paddling after work at least once a week or so.

A little more sailing would be good too.

Wish me luck, OK?

A Bunch Of People, More Flowers, and Two Non-Random Dogs!

A few more from my Easter Sunday wander at the BBG -

I did wander, and -
there were daffodils - but there was no "lonely as a cloud" about it. Not on a stunning Spring day in Brooklyn!

Usually I actually really like going on not-so-stunning days for the very reason that you mostly have the place to yourself, but it was fun getting some pictures in the sunshine.

Forsythia, forsooth!

An early tulip

Chinese Stachyurus. Doesn't this look like it should be called "bead curtain plant"?

Closeup of the flowerets

A couple of non-flowers now, just because I liked them -

Fabulously lumpy cork trees

And a nice cycad in the greenhouse for Bowsprite, who liked these when she was in Florida. They always remind me of our neighbor in Hawaii, Mr. Kansaka - he was an expert gardener, he specialized in bonsai & although I was too young to appreciate that we had a true artist living next door (he was even a little bit famous, I think, I remember tour buses would sometimes bring people to see his collection), I did love those beautiful little trees. He had three perfect cycads (full sized ones) in the front of his house. I think they were still there the last time I got to go home - they'd gotten taller, but otherwise looked almost just like they had back when we lived next door.

Enough garden - how about a nice non-random dog?

a Catahoula Leopard Dog in fact!and another happy Catahoula and an extremely non-random canoe on PA's Clarion River.

It was an awfully nice weekend. We'd planned to paddle, although we left the decision of exactly where until I got out there. I'd looked at the forecast & thought "There is no way on Earth I am putting on my drysuit this weekend".

I NEVER expected shorts & a swimsuit would be the right outfit, though. Who'd a thunk? In April, without travelling any appreciable distance in a southerly direction? Nuh uh. No way. But there you have it!

Laser Regatta on Jamaica Bay Sunday, May 16th

The Sailing Committee of the Sebago Canoe Club will be hosting a Laser Regatta for Laser District 8 on May 16, 2009. Full details on the Sailing Committee page of the Sebago website.

I'll be volunteering for the day, hope to see some new faces (and sails) visiting the bay!

******************

I'm off to see TQ this weekend. As I mentioned, he's a little further away than he used to be, but I think I've got a bus that will work out OK. The weather is going to be fabulous & we are going to go canoeing for a change! Should be fun! Won't be posting again until next week sometime, though, so I thought I'd leave you with a little photographic puzzle --

What is it?



(no answering if you were there when I took the picture, OK?)

The Cutest Functional Boat in the Whole Wide World.

Oh. My. Gosh.

Got a few minutes?

Like wooden boats, old boat rescues, or things that are really, really cute?

Ready to be charmed? Take a look at a guc!

And the best part is that it works.

If video is a little choppy, just let it play for a few seconds & then move the little sliding pointer (very small, it's right on the bottom edge of the picture) back to the start. That should fix it!

Found via the Lifejacket Adventures blog - a couple more Pier 63 alumni following their saltwater dreams!

Congratulations to Sir Robin Knox-Johnston!

3:55 pm update - I seriously almost feel like I have to apologize for the disjointedness of this post! It's one of the craziest times of the year at my always-hectic job right now - we're wrapping up budget season here at the Really Big Children's Book Company, the presentation to the board is tomorrow and we've been working flat out for the entire month of April. I was exhausted when I went home last night but I went ahead & wrote what I did because I knew there wouldn't be any lunchtime blogging today! Still, it was disjointed, but the sentiments are heartfelt. Oh, and as long as I'm updating, check out Brian's RKJ-day post over on A Moveable Bridge- as I mentioned below, I actually learned about the race I was blithering on about when Brian went & did a leg. Very cool.

4:21 pm update - one more quick note here in a lull - I think this link will take you to "Sir RKJ Day Central" over on Messing About in Sailboats - Adam's got to be the hardest-working blogger on the internet today keeping up with it all! Nice work & congratulations to him, too, for really pulling together something pretty cool! I'm glad to be part of this. Thanks, Adam!

Here it is, April 22nd, 2009 - Sir Robin Knox-Johnston Day on the Web, as called for by Adam Turinas over at Messing About in Boats.


And here he is, Sir Robin Knox-Johnston, sailing back into Falmouth on April 22nd, 1969 three-hundred and thirteen days after he'd launched to join in the Golden Globe race to become the first person ever to complete a singlehanded circumnavigation of the earth.

And here I am, a forty-something cube-dwelling New York City number-cruncher sitting in front of my computer in my nice safe quiet Brooklyn apartment, thinking,

"I know I told Adam I loved the idea & was in, but how on earth can a total sailing nonentity like myself say something that even begins to be meaningful about an accomplishment like that?"

And the fact is that much though I'd like to somehow write something brilliant & thoughtful about it, I just don't think I'm up to the job. Especially here near the end of another brain-frying budget season.

Fortunately Adam's challenge didn't say anything about being brilliant - he just said to recognize the accomplishment & say "Congratulations".

So I shall quit beating myself up for not being brilliant and just say:

Congratulations to Sir Robin Knox-Johnson on the forty anniversary of his amazing achievement.

They may do it faster now, but they just can't do it braver!

I will add a little bit more -

Wonder why a brain-fried forty-something cube-dwelling New York City number cruncher is even participating in this day?

Well, because it being able to get out on the city's waterways in boats that makes it all work for me. I love kayaking, I love sailing, and although I'm no adventurer, who doesn't have pipe dreams?

And as I said to Adam in a comment when he first suggested this back in March:

I don't know that I'd ever actually have the nerve, but I love the fact that Sir Knox-Johnston runs an ocean race that even an ordinary middle-class, non-elite person like me could theoretically participate in.

I found out about the race when our friend Brian, from A Moveable Bridge, went and did it! Sent back some pretty harrowing reports, very exciting to read. Didn't always sound like fun but that's an amazing experience that Sir Knox-Johnston has opened up to a lot of people who might otherwise not have any chance at such a thing.

Really a wonderful use of the influence he's earned.


I just don't seem to have big enough words tonight to talk about generosity like that.

2 Years At Sea, 270 Days To Go

Schooner Anne, southbound at the Verranzano Narrows Bridge, April 21st, 2007

Almost forgot in the midst of a wildly busy time at work, and it's too late for a long post, but good grief, how can I not mention that a fellow former denizen of the barge at Pier 63 has been at sea now for 2 years!

Only 270 days to go, and although it's been more than once that I've gone to that website & thought "Wow, that's got to be it, how can he possibly keep going now?", somehow, Reid's always managed. I'm getting to the point now where I think I'll be more surprised if he doesn't finish his 1000 days at sea non-stop than if he does.

Love him or hate him, you can't say he's not perservering - but when a person's been working for something for as many years as Reid worked for this, and has sponsors and a whole lot of good & loyal friends who supported him, it would be surprising if that person didn't have the determination to see the trip through to the end.

And when what started as 1000 days' adventure resulted in the lifelong commitment of parenthood, and Soanya had to return to New York, I think she may have showed more guts, in a way, in her continuing support of his continuing the quest they'd begun together than she did when she went off to sea with him in the first place.

I wish the best of luck to both of them over the next 270 days (and, of course, beyond)!

April 22nd is Almost Here!

Just a quick reminder - we're coming up fast here on April 22nd, which is the 40th anniversary of Sir Robin Knox-Johnston's historic first-ever non-stop singlehanded circumnavigation of the Earth.

Back in March, Adam Turinas has suggested that in honor of Sir Robin's achievement, it would be great if on April 22nd, boat-bloggers (and boattweeters, and boatfacebookers, and boatyoutubers, and heck all the boat-and-or-adventure-loving users of all these various social media sites) joined together to create a virtual Sir Robin Knox-Johnson Day on the web.

Interested? Check out Adam's April 1st post for more details.

Earth Day Cleanup, at Plumb Beach,

No, I wasn't sitting & enjoying the scenery - this was the biggest item I personally collected for proper disposal at the Plumb Beach Cleanup yesterday.

The day was organized by the American Littoral Society. Several Sebago members joined me there, along with people from a number of other organizations. We had a beautiful day & I took quite a few more pictures. No captions yet(I'm getting ready for a busy day at the club) but they're all over on Flickr.

New York I Love You, But You're Bringing Me Down

This song has been running through my head all day. Seems to fit how I've been feeling lately - just kinda down about how it seems like almost all the people I know either have too much work, or nowhere near enough.

Wouldn't it be nice if there was a way to create an hour exchange? A place where those of us who have so many hours of work that we barely have time for a personal life could say "Here, here's 5 paid hours of the 55 hour week I'm working just to stay on top of things, I'd like to hand over those hours to somebody who could use the money," and somebody who's got too many hours to sit on a beach can say "Here, here's 5 unpaid hours of my 7 days a week of free time that I just can't appreciate because it's not paying the bills, let's swap".

Just a pipe dream, but a nice one.

Actually I guess in a way that's exactly what people are doing when they hire maids, or babysitters, or other household help - I just think it would be theoretically cool if that could somehow be done with work hours. It's not the housecleaning that's bringing me down.

(thanks to Mr. Sea Level for first sending me a link to that video sometime last summer)

Dedication of the New Dock, Sebago Canoe Club, Sunday, April 19th at Noon!

Last Saturday, shortly before launching on my last paddle off the old dock. Yes, the weather was filthy - it just served to improve the usual Gino's deliciousness!

From The Old Dock

I'd mentioned in passing the other day that the Sebago Canoe Club is getting a new dock this week!

The dedication ceremony is this Sunday, 4/19/2009, and YOU yes YOU are invited!

I'll understand if you can't make it since this being a blog and all, you might not exactly live close enough to make it to the Paerdegat Basin, but if you do live anywhere in the area & you'd like to come see the club I'm always blithering on about, the Sebago crew would love to see you there!

Full details on the Sebago Canoe Club website. Ignore the detail about rsvp'ing by April 1st - let's just say that it's sort of an accidental, retroactive April Fool's Day joke. Fooled me anyways - I'd gone to post it a couple of weeks ago, saw the RSVP note, figured I'd better check in with a board member or two before I said anything and then, er, sort of forgot to ask until today. Sorry about the short notice!

Can't make it to this one, or rather wait to visit the club until the water's a little warmer & you can try out one of our boats? Join us at our Open House on Saturday, May 30th, or at any of our Open Paddles from June 3rd on! And if you've got a hand-launchable boat of your own, don't forget that Sebago is part of the New York City Watertrail - the club grounds are open from 9 am to 5 pm on weekend days from the Open House on May 30th all the way through the summer to Labor Day, I believe it is, and there's always at least one club member who can answer most questions a person might have on duty during those hours.

cross-posted at the Sebago Canoe Club blog.

Happy Tax Day!

Don't hate me because I did mine in March!

:D

Naaah, go ahead & hate me if it helps. I was unusually together this year & I admit that I'm having a little self-congratulatory wallow here. Wallow wallow wallow.

Hanami-time at the Brooklyn Botanical Garden

I went for the daffodils, but the cherries are getting going too. Some time before the peak, but they've definitely begun!

Trip Report, 4/5/2009, Norwalk River to the Saugatuck River Public Boat Launch (round trip, 10 miles-ish or so)

This was actually a new one for me!

No GPS, but once again I've entertained myself using a Maptech image & the Paint program. OK, I had a little too much fun with this one. Red line is outbound, blue line is coming back, SBS is the Small Boat Shop, CPYC is the Cedar Point Yacht Club - see the Laser regatta? :D

Anyways. It was sort of funny how this one happened. I haven't been talking about this much, but TQ actually moved a little further away than he used to be over the winter. I think the difficulty added by the extra distance will be offset by the fact that now he'll be able to free himself up on weekends (YAY! we used to only have holidays in common, pretty much had to take vacation days to get any regular time together). However, he will still be back in CT occasionally & I'll be making an effort to get up there when he's there.

The weekend of April 4th & 5th was one of those occasions - he went back to work for the Small Boat Shop's warehouse sale. I wanted to go up & see him, but there were a few considerations -

1. They tend to be really busy during their sales and I didn't want to be underfoot.
2. I also didn't want to get put to work. I have worked for the shop & they've always been happy with having me there, and ordinarily I like working for them, it's just that this time of year the day job overfloweth into the evenings and yea even into the nights & I really need days off to be days off. Working for the shop is fun work but still work.
3. I didn't really want to kill a day wandering around South Norwalk.
4. I really wanted to go paddling, it had been a month since I was on the water.
5. I was embarrassed to ask to borrow a boat - see 1.

My solution was that I should just go up after work on Friday night & he could put me on a train on Saturday morning before he went to work, sigh. Too short a catch-up but he'd just spent the weekend in Brooklyn I think it was the week before, and that way I'm no extra bother to anyone.

He countered my suggestion with "Well, if I put you in a boat before I start working in the morning and you go away, then you aren't underfoot and nobody can put you to work".

That's my guy. Knows me well, he does.

A quick look at the forecast told me that the getting-in-a-boat-and-getting-lost-for-the-day plan was not happening on Saturday. Rainy, foggy, winds gusting to 45 kts - I might do that in the summertime, with a few trusted friends, for an hour or two, just to push myself. Not solo, in April, for a whole day, when I hadn't been in a boat for a month. The getting-lost part is supposed to be a figure of speech, not something that could actually happen So I switched my evening to go up to Saturday, which worked out well since I was then free to get stuck at work on Friday, which I did (but it was a voluntary sort of stuckness & allowed me to tie up some things I would've been fretting about leaving undone if I hadn't, so I'm not being facetious when I say it worked out well).

Sunday was a lot more promising. NW winds, 15-20 kts, sunny, temperature in the low 50's. Water temps probably still in the 40's. Usually when I take a boat & get lost while TQ's working, I go out around the islands, but that's still a pretty solid wind & cold water, and since I was on my own & hadn't been out for a month, I decided I wanted to stick along the coast - I didn't see anything that was outside my comfort level but I just didn't want to take any chances. Anyways, there's all sorts of neat little places to poke your nose into along that coastline & before I'd even left for CT, I'd pretty much looked things over & decided that I wanted to go see the Cedar Point Yacht Club & then paddle on up the Saugatuck River a ways.

And that is exactly what I did.

The first place into which I poked my nose was a very nice marsh just past Calf Pasture Beach. At least one of the guys at the shop said it was a very nice marsh, and I bet it is, except that marshes are not exactly at their best in early Spring:

Still saw some nice ducks & a couple of egrets & made a mental note that this is probably totally worth a visit next time I'm in the area in the summer or fall, then headed on towards the Saugatuck River. I was a little surprised that there weren't any dinghies out by Cockenoe, but then one little white sail came cruising out from behind the point, followed by another, and then a whole crew. "Aha", I thought, "yonder must be the Cedar Point Yacht Club!" and I hustled my bustle to go get some pictures of the launch.

Thought about going out to watch the races - but it was around noon, the Saugatuck River looked pretty nice, I really wanted to get at least a little ways up the river, and I knew I'd set myself up to have a headwind all the way home. TQ had asked me to shoot to be back by 2:30 to 3. I'd told him not to call out the Coast Guard until 4 but I really did want to be back somewhere close to the expected time. Not enough time to go watch the races, but enough time for a short trip up the river.

And that was nice! Very scenic, the Saugatuck. I paddled up the Norwalk River once. When I came back & reported that, TQ started laughing & said "Everybody does that. Once." Now, I'd probably do it again, I don't mind paddling somewhat industrialized waterways, but I could see what he meant - up to the pretty little cascade that marks the end of the piece that's easily navigable from Norwalk Harbor, the Norwalk River is a pretty workaday stretch of water. Barges, boatyards, construction sites, waterfront condos, an interesting & very Corinthian-looking boat club or two -the river looks pretty much like you'd expect a river that runs through one of the less well-off towns in an extremely wealthy area.

The Saugatuck, though?

Well - here:



Nice digs, eh?

I was fighting the current, and by this time it was getting on towards 1:00. I was getting peckish so I thought I'd paddle just up to the bridges, looking for a spot that looked non-private enough to pull out & eat a sandwich.

Just past the railroad bridge, I saw a bunch of kayakers launching. I said hello, they asked if I was from Yonkers, I said no. Turned out some of the Yonkers crowd had planned a paddle up there that day. Bummer, I'd thought about getting in touch with them because they DO paddle out of Calf Pasture pretty regularly - but I hadn't felt like I knew what my own schedule was going to be, so I hadn't really wanted to get myself involved in trying to meet up with anyone. Still, I wish I'd at least dropped a note to a couple of my Yonkers friends. Haven't seen them since the Hudson River Greenland Festival last year!

Oh well, though. I was still having a very enjoyable day. The Connecticutt group confirmed that that was a public launch they'd just left, then told me to be careful out there on my own. I really appreciated that, it's good that people care, and I thanked them & told them that I was sticking along the coast because I was on my own. I almost considered asking if I could join them for a bit, as they seemed like a nice group, but by that time I was really hungry, plus I had the time concern, so I decided to just stop, have lunch there, and then hit the gas on the trip back. Nice launch - plenty of parking, convenient to the highway, and a ramp that looked big enough for just about anything you could fit on a trailer.

Fueled up & ready to fight the headwinds going back, I hit the water again. Paused to take a couple more pictures of these nice little cottages along the river -

That's a handsome estate, isn't it?

The ones that really killed me were the ones that had structures over their docks - I suppose they are boathouses - I'd totally take one for a house house though, they're as big as some of the pretty little bungalows they have in certain sections of Brooklyn that are the only houses I could even imagine being able to own & maintain by myself.

Heading on down towards the mouth of the Saugatuck, I heard a familiar, sharp "Kee-kee-kee" -

it was the first osprey I'd seen this year, our Jamaica Bay pairs should be back any day too, if they aren't already! Spring has sprung!

No more picture taking going back, I was right about the headwind, and the minute I got out of the river, I realized I probably hadn't left myself enough time for the trip home. I cut straight across outside of Sprite Island, instead of staying along the shore & really just paddled hard.

It was a workout getting back. That's when I really started to feel that month of too much work, insufficient exercise, and zero boat time - at first I thought the wind was picking up as I got closer to Norwalk Harbor, but as I was talking to TQ after I came plodding up to the dock where he was waiting for me a few minutes after 3, I admitted that...uh...maybe I'm just out of shape! :(

Hopefully only temporary.

I did pause once on the return. I wanted to take this one last picture, which I thought I would post with a quick suggestion for the benefit of anyone who ever might find themselves entering Norwalk Harbor around low water in a boat that draws anything much more than a kayak does...

You might not want to shave the buoys too close!

Marcus's Visit to Sebago, plus The Return of Sea Level

Clubmate John has posted a great writeup about Marcus Demuth's fascinating presentation about circumnavigating the Falkland Islands over on Summit to Shore. It was a great evening & if I hadn't been feeling very stuck in mental gear "N" on my first completely unscheduled day in what seems like a terribly long time, I probably would've posted something myself.

Oh, also, as long as I'm doing lunchtime linkage - I'm delighted to report that Sea Level has resurfaced! Mr. Sea Level is no longer blogging there, since circumstances unfortunately sort of took him out of the paddling scene, but he had a very fine compendium of NYC water-lover's links & has decided to put those back out there. Thanks, Mr. Sea Level!

My blogroll is still painfully in need of attention, but there's one link that works again. I'm glad, I was actually going to be quite sad to take that one down. Sea Level was one of my favorites for a long time!

Paerdegat Basin, Saturday evening, a couple of the racers leaving the old dock. We get a new dock this week. Pretty exciting!

From The Old Dock