Lan Tuazon had a very special request for the Tide and Current Taxi: bring her Cooper Union sculpture class to the Boat Graveyard in Staten Island.

I have learned one lesson from my trips to the boat graveyard. The tide usually helps the Tide and Current Taxi, but here in these huge tidal flats, the tide tends to strand its visitors.

“In another few hours this island will be gone,” I told Lan…

but the extra low tide that day provided lots of good treasure hunting.

Lan was talking to her sculpture class that week about site specific sculpture, so she decided instead of giving them a lecture about sites, she would just take them to one of the best ones in New York.

Almost her entire class made the 2.5 hour trek out to Staten Island, which ended up being half of the adventure.

We started out in groups to explore the wrecks.

The other half of the class was waiting for us aboard a half-sunken ship.

I realized quickly that this was a mistake.

It seemed like the half left behind wanted to be out in the boat and those on the boat wanted to be back on shore.

They described something else too, that I had never thought about before.

When they were waiting aboard the half sunken ship, the tide was coming in – quickly.

As they watched the water rise around them, they couldn’t help but think that the ship was still sinking.

No matter how they reassured themselves that the ship was solid, that it had been there for many years in just that same position,

the water was still rising. Ultimately they knew that the deck that they were standing on would be gone some day.

The tide was rising around where we left the backpacks too.

An hour before, this was solid ground.

Back aboard the wreck, we explored the slowly sinking vessel.

It seemed forgotten by time, engaged in a decades long battle with the elements.

The bridge of the boat had been ransacked years ago.

Bones in the map drawer.

I couldn’t help but record my version of one of the most photogenic views at the graveyard.

It was time to pick up the crew who was waiting on the beach,

and for an hour I shuttled the tide and current taxi back and forth to bring everyone back to shore.

Joseph and Daniel stayed behind to help me with the boat.

They hadn’t minded being stranded out there, left behind on the desolate wrecks and beaches.

In fact I wondered if they would like to stay out there for the rest of the day, left behind by the group like the forgotten wrecks, left to the elements and to their own thoughts.

thanks Lan Tuazon and to the Cooper Union sculpture class:
Daniel Hall
Joeseph Riley
Shane Kennedy
Alexander Rocine
Alice Yang
Moises Sanabria

Nick Lobo was visiting New York from Miami.

I always said that Nick should come out in the Tide and Current Taxi,

ever since he lent me his boat to explore the Miami River.

So Nick and his friend Tom Healy came out for an early morning ride.

The city looked just beautiful in the morning light,

and the current was moving about 6 knots.

Nick and Tom remarked about how fast the tide was moving; they have both been around the water a lot.

In fact, this was not the first time that Nick had been out in the East River.

His first time through, he had a harrowing experience in Hell Gate.

We were about to reach that area, so I thought we would take a break and look around Socrates Sculpture Park.

It is one of my favorite places to land;

always filled with interesting things.

We walked around and talked about the sculptures.

We got back in the boat, and although the morning seemed clear and calm, I knew that the tide would be rushing through the narrow tidal strait of Hell Gate.

In just a few minutes we were in the strait and the water changed from calm to turbulent.

We were moving around 8 or 9 knots.

Huge flat boils apeard on the surface of the water, and Nick looked over into the spiraling current, inches from where he was sitting.

“I didn’t want to say anything at the time,” said Nick, “but it looked dangerous. And I know that when things happen in a boat, they happen fast.”

We waited on shore and thought about what to do. We had made it to Astoria in less than an hour.

We decided to keep going. We were already through the hard part,

but I asked Tom and Nick to sit next to eachother in the middle of the boat, to keep the bow up out of the water,

and so that we could all see what was coming up ahead.

In a few minutes we were through the tidal strait and into the relative calm of the Long Island Sound.

It was turning out to be a pretty day,

and there was plenty to see around the Harbor.

We had one more stop to make.

Since we seemed to be exploring sculptures that day,

we visited the Richard Serra sculpture rusting away in the Bronx.

We speculated about the odd placement of a ‘torqued ellipse” on the Bronx waterfront,

but then noticed how much it looked like the neighborhood architecture.

We passed North Brother Island.

It was dark and quiet and seemed waiting for adventure,

but everyone was hot, thirsty, and cut up from our adventures climbing around the rigging yard.

I knew just where to stop.

As we walked back to the subway,

Nick told us the story of his trip down the Hudson River.

It had started when he and a friend hopped a train from the Bronx, this very train-yard in fact!

Later on, Nick sent me these photos that he and his friend Dennis Palazzolo took on their trip down the Hudson.

They camped out and paddled for five days.

When they ran into trouble in Hells Gate, they were taken in by the a tugboat crew who fed them and let them stay aboard.

The whole trip sounded like a hobo fantasy.

Thanks Nick and Tom!

I waited for Kris Timkin and Bryndolin Webster in Far Rockaway. It was a little scrap of land hemmed in by an off-ramp of the Nassau expressway,

but it looked just like a pretty beach resort.

They jumped right in the boat,

and we headed East with a strong ebb tide.

We were passing homes and docks on the south side of the channel,

and low lying marshy islands to the north.

This is what Long Island will look like for the next 100 miles, I thought to myself.

Suddenly a familiar smell,

downwind from a water treatment plant.

It reminded me of the years I lived in Greenpoint.

Kris told us the term used in ecology to describe areas between land and water: a riparian zone.

“The importance of the riparian zone is just starting to be recognized in environmental management and civil engineering,” she said.

It is important for both the land and sea.

I had a sudden desire to study the bank up close,

and we pulled the boat on dock to get a better look,

at Jordan’s Lobster.

“I must admit,” said Kris, “we thought that today would be much more difficult.”

I guess I had to think about my trip over the long haul, and it was hard to pass up a Jordan’s Lobster.

Back out in the boat, we wanted to explore the interior of one of the islands,

so we paddled up into a little creek.

These waterways must be muddy ditches at low tide,

and then at high tide the water rises up into the grass.

A true riparian zone, but not a very good place to camp, which is what I thought I would be doing that night.

We pulled into a channel on the Long Beach side,

and walked across the thin barrier island.

The temperature and the feel of the air was so different on the other side,

it was amazing that we had been a few blocks from the ocean the whole day.

It was like another universe.

We had traveled 8 miles.

In August, I attempted a circumnavigation of Long Island. I set out for two weeks and covered 200 miles, first heading east in the Great South Bay, and then heading west in the Long Island Sound. Participants met me along the way, paddling each for about a day. You can read their stories in the links below, or you can see the live image feed from the trip, where I was sending images back as I went along.

Bonnie Hulkower met me on the last day.

I had a vague goal of getting back to Brooklyn,

but my real goal was to intercept the Doyen,

and see if we could meet her captain, John Dean.

John is an 88 year old sailor who has been across the globe in his 32 foot Ketch – the Doyen.

He wrote me a few years ago about my project, and when he found out that we would be coming through his neighborhood he invited us for a ‘gam’.

We tied up my boat and dragged her along behind.

It felt great to be using the wind rather than fighting against it,

and the feeling of the lines in my hands reminded me of sailing as a kid.

John told us that when he goes to sleep at night, he imagines one by one, all the hundred islands where he has moored his boat.

He has lived here in Douglaston almost his whole life and he has been sailing in the area since 1936.

Now he takes his grand-kids out in the boat.

John told us that the tide would be in our favor for the next 2 hours,

and he offered to drop us under the Throgs Neck Bridge.

We thanked him and he wished us a happy voyage,

and then we watched the Doyen sail away.

It was a pretty sight in the shadow of the high bridge.

John was right about the tide,

and within a few minutes we were gliding under the Whitestone Bridge.

As we came around the bend at Powell Cove,

we could see the Manhattan skyline for the first time.

On one side of the sound were the wilds of the Bronx River,

and on the other, planes coming and going from Laguardia.

We paddled for a large abandoned factory on the bank,

and we tied up on it’s leeward side to get a break from the wind and sun.

We saw a boat that was so huge and so weird looking that we thought it was a building.

I had the sense that it was some kind of floating machine or mobile water processing facility.

I also thought that because of a strange smell in the area.

We could see the tall wire fences around Rikers Island to our left,

and to the right was a barge that I have always heard about.

We had arrived just in time for a swim at the ‘Floating Pool Lady Barge”.

We were not allowed to take any pictures inside the pool,

so you will have to believe me when I tell you that it is the most beautiful thing in the world,

to sit by a clear blue pool, surrounded by swirling currents of the Long Island Sound,

at the end of a long day of paddling.

We locked up the boat,

and started to make our way back to Brooklyn.

We had traveled 13 miles.

On August 10th, David Horvitz met me for a trip out of the Mamoroneck Harbor.

I tried to tell myself that it didn’t matter where we went or how far, and that it was just about exploring.

But once we got out into the harbor,

we could see David’s Island about 5 miles away.

It seemed fitting that David should visit David’s Island,

and even though the wind and waves were pushing against us once again,

I couldn’t shake the sense that we had to keep moving westward.

The first island we came to was Huckleberry Island,

and we decided to explore.

The eastern side was a beautiful rocky cove,

and there appeared to be some signs of habitation.

We walked into the woods to look for more.

There were odds and ends of structures,

blackberries,

and even a star fish.

I read later that Huckleberry Island was believed to be where Captain Kidd burried his treasure.

At least that is what the locals used to say in the 1800’s.

We stood in the cove and took pictures of the water as the sun lowered on the horizon.

“It’s as though the water is made of light,” said David.

We found a little skeleton on the shore.

I almost thought it could have been a little seal. Although it was probably a dog.

On the way to shore we made a stop at David’s Island,

and saw a whole nest of hunting osprey. The parents seemed to watch us as they circled around.

We paddled to a little beach on the Glen Island Park,

and found a place to hide the boat,

just as the park was closing.

We had gone 6 miles against the wind, and explored an island where I had never been before.

I only had a few days left to complete my circumnavigation, so I decided to cut the trip in half.

I would drive to the North Shore and start heading back to Brooklyn from there.

That is how Deb Larson and I ended up paddling through the Huntington Harbor Marina on August 9th.

We received some strange looks paddling our junky boat through the marina,

but I was determined in our plan to round the point of Caumsett State Park,

and see what the water was like out in the Long Island Sound.

The wind was blowing from the direction we wanted to go,

but at 10 am, even that seemed surmountable.

After an hour though, we needed a break,

and we found a pretty spot on a private but unattended dock.

Then it was time to get serious.

As we rounded the peninsula, I kept expecting the wind to change directions,

but it always seemed to be coming directly at us.

We decided to walk and pull the boat along,

and for miles one of us walked on shore,

while the other dragged the boat.

We passed some kind of an old fort,

and miles of pretty beach.

We noticed swallows nesting in the sandy bluffs,

and every time we rounded a turn,

the wind was there to meet us.

We came to a section of beach,

that was like a sculpture garden of nautical waste.

I was impressed with the collection of debris,

natural and man made.

It was pleasant to walk along the pretty beach,

but my feet under the water were scraped and bleeding.

Now that we had come this far though, we couldn’t go back.

Caumsett State Park is a huge undeveloped peninsula, and we were going around the long way.

There was not even a road out to where we were,

just miles of sun and wind and waves,

and luckily, ice cold drinking water; thanks to the brilliant method of freezing the bottles the night before!

We decided to get back in the boat,

where the water got deep again,

and we struggled to keep the boat away from the rocks.

We abandoned the boat a few yards later.

We realized that we had seen a car pulled up along the beach. A road! we thought.

Deb found an amazing walking stick with an old man head, and it seemed to suggest that our luck was finally turning around.

We found the road, along with a friendly local beach-goer, who agreed to drive us back to our car.

Stepping into the car after walking in the sun and waves all day felt like stepping into a space capsule,

and my body melted into the seat as we sped along.

Back on the beach an hour later we saw the sun set,

the moon rise,

and I found the most perfect horseshoe crab that I have ever seen.

The morning of the 7th, I was met by a special crew.

My friends Carla Edwards and Lan Tuazon,

and my dad.

On the drive out to Fire Island, my dad pointed out where he was standing in 1967 when they opened the Robert Moses Causeway.

‘

We dropped Lan and Carla at the beach,

and my dad and I went to look for a place to put the boat in the water.

There seemed to be a lot of spots where you were NOT supposed to put a boat in the water,

and this sign prohibiting small boat launching seemed to describe my boat exactly.

But my dad teaches law in Seattle,

which makes him an expert in getting around the law.

In no time we were out in the water,

exploring the channel between Fire Island and Long Island.

My dad grew up on Long Island in Cedarhurst.

His mother, Marie Lorenz, owned property on Fire Island for a short time.

“She would have been happy to know you settled in New York,” he said.

We tried to use a beach umbrella to sail us back to the truck,

but mostly we struggled against the current coming at us in the wrong direction.

“Stop trying to steer the boat from the front!” I had to tell my dad.

He crawled up the bank to try and find someplace to take the boat out of the water.

We decided to join Carla and Lan for a swim at the beach.

The water was perfect.

On the way home my dad told Carla and Lan that he was heading to a conference on international piracy in Washington DC.

“In fact,” he said, “On my computer back at the house, I have a whole lecture repaired on international piracy.”

“Ok!” they said, “let’s hear the lecture!”

So we ordered a pizza back at the house,

and my dad told us all about the issues surrounding piracy today.

Sara Weston and Time Shae took the LIRR out to meet me in Babylon.

Our plan was to go back across the bay and explore Fire Island,

but the water was getting choppy.

My brother had called in the morning to say that a storm was rolling in across Long Island.

Maybe it would be better to stay on this side of the bay if it comes, I thought.

There seemed like plenty to explore on the north side anyway,

so we moved into the relative protection of Great Cove.

There is a large park on the western bank of Great Cove,

and we spotted some kind of structure out at the end of the dock.

A few days later, Sara found an article on duck hunting in the South Bay,

which certainly would explain these shotgun shells.

She also found some articles about a mysterious crab die-off in the region,

which could have accounted for the piles of hundreds of dead crabs on the dock.

She even found out what makes these interesting alterations to the shells we were finding all over the beach – Calcareous worm tubes.

This little guy remains one of the unsolved beach mysteries of the day – anyone know what it is?

It was wonderful walking along on this lonesome section of beach, only reachable by boat.

When we got back out on the water, the waves had grown and the wind was up.

I thought we should look for some place to drag the boat out of the water,

but I was hesitant to land on the private beach of one of the mansions that lined the coast of Bay Shore.

We saw a little section of park tucked between two homes,

and we made a final push toward shore.

We stashed the boat as best we could,

and walked into the community of Lawrence Lake.

“Look,” said Tim,

“stone lions.”

We did find one house for sale,

and Sara left her number on the real estate’s answering machine.

We ate a few well deserved slices of pizza and watched a television show about the dead sea scrolls.

and then I waited for Jeff to come get me in his truck.

It seemed like we got off the water just in time, and I went home to Brooklyn to wait out the storm.

Later that night, Jeff and I watched Tarkovski’s ‘Stalker’. “I am like the Stalker.” I thought.

Caroline Woolard, Christopher Robbins, and Colin McMullan met me at Long Beach.

Chris’ mom bid us fair well. “Make sure you wear your life preservers!” she said.

It was about 8pm when we set out.

We wanted to find a camping spot before it got dark.

I could see from the map on my computer that there were islands all around us, but the trick was finding one with a high enough elevation to stay dry at high tide.

We found an island in the Cow Meadow Park and Preserve that seemed to have a sandy hill on the eastern shore,

and we set up our camp for the night.

Caroline, Colin and Chris brought along a veritable feast of home grown tomatoes, homemade ginger beer and other treats.

I was happy that they had ignored my advice to ‘pack light’.

We rose early the next morning.

I was worried about making it past the ocean channel between Long Beach and Jones Beach.

The early morning calm would be the perfect time to try.

It was easy going with such a great crew,

and we made it through without a hitch.

We found a pretty spot on the channel side of Jones Beach,

and shared some homemade bread with our coffee.

The other great thing about traveling with Caroline, Colin and Chris is that they know every kind of plant that you can find to eat along the way,

like hickory, wild arugula, and rose-hips.

If they don’t know it, they’ll look it up.

(also spotted along the way, a Praying Mantis)

we

We sailed when there was wind,

walked when it was shallow,

but mostly paddled all day long.

At some point we crossed the thin barrier island of Jones Beach,

and swam in the clear cold water on the Atlantic side.

We were not the only ones enjoying the beautiful weather.

At the boat when we got back, Caroline mixed some sourdough that would be our dinner later.

“Are there any conditions that make riding in the boat perfect for the formation of the dough?” I asked.

“The heat.” said Caroline.

Late in the afternoon, we reached an island that looked perfect to camp.

We were amazed to find a table and four chairs set up on a pretty bluff.

We snacked on homegrown tomatoes and wild arugula,

and watched the sun set.

It seemed like I was having a streak of incredible luck.

We gathered wood for a big bonfire,

and cooked the dough.

Calzone on a stick.

Someone was shooting fire works from another island.

We woke up at dawn.

I had the thought that maybe mosquitoes had set up the table and chairs to lure their prey onto the island.

It was time to cross the Great South Bay and bring Caroline, Colin and Chris to the Long Island Railroad.

They had been a great crew.

We had traveled 22 miles in 3 days, camped on 2 islands, and eaten 4 different kinds of wild plants.

I was sad to see them go.

Part of me wished that I was also going home to shower and take a nap.

The island of Ruffle Bar seemed like a shipwreck paradise.

It was also a census tract where Moses Gates needed to set foot to complete his goal of seeing all 2217 census tracts in New York City.

The dark pools of still water reminded me of the ‘Dead Marshes’ from Lord of the Rings. “Don’t look into the pools, Moses!”

We paddled to another island.

The Island of Little Egg.

The interior was covered in bones.

Walking on the beach, I came across the tracks of another inhabitant. What could it be?

A little dog,

had arrived by kayak with his owner.

I found a pair of mismatched flip flops. “Walking on the beach is just like shopping!” I told Moses.

He picked up a pair as well.

We decided to pull the boat and walk. The wind was blowing against us, and it seemed like a way to conserve our energy.

“If we can walk to the next Island, we will have walked from Brooklyn to Queens, but only in the water.” said Moses

I started to see how Moses gets an idea in his head,

and then he does it!

Back in the boat, we had one more goal for the day.

‘Rockaway Taco’, the latest destination dining sensation on Rockaway Beach Boulevard.

Simple, delicious, and the first thing I had eaten all day.

Back at the the boat, we had a decision to make:

The tide was turning against us,

and it was beginning to rain.

We had not accomplished our goal of reaching the Atlantic Beach bridge.

“I thought that I would help you cover much more ground today.” Said Moses.

Just then the wind picked up behind us,

and we took out a sail that we had found on Little Egg Island.

The Gay Sail!

All in all, we covered about 10 miles in one day. But we had also discovered new islands, new species, and the gay sailing.

We walked back to the train.

“When you blog about this, make sure that you explain how the wind and tide were against us.” said Moses.

“Oh I always do.” I said.

I arrived at the ‘Boatel‘ after dark. This is Constance Hockaday’s floating-art-project-hotel.

The very first thing that Connie did when I got there was to grab a glowing jelly fish out of the water to show me.

Then we went for a swim with her friend Adrian.

This is Connie under water. It was warm and as relaxing as a bath.

Connie made me a hot dog.

Served on a paper plate in the cabin of her little boat, it was the best dinner imaginable.

Connie showed me to my room.

I slept on the deck of the boat and was rocked to sleep by the waves.

The next morning on the Boatel,

Connie gave me a tour of the place:

her friend Adam’s boat,

and a dock that she made to connect all the boats she fixed up.

I was so impressed with her work and the way that she had fit her life neatly into the marina.

Connie said that she would give Moses and I a ride, not only to pick up the my boat but also to drop us off in the Jamaica Bay Wildlife Refuge.

We set out with Adrian in the morning.

It was such a nice morning, that I almost dreaded paddling again.

We picked up my boat from the park and sped across the bay.

Moses and I tried to figure out the best spot to land.

We said goodbye to Connie and Adrian,

and they left us to our own devices.

Adrian Kinloch boarded the Tide and Current Taxi from the beach at Coney Island.

He was asked to join me by his friends at Underwater New York.

They are a group of artists and writers who are inspired by things that wash up on the beaches around New York, or things that they hear about that are at the bottom of the harbor.

Adrian has a particular interest in cars that have been abandoned by the water. For a project called Liminal , he has traveled many of the same waterways that I have, looking for rusting hulks of cars and signs of dereliction.

He had been to this area a lot before.

But as we passed the rows of homes on the beach at Breezy Point, I wondered if I had planned the wrong part of the trip for Adrian.

Where was the garbage, the industrial mess, the rusting guts of the city?

Adrain Kinloch did not seem to mind.

He soaked in every detail, and he knew all the bridges and all the roads that led to these places we were floating past.

The current pulled us quickly under the Gil Hodges bridge,

and as sun dropped down on the horizon we watched a spectacular show of reflection, waves, and currents.

Suddenly the current stopped.

It would have been a great time to pull over and take a break,

but a high seawall ran along the southern bank,

and it stayed that way for miles.

When I see the New York City skyline again, I thought, it will be coming home from the North, through the Sound, hundreds of miles of water away.

We pulled up to a little park just as the sun was setting.

Adrian helped me stash the boat and we left it for the night. We had traveled over 8 miles, and most of that within the first hour of our trip.

Jesse Hamerman and Melissa Brown met me on the morning of the 2nd for a trip that I have always wanted to take:

through the Verrazano Narrows.

The forecast said it would be one of the hottest days of the year, and we protected ourselves carefully from the sun.

“I have never been out in a boat before!” announced Jesse happily.

“Well it is amazing that your first experience will be in a tiny boat floating through one of the busiest shipping channels in the world!” I said.

“We’ll try and stick close to land.” I said, and I steered the boat toward the seawall the runs along the Belt Parkway.

I didn’t know what to expect from the Narrows, where the whole harbor pours out into the Atlantic Ocean.

It was a comfort to know that we were under the watchful eye of the Harbor Police.

Jesse grew up on Staten Island,

and as we floated past, he told us stories about his young life in New York’s ‘forgotten borough’.

“The Verrazano was the longest suspension bridge in the world.” said Jesse. It is still the largest in the United States.

The size of it was incredible. I kept waiting for the tiny figures working under the bridge to appear closer as we passed.

They never did.

We slipped through the Narrows into the lower bay.

“The center span of the bridge is so long,” said Jesse, “that the two towers are actually at a slight angle from one another, to account for the curvature of the earth.”

The lower harbor is more open that the upper part, and we decided to take advantage of the wind.

As we passed by the hulls of giant cargo ships, Jesse thought they looked like works of art. “Richard Serra.” he said.

“Mel Bochner.”

“Rodchenko.” said Melissa.

The sail was really whipping us along.

And for the first time in the life of my little boat, we were officially sailing in the ocean.

As we pulled up to the beach on Coney Island, a couple standing by the water said “You made it! You’re in Brooklyn.” We must have looked like we had come a long way. Which, in fact, we had.

10 miles in just about 4 hours.

“Let me take a picture as you guys walk away.” I said.

Daphne Fitzpatrick met me at the Brooklyn Bridge Park,

and we slipped out of a small water passage between the Manhattan Bridge and the land.

We were immediately shot into the strong south-flowing current of the ebb tide.

We floated under the Brooklyn Bridge, and it was roaring with the sound and activity of a massive construction project.

“I can’t believe we are doing this!” said Daphne. “Is this crazy?”

“Yes!” I said.

Within a few minutes we were passing by the southern tip of Manhattan,

and we paddled for the channel between Governors Island and the Red Hook shipping piers.

The city began to slip into the distance.

The ship yards floated into view.

Being up close to the machinery of the docks was mesmerizing,

and Daphne wanted to row up to everything to touch it.

“Can we go inside that tunnel?” asked Daphne.

“I don’t know.” I said (which is what I say when I think it is too dangerous).

When Daphne was a kid, her grandfather had a sailboat. They used to sail up the harbor and out past Hells Gate into the Long Island Sound. Some of her fondest memories growing up were watching the city go by from the deck of the boat.

We floated into a little park in Red Hook.

The tide had carried us 3 miles in less than an hour.

We hid the boat behind the breakwater of the park,

and explored some of Red Hook’s fine drinking establishments.

My very first passenger on the Long Island Odyssey was Frederick Hayes.

He had never been out in a boat in the East River before.

In fact, he had not been in many boats this size at all.

“I’m a city kid.” said Fred. “I don’t go to the beach or to the ocean much.”

“I like trains and streets and buildings.”

It makes sense if you think about his artwork (here is one of his cityscape).

In some ways I think that the East River is more like a crowded city street or a train track than a beach. Being in it is more like exploring the structure of the metropolis than being in the outdoors.

We came to our destination in just an hour.

“What do you think?” I asked. “Lets keep going.” said Fred.

The water was choppy and the current was very fast,

but Fred seemed comfortable on the water.

We talked about our artwork,

and about living in New York,

and on either side of us the cityscape was gliding by.

It was like floating through a Frederick Hays painting.

Fred waited with me for Daphne to show up, at the a little beach under the Manhattan Bridge.

We had traveled over 3 miles.

Camped out on Hudson River Island.

6am

Jeff Williams rowing back to shore.

Robin Vachal

Robin Vachal in Athens.

Jack Hanley and Micheal Bauer come check out the boat.

The girls are ready to go!

Cathleen Chaffee, Tania Cross, and Birgit Rathsmann exploring Hudson.

Giselle Potter and family sailed out to the lighthouse to meet us!

Kara Kazanoff at the Athens light house.

The Maria T.

RJ Supa, david Fierman, Victoria Keddie on Middle Ground Flats.

RJ Supa

RTG

What is this?! (Seen with Anthony Sebok and Deborah)

The Half Moon! Docked on the Athens side of the Hudson!

Jana Leo, coming back from Middle Ground Flats.

Taking a swim break at the falls

On Saturday I was invited to participate in a special boating event  organized by the Swimming Cities collective in Brooklyn’s, Marine Park.

The idea was to get as many people as possible out in boats homade dress up and have some events out on the water

I figured there would be a fair representation of pageantry and decadence from the Swimming Cities crew

so we came as monks

come stage a battle for Mau Mau island! The invitation said

we will be its first missionaries. i said

the first thing we did when we got to the marine park was to go and see this mau mau island for ourselves

River Island Tidal Ferry

Long Island Circumnavigation

Dana called me in May to see if I would be willing to take a very special trip in the Tide and Current Taxi.

She wanted a ride down the Erie Canal, to study the area for an article she was writing.

We had been talking for years about exploring the canal around where she lives in Syracuse,

and now we had a deadline.

We planned to ride between Ilion and Fonda, an interesting stretch where the canal parallels the Mohawk River,

and is sandwiched between a busy train track and I-90.

There had been heavy rains earlier in the month and the dams and locks were all closed to traffic.

Aside from people fishing around the locks,

the canal was completely empty,

and as remote as any wilderness.

We stopped to explore some towns along the way; Little Falls, St. Johnsville.

We ate in bars and stayed in hotels along the water.

We would shyly try to hide our duffel bags and muddy clothes.

We learned quickly to navigate between the canal, which was steady, flat, and straight,

and the river, where we could catch the current.

Sometimes we made long overland portages,

as we maneuvered around the closed locks and dams.

We would empty the boat,

haul it past the brush and vines,

lower it down to the water on the other side and reload.

Dana knew everything about the canal; it was nice to travel with a guide.

We would pull over the boat and walk a hundred yards into the woods,

to study the ruins of the old canal.

Dana told me how the original canal had been constructed almost entirely by hand; dug out by Irish immigrants in the 1820’s.

Maybe some of my ancestors worked on the canal, I thought, or childless branches of my family tree.

“How do you think traveling along the canal will change what you write about in your article?” I asked Dana.

“I guess I am realizing how much of a journey is about being in between places.” she said.

And it really was.

We traveled along miles of canal and river with nothing much to see or even talk about.

Our eyes became adjusted to small changes in the landscape.

We saw an eagle and a coyote and the tracks of a hundred little things that used the river.

“There is not as much trash as you would think.” said Dana.

Just above Canajoharie, we portaged around our last dam.

The water roared through its gates like the mouth of a giant whale.

(Remember this picture. It plays into our story at the end.)

We slid the boat down the embankment on the other side.

A few miles below the dam we came to an island; a sandy strip of land.

We decided it was a perfect place to camp.

We left our bags on the island and paddled back to Canajoharie to find something to eat.

“Wait unitl I tell my friends I went camping in ‘Canjo’.” said Dana.

We came back to the river after dark,

and walked along the bank to find the boat.

Paddling back to the island was beautiful. The water was still and black as ink.

We set up camp,

and fell asleep to the sounds of the train and highway on either side.

I felt safe and sound knowing we were on an island.

The next morning we woke up to a startling discovery;

the water seemed to have risen a few feet in the night.

Dana remembered that she had heard sirens coming from the dam.

Another foot and we might have been washed away.

Now the water was flat and calm,

and we set out for our last day of paddling.

We floated through what seemed a remote and lonely wilderness.

We took the boat out around Sprakers,

and found a little tunnel to cross under I-90.

Later that day, Dana said that her favorite part of the trip was pushing the boat through the tunnel under I-90. The strangeness of our journey seemed most apparent here, in a hidden tunnel under a road she travels every day.

It took us just 40 minutes in the car to get back to Ilion, where we had set out 4 days before.

(You can read Dan’s article in the NY Times Magazine!)

Look back here on June 5th for the post about our trip!