I kept saying all summer that I wanted to go for rides in other people’s boats,
but when Clyde Petersen and Gigi Grinstad came to visit from Seattle, I couldn’t resist the chance to show off one of New York City’s greatest attractions;
the Staten Island Boat Graveyard.
We decided that one way to keep within my theme for the summer,
was to visit other people’s SUNKEN boats,
In some cases we weren’t exactly aboard the vessels,
we were inside floating through them.
We visited HILA, a wood-hulled rescue tug built during World War II.
She was steam powered, 116 feet long, and once home to 50 officers and sailors of the U.S. Navy.
We picked our way through the wrecks,
and tucked ourselves inside an old Hudson River ferry,
to wait for a passing ship.
“I wonder what they think of us down here.” said Clyde,
as we came poking back out of the wreck like sea urchins.
It was actually starting to rain,
but we had one more stop to make.
LT 653, another old steam powered tugboat.
This one was built for the army in 1954, and ships of her class would have helped with the D-day invasion.
She’s been sitting right here since 1972, which is longer than I’ve been on the planet,
and she’s holding up pretty well, considering everything.
All this information about the wrecks I learned from Will Van Dorp and Gary Kane’s great documentary ‘Graves of Arthur Kill’.
It was fun to walk slowly through the wreck and imagine the crew that operated her.
From up on the bridge of LT 653, it was possible to get a better sense of the graveyard’s immense scale.
“I wonder why people don’t just move out here and live aboard the boats.” said Clyde.
It started to rain harder, and we kind of figured that out.
The boat was wet and cold, inside and out. There was no place to get out of the weather.
We decided to make a run for it, to get back to the truck and out of the rain.
Even these pacific north-westerners were getting a little tired of being soaked and cold.
“What are you guys going to do when you get home?” I asked.
“Tomato soup and grilled cheese,” they told me later.
The Spartina is a decommissioned military landing craft, owned and operated by Captain Joshua Horton of Greenport Long Island.
Josh and the Spartina are part of a huge FEMA Public Assistance Project to clear debris left by Hurricane Sandy. They have been working since March throughout Nassau County, removing any debris that could pose a navigational hazard.
I was able to come aboard with an introduction from Will Van Dorp who has accompanied the Spartina on her daily rounds as well.
For the first hour, I just tried to stay out of the way as Josh and his pilot maneuvered the boat out of port and got her ready for work.
I held my breath as we headed for a bridge that barely seemed high enough for the boat.
“That’s nothing!” Said the pilot as he powered through.
Along the way we passed two barges that are also on the FEMA cleanup job.
On deck were two boats, picked from the bottom of the marsh.
Everything less than 4 feel below the surface must be taken out.
When I first came on board, I thought that machine on deck was the boat’s engine. It turned out to be a motor that runs only the crane and winches.
The real engine is down under the wheelhouse.
It fills an entire room, hot and loud, where Josh’s pilot made some last minute adjustments.
“It’s not working if your not bleeding!” He shouted up, happy to be almost finished.
Our first stop was for fuel, a quick, 200 gallon sip of diesel.
Across from the floating station, a flock of fat white geese ambled about, getting, ready for their day.
It was early by most people’s standards, but things at the job site were already moving along, and the contractor came by to see where we were.
“He just came by because he heard there’s someone new on board.” Josh said with a wink.
A bright pile of debris in the distance turns out to be an array of flotsam, equipment, and people.
Things are beautifully sorted at the job site, with a whole pcinic area that seems made entirely of objects found in the marsh.
The Spartina can land with her bow resting right up on the beach.
Her gate opens downward, just like in ‘Saving Private Ryan’.
Josh had to keep an eye on the tide. Sandy beaches can leave the landing craft stranded when the tide goes out.
The piles of debris were amazing, and the crew said this wasn’t even a big load.
The main contract is to remove tens of thousands of cubic yards of debris from Nassau County.
When the contract was written, they estimated costs for lots of heavy equipment:
track loaders, large excavators, a hydraulic crane,
but it was hard to get all that equipment out into the marsh.
Most of the work has been done by men on foot, cutting through the phragmites with machetes, and dragging the debris out by hand.
These men will have touched almost every piece of the haul, dragging some of it miles through the marsh by hand.
The crew explained how trails are cut, fanning out into the marsh from deposit sites.
I took a break from the site to see if I coul find some of the trails.
One of the employees showed me pictures on his phone of a site they finished last spring. The marsh was growing back in over the signs of their intrusion.
I didn’t think about it at the time, but those were the only pictures he had on his phone; pictures of little shoots of grass coming in around what they had cleared.
When I got back to the Spartina, the tide was up around the loading site and the crew was ready to go.
Inspectors made sure that the load was full.
This will be compared to notes from a FEMAÂ inspector here and at the delivery site.
The pile looked great, and our hang out spot had become a little island.
We nudged away from shore in a cloud of diesl smoke.
The Spartina didn’t mind carrying the extra load. This is what she was made for.
The spartina marsh grass was doing what it was made for too, engulfed almost completely by high tide, with just their tips showing above water.
Back at Cedar Creek, we watched the container get hoisted onto land.
The trash was loaded onto a truck bound for a ‘certified transfer station’.
The Spartina was ready for a fresh container.
She would be busy for the rest of the day, with another couple loads,
but Josh had to see to some other jobs in the area.
It felt strange to be flying over the surface of the water, after spending so much time thinking about what was underneath it.
Paula Murgia suggested that we ride out to Sandy Hook on the ferry from Manhattan,
but I had no idea that we would be aboard the Seastreak, a huge, multi-hulled ferry that I have admired and feared since starting the Tide and Current Taxi in 2005.
We wanted to go chat with the captain, but the doorway to his cabin looked uninviting,
and two attendants said that it would be impossible to visit ‘the bridge’ at any time.
When I am out in my little boat, this ferry is the scariest thing on the East River. It is very fast, and something about the double hull makes a dangerous wake.
The Seastreak seemed to devour the water behind her, and we watched the wake fill the entire river from bank to bank.
Up on deck, the ride was smooth and flat. There was something wonderful about being aboard the biggest thing in the river, because in the Tide and Current Taxi, I am usually the smallest.
We were ready for a day at the beach, but the rest of the passengers were coming home from work.
This would be an amazing way to commute. I imagined the stress of the day slipping away as we watched Manhattan shrink in the distance.
When we reached top speed, the sound of the engine was incredible, and we left behind a wake that must have been over a mile long.
In no time at all, the city was a speck on the horizon.
Just then, the attendant we spoke with earlier found us. The captain had agreed to let us onto the bridge! We would be able to look around and ask questions, but there was just one rule: no pictures.
“That’s ok.” I whispered to Paula, “There must be some pictures of the deck online that I can use for my blog.”
Paula snuck one with her phone just in case.
Captain Gordon Young had a confident and easy demeanor. He spoke about the ferry like the loving, faithful husband of a capricious wife.
This boat is one of the oldest in the entire Seastreak fleet, and Young is one of the only Captains qualified to drive her.
We passed an East River Ferry, and I told Captain Young about my problems with wake from ferry boats. “The East River is no place for small boats.” He said. But he also reassured me about the Seastreak’s capability to watch out for smaller craft. Much more so than the drivers of East River Ferry, who he shrugged off as novices.
Up ahead, two jet skis were heading straight for the Seastreak. “Sometimes they don’t realise how fast we are going.” Said Young, and he eased back on the throttle. The jet skiers spilt up right before we crossed paths, cutting within 10 yards of the Seastreak.  They were playing in the steep wake of the boat.
Gordon Young dropped us off in New Jersey and headed back to Manhattan for the rest of his shift. It was going to be a pretty good day, he told us. His shifts are shorter, now that he is a senior captain and agrees to drive the older boat.
Thank you Captain Young, for a great view of the harbor and some important navigation tips!
It was going to be a good day for us, too.
We had our bikes on board and we set off explore Sandy Hook.
This thin peninsula was hit horribly during hurricane Sandy,
but as a ‘barrier spit’, it may have protected the land directly west from a worse fate.
We stopped at the Spermaceti Cove Lifesaving Station.
It was built in the 1800’s to house the ‘Beachmen’ hired to save ships in peril along the treacherous Sandy Hook (said that sign).
Everything about Sandy Hook was different than the Rockaways, just a few miles east.
The beach was made of beautiful, uniform pebbles,
and long, evenly spaced waves curled down the peninsula.
There is something wistful about swimming in the fall, at the end of a sunny day,
like all the summers of your whole life are coming to an end.
We made the most of it,
and biked back in the setting sun.
Back at the ferry landing, we could see the headlights of Seastreak coming to pick us up;
the last ship home.
This time we sat out on the front deck, and we could feel the air coming off the water, much warmer than the first chilly night of fall.
It was like the water didn’t want summer to end either, and was holding some of it in there for us.
“We could do this a few more times before the summer is really over.” I told Paula.
But we haven’t been back.
The North Brooklyn Boat Club resides in a lovingly maintained sliver of land between the Pulaski bridge and Ash Street in Greenpoint.
Since its establishment in 2010, the club boasts 260 members annually, and has grown to include a boatbuilding workshop, environmental education center, and new programs for the Newtown Creek.
Willis Elkins, founding member and also Program Director of the Newtown Creek Alliance, invited me for a trip out in one of the NBBC canoes.
We toured the ‘Ed Shed’, complete with a digital micoroscop, library, and two tanks for local fish, crab, snails, and eels (all of whom were still tucked into the mud this Sunday morning).
Our mission today was collecting samples for analysis by Dr. Michael Levandowsky, a research scientist and professor at Pace University who helps out with water quality testing.
NBBC members, Patterson Beckwith and Amy Gartrell came along as well. Patterson showed us the NBBC’s amazing collection of floatable debris, all found in the Newtown Creek and East River.
Patterson also collects bricks from the shores of New York City. “They used to cast their names on the side to help the bricks adhere to one another.” Said Patterson, “Now you can look them up online and read about the companies that made each brick.”
We chose to take out the Sherman canoe, a large canvas ‘Old Town’ from the 1930’s.
Compared to my boats, the Sherman seemed to glide effortlessly through the water,
and Willis explained how her razor sharp bow and stern helped reduce drag. It’s something I will have to keep in mind for the next ‘Tide and Current Taxi’ design.
Our first stop was a Combined Sewer Overflow outfall in the Dutch Kills waterway. Willis planned our trip to coincide with low tide, a narrow window of opportunity to paddle into the CSO.
We chose an amazing day to look at the water itself. Heavy rains and warm weather had caused a bloom of red algae in the Newtown Creek.
It was hard to get a good picture, but the microscopic dinoflagellates were present in such huge quantities, that their ochre color was perfectly visible.
We could see eddies of color swirling along the banks. The water right next to the shore seemed clear, perhaps because of fresh rainwater leaching in from the street.
The CSOs, present an interesting problem for the health of the Newtown Creek.
A Combined Sewer Overflow is exactly what it sounds like; places where raw sewage enters the waterway. They’re illegal under the Clean Water Act, but would require such a huge amount of infrastructural change, New York City finds it basically impossible to fix. The new superfund status of the Newtown Creek is not likely to help the situation either, Willis explained, because the fund doesn’t cover biological contaminants.
If someone can show that CSOs are actually contributing more than just biological contaminants in the creek, then maybe the city will take a closer look.
A light rain had started, and we remembered our tunnel exploring friend, Steve Duncan’s advice; “When it rains – NO DRAINS.”
We figured a light rain couldn’t hurt, so we entered the CSO.
It had seemed like a good idea in daylight, but as darkness closed in around us, my imagination went crazy.
Every drip sounded like a waterfall of sewage, and the current seemed to pull us further into the darkness.
I took pictures with my flash just to see what we were bumping over.
At the end of the tunnel, we found ourselves in front of a huge wooden gate; this was the overflow valve itself.  When the water levels rise during a rain event, this thing floats opens and lets the city sewage right into the Newtown Creek.
There seemed to be some kind of monitoring equipment installed near the valve. Willis thought this might be an effort by the city to get better data on exactly when the CSO gates open and how much untreated water is coming out.
As we came out of the CSO, we noticed the red algae pooling around the entrance of the tunnel.
The dispersion of algae might be a sign of fluctuating oxygen levels in the water. Sometimes algae can consume so much oxygen, it kills everything else in the water.
It was hard to imagine anything living in here except bacteria and microscopic things,
but we stopped to watch a young heron fishing along the bank. He let us float so close that we could see his distinctive yellow bill and red-rimmed eyes.
Here is Willis’ picture of the bird, a black crowned night heron.
Hearing Willis describe the problems surrounding CSOs, the superfund site, and all the competing interests, made my head swim.
Who is to blame for the wreck of the Newtown Creek? Who is going to fix it?
It seems simple though, when I think of the example that Willis and his colleagues are setting.
It’s fun to think of the Newtown Creek as my own personal backyard. The harder thing to accept is that the CSO also belongs to me. It’s my toilet, my sewer, my energy needs, and my responsibility to help fix.
Willis pointed out one of the ExxonMobile remediation sites. This spout of clear water is the outfall of a recovery well pumping system. ExxonMobile operates these in an effort to clean one of the largest oil spills in recorded history.
It was great hear the facts about every spout and spill and drain from Willis and Patterson. Things that I had speculated about for years were becoming clear.
As we paddled into Maspeth, a mile up the creek, the water had completely changed color.
In a certain light, the creek was glowing like a caribbean lagoon,
but instead of white sand and coral reefs, there were wrecked cars,
and the creek bottom was perfectly black.
We entered another CSO, a huge double tunnel that Willis said was not even the biggest in the creek.
I could hear the sound of rushing water and I imagined being sucked over a giant waterfall in the dark,
but it was just a trickel.
Willis said this one could be a freshwater stream, rerouted underground to join the creek,
and he took a sample for Dr. Levandowsky.
Patterson and Amy had taken the other tunnel, and we checked in with each other at each opening to compare notes.
I saw an eel under the boat, something that I had never seen before in the Newtown Creek, but he swam away before I could get a picture.
We backed out of the tunnel, when it got too shallow to float.
We had one more stop to make.
The Maspeth Plank Road used to be a muddy and garbage filled dead end, but theThe Newtown Creek Alliance has been clearing and restoring the site to make a pretty little public park.
They had just installed a sign (designed by Willis), and needed a picture for their funders.
Part of the problem, other than neglect, was that the road-end was washed out from two clogged street grates, overflowing with water from a mysterious source.
A few blocks away, I saw the place in the street where water continually emerges. Willis said there might be a natural spring buried under there, or it might be a broken water main.
When he asked the DEP to come out and have a look, the crew made fun of him for asking so much about the spring. They wanted to know how old he was, and what he did for his real job. What did he care about a leaky pipe?
“This IS my job,” said Willis.
The thing that I think is so effective about Willis’ approach to the landscape, is that he seems to enjoy the whole process of restoration, not just end result.
He likes collecting dinoflagellates,
and touring the backyards of energy facilities,
just as much as he likes seeing the results of the NCA and NBBC’s hard work (like these planter boxes, filled with native wetland grasses and installed at the level where the grass would live if the Newtown Creek had never been developed).
Back at the boathouse, Patterson examined his latest floatable find,
and Willis labeled his samples, setting them aside for Michael Levandowsky.
I figured Michael would respond with a list of numbers, but his email the next day read like the screenplay for ‘Gremlins’…
Thank you Willis, Patterson, and Amy for an amazing day on the Newtown Creek!
I found out Rich Porter had a new sailboat when he tried to sell me his old one.
“Join me in City Island,” he had texted, “we’ll make the C.I. Sailing Club!”
I had reservations about owning a sailboat when I don’t even have a car,
but Jeff and I took Rich and Pali up on the offer to join them for a day of sailing aboard the new boat.
“It is a Pearson Ariel,” said Rich, “designed by Carl Alberg in 1961.”
He said it was the one of the first production fiberglass sailboats ever made, for a growing middle-class of pleasure boaters.
Pearson made 440 Ariels from 1962 to 1967 (the Noesis is number 109), and almost all of them are still in service.
This Sunday the Long Island Sound was filled with boats; sailing, motoring, fishing
and some so strange, we couldn’t figure out WHAT they were doing.
“It’s the doctor with Ebola coming back to the U.S.” said Jeff.
“I think I like this better than rowing.”
The conversationed turned to various disasters at sea,
and we tried to imagine what a 60 foot wave would look like beside the boat.
It all seemed as distant from our current reality,
as the ghost of New York City, barely visible on the horizon.
The one thing I found disconcerting, and different from being in my shallow row boat, was the issue of submerged rocks.
The area around City Island is notoriously rocky,
and formations like ‘Big Tom’ could rip a hole right through Noesis’ lead keel.
I crawled up to my favorite seat;
the look-out.
There was so much about being aboard the boat with Rich and Pali that reminded me of happy hours spent sailing as a kid.
“When I start sailing, it’s all IÂ want to do.” said Rich.
It was true. Just as we were heading back to the mooring,
Rich turned away. He wanted to show us ‘the melting house’.
Rich described the wrecked boathouse with weird taxidermy deer peering out of abandoned windows,
but the wind wouldn’t let us get too close.
It didn’t seem to be helping us get home either.
We were dead in the water; the doldrums; dead calm. It was actually kind of nice.
We decided to take down the sail,
and motor in.
“I think I like this boat better than the last one.” said Pali.
There was one last trick to perform.
“When we go by that buoy, you have to hook it with the pole,” Pali said. “You only have one chance!”
Jeff grabbed the buoy,
and Pali shuttled us back to shore,
just as the sun set.
We could smell fried food wafting over the water.
“I would have come to City Island just for this!” I said.
Thank you Rich and Pali for a great sailing day!
Growing up with a Marine Corps dad and an adventuresome mom, I was put to work at an early age.
These are some images that my dad scanned recently from his wealth of 35 mm slides.
Now my parents live in Tacoma, Washington,
and on a trip to see them in June, we took the ferry out to our friend Stuart Hennessey’s cabin on Vashon Island.
The Chetzemoka is a beautiful new ferry that connects Vashon to Point Defiance. It was designed to travel a busier route, “but sea trials revealed excessive vibrations in the vessel’s propulsion system.”
The Chetzemoka was almost completely empty when we crossed the bay,
but she seemed to be working just fine,
and I started to get excited about what could be waiting for us on Vashon Island.
There are no roads to the Hennessey’s house, just a pretty walking trail.
Of course, you could always get there by boat. The house is on Dolphin Point,
originally serviced by Puget Sound’s ‘Mosquito Fleet‘in the 1920’s.
The Hennessey’s have a pair of sturdy ocean kayaks,
and the first thing we did was paddle out into the sound.
We were treated to a perfect view of Mt. Rainier – elevation 14,411 feet.
The next morning, we went out again with my mom.
“This is my kind of boating.” she said.
I agree.
It’s not common to get such a clear, sunny day in the Seattle area, and it was mesmerizing to drift along.
There were eagles perched in the treetops,
and, as promised by the poster back on the Chetzemoka, seals poked their heads curiously out of the water.
The water was as still as glass,
and I stopped to admire the hundreds of jellyfish.
I thought they might have been laying eggs.
The water around them was filled with tiny bits of something.
My parents had moved on, and I paddled to catch up.
There are jellyfish to bother back home in New York City,
but just another week with my parents this summer,
and lunch was waiting back on shore.
I’m kind of cheating here, taking out my boat when I was supposed to hitch rides in others this summer,
but the fact is, no one invited me in any other boat to see the 4th of July fire works in New York City,
and anyway, it was Jeff Williams suggestion.
“Would we be able to see the fire works from your boat?” Jeff had asked.
“Yes!” I said.
It was a perfect time of day to be out in the boat,
except for the wind and waves. My boat was riding a little low in the water,
because we had five people, plus dinner, drinks, and Melissa’s Rhubarb pie baked especially for the occasion.
We tied up to a pier to have some food and wait for sunset.
The fireworks would start at 9pm,
and we had another few miles to go.
I assured everyone that the high wind would stop as soon as the sun set,
but it wasn’t happening.
Thunder storms were predicted for later that night,
but for now the sky was  clear – just in time for the fire works it seemed.
We slowed down after the Williamsburg bridge.
You can’t really see it from here, but up ahead, there were big motor boats queuing up for the show.
I didn’t want to be in the middle of all those boats in the dark, so we hung back.
Even from here though, we had front row seats.
and the fire works looked great with all the lights from the city,
reflecting off the water.
Also, there was something new that I had never seen before;
fire works shot off directly from the bridge!
As the sky darkened after the finale, we could hear motor boats moving toward us.
“Lets get out of here!” I said.
We ducked into the navy yard,
to have some Rhubarb pie,
and wait for the traffic to clear up.
It was still windy as we paddled home,
but now the tide was with us.
This had been a perfect mission for ‘the Tide and Current Taxi’; we rode the ebb tide down to Dumbo,  
and now the flood tide was bringing us right back home.
“Why don’t we do this every night?” asked Carla.
Anytime you want, guys!
‘Boating with Clyde‘ is a web t.v. series created by the artist, Clyde Petersen. Each episode features a musical performance shot in waterways around Seattle. They’ve hosted everyone from Rae Spoon, to ‘Behead the Prophet No Lord Shall Live‘, all performing in a boat that Clyde designed and built.
I wanted to go out in Clyde’s boat to be part of this great art project, but I don’t have a musical act.
Luckily, I was staying with my parents in Tacoma, Washington.  Apart from being a retired Marine Colonel, professor of law at the University of Washington, and an active member of the Olympic Mountain Rescue, my dad is a bit of a performer.
Clyde and my dad were instant friends (which mostly means listening while my dad tells you about stuff),
and they got right to work setting up the equipment.
“Sing a few notes,” said Clyde, “give me your loudest.”
When my dad saw Clyde’s show on the internet the night before, he said, “Uh oh, I better bring along my good guitar.” That is a Martin D-28 Purchased at Manny’s Music in New York City in 1972.
“Sounds great.” said Clyde.
I got in back to steer the canoe, and we set off down Thea Foss Waterway.
That’s Forrest Baum, Clydes friend, technical collaborator, and true adventurer.
I was worried that I’de dragged everyone out here, and somehow Tacoma wouldn’t stack up compared to the other episodes in ‘Boating with Clyde’,
but the Foss looked great and my dad’s songs were perfect. First he sang “The Sinking of the Reuben James†an old song by Woody Guthrie about the first U.S. naval ship sunk during World War II.
“Hey, let’s turn the boats around.” I said, “The other side will make a better backdrop for this next song.”
‘Where I’m Bound’ by Tom Paxton.
“If you see me passing by and you sit and you wonder why,”
“and you wish that you were rambling too”
“Nail your shoes to the kitchen floor, lace ’em up and bar the door,”
“Thank your stars for the roof that’s over you,”
“Cause I can’t help but wonder where I’m bound, where I’m bound”
“Can’t help but wonder where I’m bound.”
“Here we are in the Foss Waterway,” my dad said into Clyde’s tape, “The Murray Morgan Bridge, 1905.”
I could have paddled around like that all day,
checking out the sights, getting to know Forrest and Clyde,
and listening to my dad sing,
but we had one more thing to do.
That night I was giving a lecture at Tacoma’s Working Waterfront Maritime Museum.
The Museum is housed in an old historic wharf building on Thea Foss Waterway,
and it hosts a wonderful array of maritime artifacts and enthusiasts like model boat builder, Ron Huhn,
who was actually on site to show us some of his amazing modeling tricks.
We also arranged to meet Bill Holland, who spoke to us about the classic boats that he donated to the museum.
These are handmade wooden canoes, built by the Willits Brothers Canoe Company in the 1930’s right here in Tacoma, Washington. “This was before the 1950’s car culture,” Bill pointed out, “and a canoe was a great way entertain a date.”
I was starting to think that this might be a little more information than Clyde and Forrest signed up for today, but I shouldn’t have worried.
“Ahoy! Marie! Look what we found!”
Clyde was perfectly engaged, piloting ‘Faith’, the Columbia Gillnetter Youth Educational Tool.
Clyde and Forrest even sat through my talk, about artwork and growing up with my adventuring dad.
Thanks Clyde and Forrest for an amazing day, for featuring the Lorenz Family Outing on Boating with Clyde,
and thanks to my parents for hosting me in lovely Tacoma, Washington. (This is the view from their living room, overlooking Thea Foss Waterway.)
Josh Hite and Rebecca Bayer are members of the ‘Ten Fifteen Maple’ art collective, in residence now at the Hadden Park Field House in Vancouver, Canada.
Josh and Kristen Roos purchased a canoe last August, and Josh has been going on excursions related to his perspective projects.
There is one place though, that Josh has yet to paddle; around Stanley Park and under the Lions Gate Bridge.
Dangerous tidal currents move through the Lions Gate into the Burrard Inlet, but I found a chart that indicates times when the current is perfectly still.
The only thing was, we disagreed slightly about when that perfect time would be,
and I was making matters worse by talking about all the confusing numbers on my chart.
“It’s nice to go on an adventure in your own city.” said Rebecca.
I got to ride in the middle while Josh and Rebecca expertly piloted the canoe.
Josh was doing all the worrying that I usually do,
and as a passenger, I realized how little cause there actually is to fret,
when you are out in a boat, not far from shore, on a warm pretty day.
Vancouver looks great from the water, like it was made to be seen from a canoe.
Rebecca pointed out the The Euginia Building. The tree on top is the original height of Vancouver’s virgin pine forrest.
There was something horrible about the idea, like seeing a severed head on a pike.
To our left, the container ships waited 15 deep to enter the shipping port.
The day was so clear that we could see a ship 20 miles away, its hull hidden by the curve of the earth.
Eagles were being chased around by angry crows,
and every time we turned around, a little head poked curiously out of the water; a harbor seal was following our canoe.
Stanley park seemed like a theater, looking out onto the natural world, and we were sneaking quietly backstage.
We passed by Slhx̱i7lsh rock, a powerful site for the Squamish people who lived on this peninsula before the British colony.
My heart raced as we came within site of the Lions Gate,
but we passed under the bridge without a hitch.
The water was as still as glass. Josh had been right; the slack current seemed to coincide perfectly with high tide.
We found a little beach to pull over,
and sent word back to friends that we had made it through the Lions Gate.
As traffic filled the channel, my confidence was rattled.
Lucky we’re not coming through there right now, I thought.
We set out to see more of downtown Vancouver,
followed by our curious little friend.
Josh and Rebecca pointed out the giant sulfur piles in the Port of Vancouver,
the stoic ‘Girl in a Wetsuit’ by Elek Imredy,
and whatever the heck that was.
We slipped quietly by the Naval Base on Deadman’s Island,
and let ourselves into the Royal Vancouver Yacht Club.
It was fun to peek into all the boat garages,
and see the million dollar yachts.
We found a secret passage under the pier,
and tied up to a dock downtown.
We sat and rested for a bit,
but when we set out again, I wondered if we had timed things wrong.
We would be coming through the Lions Gate right between high and low tide, during the period of fastest moving current,
exactly when we said we wouldn’t go.
A concerned boater stopped and asked if we knew what we were about to do,
but once again, there seemed nothing left to do but try,
and we sped back through the channel like we were whitewater rafting.
It doesn’t look like much in the picture here, but that dark patch in the water was a wave of current moving faster than I have ever seen before.
We made it under the bridge in just a few minutes, accompanied by our little friend.
A new friend appeared to be following us though;
a Vancouver Police vessel. The concerned boater we spoke to earlier had radioed ahead for someone to help us.
The police asked if we were aware that traveling under the Lions Gate in a canoe was against the law.
I had to look back at Josh’s video to see what we said in return.
“Yeah… Yeah… o.k… thank you.” we said.
A helpful wind pushed us all the way back to Kitsilano Beach.
We had been out for 7 hours and traveled over 12 miles.
Josh and Rebecca’s friends would be wondering where they were by now,
but we took some time to enjoy the sun before going back to real life.
The North Star of Hershel Island is 58Â foot long Arctic transport ship.
She’s the only one left of her kind, a fully rigged, sailing cargo vessel, built in the 1930s for Inuit fox trappers.
Now owned by Sheila and Bruce Macdonald, she lives in the Vancouver Maritime Museum’s Heritage Harbour.
The boat is a museum all in herself, but also home for Bruce and Sheila. They make her available as a teaching tool here at the Heritage Harbour, and for tall ship festivals around the world.
I was lucky to get aboard as part of a worskshop that we organized at the Maritime Museum.
This workshop was about tying knots.
Bruce has the expertise of a true sailor, having logged over 75,000 nautical miles at various helms of traditionally rigged ships,
but he delivers information with the flair of an artist.
I was so busy trying to learn the knots that I didn’t get to take any pictures of them.
Now I have neither the knots in my head nor images of them in my camera,
just a few shots of the pretty North Star.
I went back a few days later to collect some equipment that Bruce offered to lend on our trip through Lions Gate.
We climbed into the rigging of the boat, as high as I could go.
From there, I felt the exaggerated pitch and roll of the boat as she moved quietly by the dock.
I tried to imagine how hard it would be to work up here when the boat was actually sailing.
“It can be quite active,” said Bruce, “but sometimes when you are aboard a crowded ship at sea, the rigging is the only place to be alone.”
The North Star was built in 1935 and used for 25 years to transport fur and supplies between Aklavik and Sachs Harbour in Alaska.
A painting down below shows what life might have been like, spending 9 months frozen into the ice. That’s how the ship would winter over if she did not make port before the ice closed around her in the north.
Bruce pointed out the roundness of her hull, designed so that when she was surrounded by ice, the expansion would push the boat up rather than crack it to pieces.
In 1967 the boat was purchased by Captain Sven Johansson, a Swedish-born Arctic explorer who outfitted her as a research vessel.
Some details, like the square rigged mast, date back to when Sven saved her from the beach.
and some have been added by Bruce over the years.
Below deck, the cabins are perfectly organized for a life spent in motion;
everything that moves must be tied down.
Bruce took out some photographs that he’s collected of the original owners. This is Fred Carpenter’s mother and family, trappers and traders who sailed the ship in her prime. Records and diaries that Bruce found suggest that at one time there might have been 30 people living on board.
Bruce showed me the main cabin and I imagined his daughters doing their homework around the helm.
The ship serves as studio and office too. Here is one of Bruce’s paintings.
Bruce wrote a book about the history of the ship,
and she’s open to the public, “as a way of educating people about Arctic history such as for school group tours and historical societies.”
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