By Vladimir Brezina
Johna and I try to go out for a longish paddle every weekend. We don’t always succeed, but we succeed often enough that a backlog of trips that we have yet to post is accumulating.
Here’s one from early November. It’s strange now, in January, to see ourselves in these photos paddling without drysuits, and with leaves still on the trees…
Posted in Kayaking, New York City
Tagged Kayaking, New York City, New York Harbor, Photography, Sandy Hook
By Vladimir Brezina
Finally! We’ve turned the corner, and the days are getting longer. Of course, winter has really only just begun—but once the short dark days begin their retreat, winter is a great time for kayaking!
I am already thinking forward to those crisp blue days in late winter or early spring when you can see forever, and can paddle a long way before the day is done, and are alone on the water… (and you can also get seriously hypothermic).
Here is my account of one such day in 2002, written up for the March/April 2003 issue of ANorAK, the Journal of the Association of North Atlantic Kayakers. (I wrote up a series of three trips for Anorak in 2003, whereupon the journal died—hopefully not cause and effect. The others two trips are already posted here and here.)
Tagged Cape Cod, Elizabeth Islands, Kayaking, Martha's Vineyard, Whale, Winter, Woods Hole
By Vladimir Brezina
Looking back over our kayaking adventures of 2011, here’s a calendar of photos from the most memorable trips of each month…
…
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Posted in Kayaking, New York City
Tagged Kayaking, New York City, New York Harbor, Photography
By Vladimir Brezina
From no direction is it as obvious that Manhattan is an island as from the south.
Clear across the Upper Bay the ramparts of Manhattan draw the eye.
.
Sometimes Manhattan is a fantastical mirage that we paddle toward again and again…
… sometimes it shimmers in the sunset and is gone as the last light fades.
Posted in Kayaking, New York City
Tagged Kayaking, Manhattan, New York City, New York Harbor, Photography
By Vladimir Brezina
I’ve paddled in New York Harbor quite a bit, and other kayakers often ask my advice on the timing of their trips through this tidal waterway. They say things like, “We are planning a trip from Pier 40 down to Swinburne Island to see the seals, like you did last year, and we are thinking that January 8 might be a good day to go. High tide at the Battery is at 7:13 a.m. that day. So, when do you think we should leave?” And I have to reply, “I have no idea.”
I have no idea because the time of high tide at the Battery does not immediately tell me much. I think in terms of current, not tide.
Posted in Kayaking, New York City
Tagged Kayak Navigation, Kayak Trip Planning, Kayaking, Marine Charts, New York Harbor, Tidal Current, Tide
By Johna Till Johnson
Photos by Vladimir Brezina
Do you ever have those days where you just don’t feel like finishing what you start? I do, but not usually when it comes to kayaking.
But that’s how I felt on a recent Saturday afternoon. It was a warm autumn day, and we’d planned a fast Manhattan circumnavigation, heading around the island clockwise, rather than the more usual counterclockwise. Starting from Pier 40, a clockwise circumnavigation is usually faster than a counterclockwise one because you can catch faster current in all three main legs of the trip—up the Hudson River (about 11 miles), down the Harlem river (about 8), and down the East River (another 8), leaving you fighting the current only at the very tail end (from the Battery back up to Pier 40).
If the stars align right—and wind and currents fall into place—a reasonably fast paddler can finish a clockwise circumnavigation in under five hours. Racers can do it in three-and-change.
Posted in Kayaking, New York City
Tagged Kayaking, Manhattan Circumnavigation, New York City, New York Harbor
By Vladimir Brezina
A week ago, on the last Sunday of November, the weather promised to be clear and mild—perfect for a late-fall paddle. We looked up the current predictions. In the morning, the current was flooding north. So we paddled north—from Pier 40 up the Hudson River along the West Side of Manhattan, under the George Washington Bridge and along the Palisades up to Tonetti Gardens, then returning with the ebb current in the afternoon…
It was a peaceful paddle. There were no exciting conditions, no incidents to report. But it was a beautiful day for a few photos…
Posted in Kayaking, New York City
Tagged Hudson River, Italian Gardens, Kayaking, Manhattan, New York City, Palisades
By Vladimir Brezina
Illusion of speed
I love paddling at night. Not only for eminently practical reasons—to avoid the heat and humidity of New York’s summer days, for instance—but because of a remarkable visual illusion. As dusk falls, I feel myself paddling faster and faster, until I am simply flying over the water through the darkness. It’s an exhilarating feeling. If you paddle at night, no doubt you know exactly what I am talking about.
But when I look at my GPS, or for a moment emerge into the glare of shore lights, the illusion is shattered. I find that I am paddling at my usual daytime speed, if not slower.
I’ve often idly wondered what the basis of this illusion was. It seems that it’s by no means limited to paddling. According to this article, runners run faster at night, and cyclists ride their bikes faster at night. Even car drivers drive faster at night—although that might not be just an illusion :-).
The explanation given in the article is a relatively plausible one based on well-established neurological mechanisms. When we move through the world, we judge our speed by the speed of the optic flow, the coherent apparent motion of the objects in our visual field past us. But not all objects appear to move at the same speed. Nearby objects appear to move past faster than distant objects. (Indeed, this motion parallax helps us decide which objects are nearby and which are distant, a calculation that itself can generate some potent visual illusions.) Our brain balances the apparent fast movement of nearby objects and the slow movement of distant objects to determine our most likely true speed.
But at night this balance is disturbed. We see, dimly, only the fast-moving nearby objects—the waves around the kayak—and not the distant objects—the distant shoreline whose slow movement would in daytime provide a corrective balance. At night, all the objects that we see are moving fast. Consequently, we conclude that we are moving fast through the world.
So that mystery is solved. Now I just have to worry about why time goes faster as you get older…
Posted in Kayaking, Science and Technology
Tagged Kayaking, Neuroscience, Night Kayaking, Paddling Speed, Visual Illusion
By Vladimir Brezina
Now that New York City is once again embracing its waterways, all manner of the city’s activities are spilling over into the harbor—and that includes the city’s art. As I kayak around the harbor, I can’t help but notice the number of works of art that don’t stop at the water’s edge, but plunge right in…
Here are a few examples. In some cases, they use for their effect their location at the interface between land and water. In more extreme cases, they can only be appreciated, indeed can only have been created, from a boat on the water…
Posted in Art, Culture, Kayaking, New York City
Tagged Art, Columbia C, Graffiti, Marine Art, New York City, New York Harbor, Olafur Eliasson, Robert Smithson, Sculpture, Statue of Liberty, Tom Otterness
By Johna Till Johnson and Vladimir Brezina
We couldn’t possibly write about this topic without first referencing Bowsprite’s prior posts here and here. Not only did she accurately (and highly entertainingly) capture the lingo, her whimsical drawings are one-of-a kind!
Negotiating ferry traffic in New York Harbor
When out kayaking in New York Harbor, we carry marine radios for several reasons: To call for help if something goes wiggy; to stay abreast of developments on the water; and, where appropriate, to advise larger vessels of our intentions.
But one of the more captivating aspects of kayaking with a radio in the harbor is simply the opportunity to listen to exchanges between the captains of commercial vessels.
Posted in Kayaking, New York City
Tagged Kayaking, Marine Radio, Marine Traffic, New York Harbor, Radio Calls, Shipping, VHF Radio
... kayaked the waters around New York for more than 15 years in his red Feathercraft folding kayak. He was originally from (the former) Czechoslovakia and lived in the U.K. and California before settling down in New York. He was a neuroscientist at the Mount Sinai School of Medicine in New York City. He died in 2016.
... is a kayaker and technology researcher at Nemertes Research. She's an erstwhile engineer, particle physicist, and science fiction writer. She was born in California and has lived in Italy, Norway, Hawaii, and a few other places. She currently resides in New York City.
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Wind Against Current 