It’s interesting to look occasionally through the search terms that people have entered to reach your blog. And recently, quite a few people have been arriving at Wind Against Current with the query “how many bridges circumnavigating Manhattan”. They’ll have been disappointed in not finding an answer—until now!
Another popular query is “how many islands in New York City”. Unfortunately, that question does not have a definite answer—it depends on what you consider an island, and on the state of the tide.
But “how many bridges circumnavigating Manhattan” does have a very definite answer. And the answer is…
Once in a while it occurs to us that there might be other ways to see New York Harbor than by kayak.
And so, on Tuesday evening, we traveled down to the South Street Seaport and boarded the yacht Zephyr, for one of the Hidden Harbor Tours organized by the Working Harbor Committee. Our appetites had been whetted by the recent Tugboat Races, also organized by the Committee. And reading the description of this tour, it promised to be another highlight:
This tour passes by the Red Hook Container Terminal and visits Erie Basin, home of Hughes Brothers Barges and Reinauer Tugs before crossing the harbor toward Staten Island. It then enters Kill Van Kull, the area’s busiest waterway dividing Staten Island and Bayonne, passing tug yards, oil docks and marine repair facilities. It then passes under the Bayonne Bridge and visits the giant container ports of Newark Bay, Port Newark and Port Elizabeth where the world’s largest container ships tie up. On the way back, we pass by Military Ocean Terminal, the 9/11 Teardrop Memorial, the Robbins Reef Lighthouse and another container port, ending up at the Statue of Liberty for a moment before returning to Pier 16.
Ailsa’s travel-themed photo challenge this week is Hidden.
In our kayaks, we can poke into the most obscure corners of New York Harbor. And we do! And over the years, we’ve found there many fascinating hidden things.
Here is another strange, intriguing structure. It’s located a little out of the way, in Port Reading, NJ, on the Arthur Kill behind Staten Island. It’s not exactly hidden—as you paddle up the Kill you can see it in plain sight from a long way off. But you have to notice it particularly, as it blends rather well into the general decayed industrial look of the shoreline. And, on the first visit, the pink wreck of the Major General William H. Hart just in front of it (in the first photo below) completely steals the show.
So, although we’ve paddled past many times, we’ve only once taken a few minutes for a closer look. This was in September 2010, when these photos were taken (since then, the structure has reportedly deteriorated even more).
At that time, we didn’t really know what we were looking at. Now that we do, we must go back for a careful inspection!
So, what is it?
It’s a McMyler Coal Unloader. Built in 1917 and operating until the 1970s—according to some accounts, until 1983—it’s the last remaining one of its kind in the New York area. Originally there were at least eight of them along the shoreline of New York Harbor, each operated by one of the railroads that brought coal in from Pennsylvania and the Alleghenies. One, described in loving detail here in a 1951 article, apparently was located on Jersey City’s Pier 18, a now completely vanished 900-foot quay extending into the Hudson River between Liberty and Ellis Islands!
In operation, an open-topped railroad car full of coal was pushed into position inside the unloader’s tower. It was then grasped by the machinery, bodily lifted up, and turned upside down so that the coal spilled down a chute into a waiting barge (moored about where the tug Turecamo Girls is moored in the photos above). The empty car was put back onto the rails and given a little shove, so that, like on a roller coaster, it rolled away by gravity down an incline while the next full car was pushed into position…
The Garden State Central Model Railroad Club has built a working model of a McMyler Coal Unloader, seen in action here:
No dainty opening of little hopper doors here. This was a crude, brute-force approach that worked. The McMyler Coal Unloader could empty a 100-ton car every minute or so, continuously. A fascinating relic of the heroic industrial age—it might have been built by giants!
We were stunned, blown away, and delighted by the experience.
So it’s only natural that this year, we were conflicted. On the one hand, we were eager to go again; on the other hand, how could it possibly live up to the previous time?
A couple of weekends ago, we set out to visit our friends and fellow kayakers Alex and Jean, who are also fellow bloggers at 2 Geeks @ 3 Knots (check out their lovely blog!). They live in New Rochelle, just outside New York City, and just off Long Island Sound.
Heading out to the Sound on a summer weekend is pretty typical for New Yorkers.
What’s a little less typical is getting there by kayak.
But hey—we’d been there quite a few times before and knew the route pretty well. And this time we’d have the luxury of spending the night with our friends—so we’d have the chance to explore more than we usually can on an out-and-back trip. We’d been eagerly anticipating this trip for several weeks.
On Sunday a week ago, August 18th, I found myself once more in my kayak accompanying a long-distance swimmer through New York Harbor.
It was the day of this year’s Ederle Swim, a 17.5 -mile open-water swim from Manhattan to Sandy Hook, New Jersey, organized by NYC Swim. This year’s swim was in fact the centennial swim, since the first successful swim over that course, after a number of failed attempts, occurred a hundred years ago almost to the day, on August 28th, 1913.
My swimmer this year was Barbara Held, from San Diego, California. Having completed her Triple Crown of Open Water Swimming—the Manhattan Island Marathon Swim, the Catalina Channel, and the English Channel—Barbara was looking for new challenges!
Every now and then something comes along that’s just a sheer delight from start to finish.
Yesterday, it was this video of the 2013 City of Water Day’s First Annual Cardboard Kayak Race. It features practically all of my favorite things: kayaking, engineering, competition (the thrill of victory and the cold splash of defeat), creativity, ingenuity, and whimsy. All on a beautiful summer’s day in New York!
The event was hosted by the Metropolitan Water Alliance, a not-for-profit that, in its own words, “works to transform the New York and New Jersey Harbor and Waterways to make them cleaner and more accessible, a vibrant place to play, learn and work with great parks, great jobs and great transportation for all.”
The Cardboard Kayak Race is exactly what it sounds like: Teams of competitors are each given identical materials from which they construct, and then race, cardboard kayaks. Starting materials include:
10 5×5 squares of cardboard
10 rolls of packing tape
3 rolls of gaffer tape, and
a box knife
The video is long (though well worth watching—it will leave you laughing with joy!). But if you’re pressed for time, here are some highlights:
The first 12 minutes feature various shots of boat construction
At 12:00, judging commences. You’ll meet the teams, which include the Brooklyn Bridge Park Boathouse, the NYC Watertrail Village Community Boathouse, the High School of Math, Science, and Engineering Alumni, El Centro (from Staten Island), the North Brooklyn Boathouse, the Stevens Institute of Technology, the Stuyvesant High School Village Community Boathouse, and the US Coast Guard Marine Inspectors.
There’s a great comment at 17:30 where the judge asks the Coast Guard team, “Which do you think is the front part of the boat?”, then adds, “I don’t want to confuse you with technical questions!”
Last weekend, the currents took us on another of our favorite paddles—from Pier 40 in Manhattan round the Battery, up the East River, through Hell Gate, and round Throgs Neck into Long Island Sound.
Rounding Throgs Neck is like entering another world. The towers of Manhattan are still visible—all this is still within the borders of New York City!—but they are tiny in the distance. The broad blue Sound opens up. Shoals of white sailboats cruise past. Rocks are crowded with cormorants. We paddle past lighthouses and round islands—City Island, Hart Island, Pea Island…
Here are a few photos (click on any photo to start slideshow).
We paddle down the Hudson, with the Statue across the harbor
North Cove
Jersey City across the river
Round the Battery
Downtown architecture
South Street Seaport
… has a certain 19th-century look
Under the Brooklyn and Manhattan Bridges
Looking back at Downtown
Williamsburg Bridge
Midtown Manhattan
Two towers and a sail
We pass the UN
Into Hell Gate
Good current!
Off Rikers Island
Prison barge
The next two bridges: Bronx-Whitestone and Throgs Neck
Just before rounding Throgs Neck, we look back at tiny Manhattan
Stepping Stones Light
Grim Hart Island
We land on Pea Island for lunch
Green vista
Red and green
Siesta
Fishermen offshore
Time to get back into the boats…
Cormorant (and gull) rock
Off City Island, we paddle between hundreds of moored sailboats
The wind is freshening, and the sailboats are going out
Back into the East River
Hell Gate again
Under the Hell Gate bridges
… toward Manhattan
The Domino sugar factory and the Williamsburg Bridge in the late afternoon light
Under the Willliamsburg Bridge
Moody skies
Downtown vista
Brooklyn Bridge
South Street Seaport once more
Into the sun
Round the Battery
Dramatic skies over Jersey City
Sailing at sunset
The glass towers above North Cove reflect the light
Vladimir Brezina (RIP)
... 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.
Johna Till Johnson
... 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.
It’s interesting to look occasionally through the search terms that people have entered to reach your blog. And recently, quite a few people have been arriving at Wind Against Current with the query “how many bridges circumnavigating Manhattan”. They’ll have been disappointed in not finding an answer—until now!
Vladimir Brezina (RIP) 
Johna Till Johnson
Wind Against Current 