Tag Archives: Palisades

Trip 5: Hudson River, Manhattan to Irvington, October 1999

Posted on June 30, 2017 by | 6 comments

Text and Photo by Vladimir Brezina

Autumn colors

Saturday, 30 October

Met John and Kathy at Dyckman Street. Put boats together and launched at 11:30 a.m. around the predicted beginning of flood current. Warm for late October. Fog still not burned off completely, but sun gradually appearing. At first light wind from the north, then calm.

Palisades very colorful in the thinning fog. Lunch at Alpine. Stopped at Italian Gardens (waterfall and foliage very picturesque) then crossed over to Irvington. Arrived around 4 p.m.; took out at convenient boat ramp in parking lot by the train station. Briefly saw Kathy’s show at the gallery, then Metro-North train back to New York.

(Note: It’s nice to see that Vlad sometimes went on short and sweet paddles, as well as the longer ones he was known for. And Italian Gardens site was a favored destination for us from Pier 40, though we often failed to make it that far–somehow we constantly managed to underestimate the time required!)

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A Jaunt Up the Hudson

Posted on September 12, 2015 by | 22 comments

By Vladimir Brezina

Midtown ManhattanThe Binghamton

A routine paddle from Lower Manhattan up the Hudson—up the West Side of Manhattan, under the George Washington Bridge and along the Palisades—and back, about 30 miles. Nothing special.

But I do have a few photos…

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A Brisk Paddle Up the Palisades

Posted on September 22, 2013 by | 16 comments

By Johna Till Johnson
Photos by Vladimir Brezina

IMGP7239 cropped small“Do you think we can make it to Piermont Pier?”, I asked.

“I know of no reason why not,” Vlad replied. A small alarm bell rang at the back of my head: he hadn’t exactly said, “Yes.” And Vlad is a man who uses words very precisely.

But I brushed it off. We’d come quite a distance up the Palisades—just over 19 nautical miles, in fact.  Aided by a stiff flood current, we were almost at Italian Gardens, and we were deciding whether to stop there or continue onwards.

Piermont Pier, the long finger of land extending into the Hudson just south of the Tappan Zee Bridge, was only two miles away. We hadn’t been there yet this year, and the summer was almost over.

And though we’d had a brisk northerly breeze in our faces the whole way, we’d come thus far with no trouble. As Vlad said, there was no reason why we couldn’t make it the rest of the way.

So we set off into the wind-against-current chop ahead of us.

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A Spring Paddle Along the Palisades

Posted on May 12, 2013 by | 62 comments

By Vladimir Brezina

Yesterday, we paddled up the Hudson River along the Palisades, all freshly green…

(click on any photo to start slideshow)

It’s a gray day, with showers and thunderstorms forecast: a cold front is coming over
A splash of red: the fireboat John J. Harvey
Pushed by a southerly tailwind and a good flood current, we pass Midtown Manhattan
Vlad, off 79th Street (photo by Johna)
We approach the George Washington Bridge
It’s big! It dwarfs the Little Red Lighthouse at its foot, and an even tinier Johna passing under it…
Across the river, the Palisades begin
The edges of land disappear in the mist
We pass Yonkers (photo by Johna)
Looking back, New York City has vanished in the mist
At Italian (Tonetti) Gardens, our turn-around point, Johna declines to land because the rocks might scratch her shiny new boat
The waterfall at Italian Gardens, one of several along the Palisades, is in full spate…
… fringed by the fresh green of spring
We paddle back, past the large rockfall that last summer blocked the Palisades hiking path
There’s a nice sandy beach at Alpine, so we can land…
… and eat a belated lunch—come to think of it, it’s the first time since last fall that it’s been warm enough for us to get out of our boats for lunch (photo by Johna)
After lunch, we continue down the Hudson, under an ominous sky
An intense thunderstorm begins…
… but after a few minutes of lightning and thunder directly over us, it passes east across the Hudson, leaving us with just heavy rain
We skirt the Palisades on our way south
Overhead, the Palisades are steaming as the rain lets up
Ahead, the George Washington Bridge, and beyond it the city, reappear out of the fog
A waterfall plunges off the Palisades
The sun is struggling to break through the clouds, and now and then succeeds for a spell
We pass under the George Washington Bridge again
The West Side of Manhattan reflects the hazy sunshine
As always, we visit the wreck of the Binghamton ferry, noticeably more decrepit than on our last visit
We paddle back past Midtown
The wind has died, and the river gleams like dull silver
Far ahead, we can see a tiny Verrazano Narrows Brige
As we look back up the Hudson, the sky is eggshell blue and purple with the coming dusk
Last mile
From Pier 40, we look across at the new World Trade Center tower, now almost complete with its spire installed

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Best of all, as the last photo shows, the official kayak-launching dock at Pier 40 has finally been put back into place (mostly), six months after Hurricane Sandy left it in a crumpled mess last October…

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Posted in Kayaking, New York City

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A Late-Fall Paddle Along the Palisades

Posted on December 5, 2011 by | 9 comments

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…

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Touched By Fire: An Early-Autumn Kayak Trip Along the Palisades

Posted on October 20, 2011 by | 5 comments

By Johna Till Johnson
Photos by Vladimir Brezina

Autumn is a time of melancholy, of dreams and mists. It’s also a time of intense beauty—and a reminder that everything in life is transient.

That’s particularly true when it comes to catching the leaves turning along the Hudson: Bare hints of color one day, blazing the next, and then fading—all in the space of a week or two.

For New York City kayakers with day jobs, the challenge is that the currents are right for a weekend trip up the Hudson only once every two weeks—which means there are only two October weekends to catch this ephemeral color.

The first weekend with a daytime flood current was October 15-16. Either weekend day would have worked, but since I’d just gotten back from an intense week of traveling, Sunday was the better fit. Plus, Saturday’s winds were pretty severe—predicted and ultimately proving to be over 20 knots. So we agreed to go Sunday.

By then, the winds had calmed somewhat. Vlad and I set off on a crystalline, perfect, early-autumn day.

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