The Reservoir

More comments on the trip to come later, but here are a few photos from the weekend.

Sid Stone, Bob Volin and I headed out for a quick night paddle to give us a chance to sort out gear and lighting preferences and gain a little more experience with night navigation.

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An eventful couple of days on the water in Rhode Island, including a night navigation and surf landing. Many lessons learned. I’ve posted a few photos.

Finally able to get on the water again to start the kayaking season with an easy beginner trip out of Peekskill. Hot and sunny, but the water is still cold. A couple of rolls just to reassure myself that I haven’t lost it yet. Actually, my form is a little sloppy and I busted a couple of butterfly rolls (not that I really ever had that one down pat). All in all, a good day on the water.

I joined Rich Gagliardi and his friend Dan for my first real taste of winter paddling. I’ve paddled into late fall several times with air temps hovering below 40°F and have even started a morning or two with snow flurries swirling, but I’ve never been out in temps below freezing or when the water was this cold (35°). We launched at Cold Spring with the air temp at 30° and 10-12 knots winds and headed north to Pollopel Island, home to the Bannerman Island Arsenal ruins, in the shadows of Storm King Mountain. After exploring the island a bit and a quick bite to eat while trying to stay warm, we crossed the channel toward Plum Point and turned south along the western shore toward West Point. Despite the forecast for winds to build during the course of the day, the weather held and by afternoon the sun broke through for a magnificent winter afternoon.

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I’m back from five days on Hunting Island, South Carolina (near Beaufort) for a four-day Sea Kayak Camp with Ben Lawry, John Carmody and Peter Casson assisting. I travelled down with Rich Gagliardi from AKT and borrowed his Anas for the course. Overall, it was a great weekend – I learned a lot, pleasantly surprised myself in a few areas and was appropriately humbled in many others. I’ve posted a few photos from the weekend. Unfortunately, I don’t have a waterproof enclosure for my camera and so I don’t have any action shots on the water.

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Yesterday I headed out to St Peter’s College in Jersey City for my introduction to kayak polo. I learned about NY Kayak Polo through Tom Potter, who I met at this year’s end of season party for AKT a few weeks ago. Its the first time I’d ever been in a boat in a pool, which was entirely strange, but fun nonetheless. Even though we took it pretty easy yesterday to introduce new-comers like myself to the sport, there is no question that this is a full contact sport – helmets and faceguards required. Exhilirating and exhausting. I’ll be back for more.

The last AKT trip of this season for me. A remarkably warm day with air temps approaching 70. Of course, the water temp has already dropped below 50 degrees. The tide was as high as I’ve ever seen it in Tivoli Bays and at the Saugerties Lighthouse. The Esopus was running large and the stretch below the waterfall produced some really wild conditions to manuveur with 16 ft boats. It also produced a few capsizes and rescues, while not particularly dangerous, were a little tricky.

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I still haven’t been able to bring myself to put down all my thoughts about this day. Its been well over a month and although I personally had a blast on the water that day (inspite of the truly exhausting leg to end the day), the events of the day raise many questions about knowing one’s own limits, trusting other to know their’s, leadership decisions, group decisions, safety and survival. It wasn’t a life or death kind of scenario, but the stakes were pretty high. Stranded on Plum Island and the inevitable arrest to follow, or a rescue at sea were both dangerously close to being immediate options. Here are a few images of the calm before the storm that simply don’t begin to convey the sequences of the day.

Photos of Plum Gut.

The annual end-of-season AKT Staff retreat was another rewarding trip this year. The weather held through and the torrential rains and gale force winds that hit most of the Northeast and were predicted for the Cape passed just to the west and we only got a taste of the conditions. Although it did cool off toward the end of the weekend and we did get rain, it wasn’t the raw and draining weekend I’d braced (and packed) for. A few glimpses of the trip.

Starting from Peekskill, we headed north on the Hudson to Bear Mountain Bridge and Popolopen Creek for lunch. We couldn’t have asked for a more beautiful day. A good time was had by all — at least that’s what everyone said (as if they’d tell me otherwise).
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