Hull, Massachusetts

Sunset at the Village Community Boathouse

Late summer.

Rowing to Alpine & Back

The lovely Quixotic rowing under the George Washington Bridge.

Under brilliant Sunday afternoon blue skies, rows and rows of white, pristine clouds, and the sun shining at just the right angles and intensity, three Whitehall Gigs sailed and rowed their way back to Pier 40 after a journey up north and a night’s rest at Alpine, New Jersey.


Rowing in The Quixotic.

Led by Rob Buchanan, on Saturday, October 13, we rowed up the Hudson to Alpine, New Jersey where we spent the night at the Alpine Picnic Area/Boat Basin (with permission, of course). For some, this trip echoed an earlier mission this past summer when we helped bring three boats from Croton Point to Pier 40 for the FISA Row Around Manhattan event. The Magnus resides in the boathouse as a result of that trip and it was one of the boats we took on our adventure, along with the Quixotic and the Alex Murphy.

Although we were set to go with fourteen people, only twelve showed up. Since we planned on taking three boats, we divvied up the crew into groups of four. Ideally, you want five people in the boat—four rowers and one coxswain, a.k.a. the leader. We lacked full power, but we went ahead anyway. Luckily, the Magnus was already equipped with a self-steering device that Rob himself put together, so that crew had it a bit easier.


Setting up the sails at Fort Washington Park.

Heading out at around 10 a.m., we stopped just before the George Washington Bridge at Fort Washington Park for bathroom beaks and rigging up the sails. Ever since I fell in love with rowing, I’ve wanted to sail in the Whitehall gigs, especially because I’ve never been sailing before. Sam, Rob and Frank put up the sails—placing the mast, setting up the halyard, affixing the sails and away we went.


First time sailing in The Quixotic under the George Washington Bridge.

This trip marked The Quixotic’s many firsts—first overnight adventure, first endeavor past New York City, first over-10-mile trip (rows around Manhattan don’t count) and its first time sailing. Anne and I, along with Rob as our teacher, built The Quixotic in the first Lang on the Hudson class and we were so proud and happy to officially break The Quixotic’s sailing cherry. Granted, it took us forever to actually get to Alpine because the tides were against us, the skies were overcast and it was difficult picking up the winds. In the end, after we reached Alpine, it didn’t bother us too much.


Around the campfire.

At the Alpine Pavilion, there was a wedding reception and our boats added that romantic touch. Sam and I spoke to the bride and groom, who, along with their wedding party, posed with the boats, and other various guests. After thoroughly enjoying ourselves with food and many, many drinks, we wandered around the area, taking pictures and talking. Eventually, the campfire/grill was set up and dinner was served. With full bellies, we sat around the fire and talked about life and all that stuff.


Climbing the Palisades.

After a cold night’s sleep (which will never happen to me again), we awoke to another golden morning. With a quick breakfast and a reminder to return by noon for shove-off, we explored Alpine.

First stop was the Kearny House, which, to our dismay, was closed. When we weren’t able to find any way into the building, we went hiking. After staying on the trail, we strayed off. Suresh and I parted with the group but eventually caught up. We met up at the ruins of what must have been a manor overlooking the Hudson and decided that our goal way to climb up the Palisades and find either a WaWa (I’ve never been to one) or store so Derek could buy cigarettes. The non-path was rocky and steep but the eight of us managed. When we reached the highway, we walked south until we saw a Citgo to our right. Derek bought his pack while we bought drinks and snacks. Since we had about thirty minutes to head back and we were having no luck with trying to hitch a ride back, we followed the actual trail down to the Hudson.


Sailing and rowing the Magnus.

Back at the beach at Alpine, we prepared and we were off. I switched to the Magnus and sailed. Because I couldn’t steer and hold the sail, Rob steered from the stroke position. Sailing was wonderful, especially when the wind picked up and I felt the powerful push. We made a stop at Englewood Basin for paninis. Then we rowed and sailed the last leg back to Pier 40 as we talked about poetry, camping, and mountaineering and enjoyed watching The Quixotic.


The gorgeous boat we built.

With the pink-and-orange-tinted skies above, we cleaned the three boats and all headed our separate ways home. Well-spent weekend. Very. Check out Rob's write-up for more.

Cleaning the boat.

Brooklyn Rail: The City From a Rowboat

[From the latest issue of the Brooklyn Rail. Check out the amazing spread at the end of the article.]

The City From a Rowboat
Exploring the Rivers
by Nadia Chaudhury


Rowing in the Hudson River during a row around Manhattan.

From a not-so-quite distance, New York City looks peaceful, tiny, and conquerable. Instead of riding around in the leisurely and loud Circle Line ships that frequent the waterways of New York, I am grunting with my fellow rowers, pushing and pulling our way through the messy tides of the Hudson. We are literally right on the river in a Whitehall Gig, a 25-foot-long rowing vessel. With three fellow rowers and our reliable, all-knowing coxswain at the stern I am experiencing New York from a different angle—from the waters.

Rowing in New York City sounds impossible. In this city where grids of sidewalks, streets and subways guide us through our everyday lives, it’s easy to overlook the fact that New York is, in fact, surrounded by water. At most points the city’s residents are literally blocked from the water by fences or by harsh, jagged rocks.

There are four rowers to a boat: the stroke, two engine rowers and the bow rower. The stroke rower dictates the speed and length of the oar stroke and the rest follow. Then there is the coxswain who, in addition to steering the boat, leads the boat by telling the rowers when and what pace to row.

Rowing under the Brooklyn Bridge during the FISA Row Around Manhattan tour.

Whitehall Gigs were rowboats used to taxi people back and forth between boroughs and to larger ships. It is thought that they received their name because they were sent out from Whitehall Street, which used to rest on Manhattan’s coast before the city extended the island with landfills.

Groups like Floating the Apple and East River CREW (Community Recreation and Education on the Water), promote greater access to our city’s waterways. The two non-profit organizations show anyone who happens to wander by their respective boathouses the ins and outs of rowing in the Hudson, the East, the Harlem and the Bronx Rivers. All for free.

Philip Yee is a familiar face to those who frequent Floating the Apple’s boathouse at Pier 40. As a volunteer, he sees himself as the activities and Pier 40 operations coordinator.

“I kind of expanded with the program,” Yee says. “When I first came down here, it was originally Wednesday rowing and it basically consisted of about seven people.”

Launching from East 96th Street for the 5 Borough Ramble.

On the other side of Manhattan along the East River, Mary Nell Hawk acts as the ad-hoc program director of the East River CREW. Hawk is also the vice president of the organization’s board of directors and helps with the curriculum for the group’s educational activities.

Moving uptown, she felt she needed to do something. She was already in touch with Yee at Pier 40 and she could see the East River from her apartment window. “It didn’t occur to me to even think about getting on the water.” It wasn’t even a thought for her until she read an article about groups like Floating the Apple and East River CREW who, working with City Council member Gifford Miller, were searching for increased waterfront access for smaller boats.

With St. David’s, their boat, East River CREW looked for a boat house location on the east side. After some searching, the Parks Department gave them a strip of land at 96^th Street where they soon installed a davit, a mechanical arm used to put boats onto the water, and obtained a storage container for the boat and other supplies.

“Rowing the East River versus rowing the Hudson became a big deal for us,” Hawk says. “We felt that the East River is what joins four of the five boroughs and even Staten Island if you want to, but everybody touches on the East River. This year we’ve made it our focus to row to other boroughs as much as we can because we have the access.”

Landing at the Italian Gardens, near the New York-New Jersey border.

The first East River CREW row this season was the Cinco de Mayo row. “We rowed to the Bronx River where the Bronx River Alliance was doing what they called a ‘flotilla’ of 75 canoes down the Bronx River. We joined them at the newly opened Hunts Point Riverside Park,” said Hawk.

Floating the Apple is affiliated with schools and programs throughout the city with rowing and boatbuilding programs. Among those in the past were the Graphic Arts and Communications High School through their ROTC program, Stuyvesant High School and Harbor School. With the City As School, students actually received gym credits for rowing.

“The youth program legitimized us in the sense that otherwise it would be just a bunch of old folks sitting here in our own club,” Yee says. “Getting youth involved is very invigorating and it gives us a sense of community.”

Schools programs, including Eugene Lang College at the New School University’s Lang on the Hudson and BMCC’s Now, take advantage of Floating the Apple’s facilities. In Lang on the Hudson, students build a boat to add to the program’s collection and learn about the New York Harbor. With BMCC’s program, students combine science and language arts with rowing. This past summer they studied Homer’s Odyssey on the water.

Out in the Hudson, along with an experienced Floating the Apple member, beginners get a sense for the waters by rowing around the basin at Pier 40. Those up for the challenge venture north or south of the Pier 40 and the more experienced traverse the river to New Jersey, whether to Frank Sinatra Park or Maxwell House Beach (known also as the Playa de Hoboken), a small strip of sand where another boathouse is opening up.

The sight of a Whitehall in the river is still a spectacle to many. Motor-boaters gawk as they sped by; people walking along the coast take pictures; passengers on the commuter and tourist ships wave.

Using the davit at Pier 40.

Hawk describes one instance where East River CREW was asked to take one hundred high school kids, one by one, on the water. “So we had two groups out on the boats and three groups on land. I’m out on the water and all of a sudden I’m hearing all this police sound and someone had put in a 911 call. Since then we’ve been calling the Harbor Unit.”

As wonderful as being out on the water is, it seems as though there should be more legal waterfront entrance sites. The water is a public area and everyone should have access to it, but this isn’t always the case.

During a summer outing, Floating the Apple crossed over to a cove in New Jersey and rested alongside a dock in front of a restaurant. While relaxing our arms, a uniformed man came up to us. “You’re not allowed to stay here,” he said from down the dock. We said we’d only be a couple of minutes and left soon afterwards.

“They’ll just limit the access points as to where you can get out to the water,” Yee said of the Parks Department. “The only way you could have gotten out to the water was to own a boat, rent a boat, which was expensive, or you could take the Staten Island Ferry back and forth.” Yee claims that what they are doing at Floating the Apple and the Downtown Boathouse, a kayaking shop next door to the group’s pier, is “giving people the opportunity to go out on the water and enjoy the water because the water’s for everybody.”

Landing boats at the East 96th Street boathouse.

There are ways to get around it, though.

“When I first graduated from college [in 1976] I did have one friend who had a kayak and he and I would come near here,” Hawk reminisced, referring to the waterfront on West Houston Street. “There was the ruin of this elevated highway that you could walk under and over this road. Then there was one place in the railing where a piece of debris had fallen in the water like a sort of step-down. So you’d put the kayak down and crawl through.”

The moment you experience being out on the water, it’s hard to resist its call. You’re bound to venture out there time after time.

“Once you’re on the water,” Yee said, “it’s an incredible feeling that I could go somewhere and feel like I’m outside the city and not really leave the city. In the 90s the parks got crowded, so this is the last open space in New York.”

From inside the boathouse at Pier 40.

Pier 40 offers free rowing on Tuesdays and Thursdays in the afternoon until dusk. Check eastrivercrew.org for East River CREW events.

Nadia Chaudhury is Layout Editor for the Rail and, among traveling, writing and taking pictures, is a rowing and waterfront enthusiast. Check out her blog at mysticchildz.blogspot.com

My amazingly designed spread, by yours truly:

Rowing to Governors Island

Rowing in The Quixotic. Photo from Frank at Floating the Apple.

On June 3rd, Floating the Apple, Lang on the Hudson kids (myself included) and random people rowed three Whitehall Gigs to Governors Island, home of Fort Jay, deteriorating former Coast Guard homes, lots of flowers, trees, and grass and, of course, gorgeous views of downtown Manhattan, Brooklyn, Staten Island, Ellis Island and Lady Liberty.

Governors, closed from September to June, opened to the public on June 3rd, but in a restricted sense. According to its website, people must go on the guided tour from Wednesday through Friday. On the weekends, people are allowed to explore the island a bit more, but only the northern half. The southern half is closed off to the public.

The ferry (only way to reach the island, besides rowing or flying in somehow or even swimming, if you're up for that) leaves lower Manhattan (next to the South Ferry) every hour from 10 a.m. to 3 p.m. and leaves Governors Island every hour from 11:30 a.m. to 4:30 p.m. with a final boat at 5 p.m.

We left Pier 40 (where Floating the Apple is located) at around 8 a.m. The water was perfect--calm and smooth. Being early, we killed some time at Louis Valentine Park in Red Hook. After getting water or coffee and looking for the bathroom, we launched out once again and continued our row to the dock that Rob's friend built on Governor's Island.


Docking at Governors Island.

After docking all three boats (tying them up, something I haven't done before), we explored the island. On the grassy lawn near the dock, there were kayakers lounging next to their row of kayaks.

Water on Governors isn't potable according to many signs featured prominently throughout the island. This is also expressed on its website and even in forms regarding permission to film and photograph on the island. This is due to its faulty water system. However, they are attempting to correct this, amongst other problems, with the Governors Island Land Use Improvement and Civic Project. There was one food/beverage vendor we stumbled upon. He told us about the other vendor, but we didn't see him.

Walking around the island, Rob showed us Governors Island's sliver of a beach (there is one under the Brooklyn Bridge and in Hoboken as well) that, in his opinion, would make a perfect landing/launch spot, if they just threw in a ladder and a couple of things (sorry, I don't know the technical term) to tie the boats to.


Governors Island's beach.

Despite not being "allowed" to enter any buildings, we managed to find an unlocked door to the basement of the Admiral's House. We wandered through the desolate, mostly unlit rooms and found a working bathroom, a closet filled with new Christmas decorations, rooms with what appeared to be elementary school chairs, empty water bottles and various construction items. I took what I think is a door stop, at least, according to Josh. We wanted to wander upstairs but we thought someone would see us and kick us out. Next time...

The row back to Pier 40 was choppier but we still made it. The idea behind this trip is to show New York City/Parks Department/Governors Island that there is a demand and desire for more access, especially boating access, to the island (as well as other parts of New York, but that's for another time), and there is. It's just a matter of spreading the word. Every person I've talked to becomes interested in rowing and I've already taken most of my friends down to Pier 40.

After a call for proposed redevelopment plans, the Governors Island Preservation and Education Corporation settled on five plans featured in New York Magazine. Thankfully, according to the 2006 Status of Planning for Development, no permanent housing is allowed on the island. What is also interesting is the educational uses requirement. Of the plans, I suppose I'd have to pick the Mollusk, though I don't know how sensible outdoor heated baths are.


View of downtown Manhattan with a hint of Castle Williams.

One of their main concerns is trying to make the island enticing enough so people will WANT to take the ferry over. I would think this would be the least of their concerns--wouldn't people want to island hop in New York? There's already interest in the Statue of Liberty and Ellis Island, and I know people are intrigued by Roosevelt Island, so why not Governors? It just makes sense.

Lang on the Hudson: The Quixotic

Crossing 5th Avenue. Photo from New School photographer


So I've been meaning to write about this for a while and the night before graduation seems as good of a time as any...

So for my final semester at Lang (along with my journalism class, my senior work, and the ever-important newspaper), I built a boat, with about twenty-ish other people. And yes, I got credit for it (3 to be exact). Now I'm not much for construction--I'm more of a computer-and-write-and-talk kinda girl, but I thought I should do something different and not-typically-Nadia. And Rob (one of the greatest people ever) was overseeing/teaching the class and I have a good working-relationship with him, so why not?



Top: Power-sawing it up; Bottom: Adding epoxy for the sides. Photos from Rob

I used a power-saw, fitted wood together, played with epoxy, measured things out even though I'm horrible at math, got splinters, enjoyed the pleasure of planing wonderfully soft wood, clamped things together/down, painted till midnight at school, glued together, and it all came together in the form of a 26-foot Whitehall Gig, The Quixotic (not my choice, but eh). Despite the fact that I have a hard time remembering where the stern and bow are (bow is the front?), I still feel like it was one of the best experiences in my life. Working on the boat was a great way to ignore/forget all of the other nonsense I had to worry/work on (newspaper, senior work, class, life).

For our launch date, maintenance took out the glass windows of the GF and we pulled the boat through. Once we put the boat onto the dolly, we proceeded to walk down 14th Street, then 5th Avenue, and then 11th Street until we reached the Hudson, with the boat in tow. It was amazing and so much fun. The weather was perfect, everyone was wearing either their orange crew shirts or the nifty gray New School-Lang shirts (I cut mine up because I'm stylish like that), people stopped and looked at us, some people even joined up with us (including Inprinters, of course) and it was just so awesome.


Rowing in The Quixotic in Pier 40. Photos from New School photographer.

Once we got to Pier 40, we hooked The Quixotic up to the [hook thingie--forgot official name] and Rob made a speech and poured champagne on the boat (he didn't break it because he "knew what the boat was made of") and then off it went to the water and it floated! I got to christen the boat, along with Brian, Whitney, Toni and the ever-amazing Don. And I have to say, we were a pretty kick-ass rowing team. The boat moved so smoothly. It was great. Afterwards, everyone else got to row and I just ate and played with Rob's daughter and talked to people. I even got some work done.

The next Friday, they rowed out from Pier 40 to Red Hook. I missed this because I overslept, but I met up with them in Red Hook and we rowed back to Pier 40. I was determined to row the entire way and not switch off, even though I kinda sucked at times, but we made it, and I was so very proud of myself. I really need to go rowing again.

And there is more I can say about the proposed developments of Pier 40 and New York City (re)construction and bodies of water, but I will save that for next time.


Rowing back to Pier 40 from Red Hook.

Video of Launch
New York Magazine coverage of the Launch
New York Observer coverage of the class
Inprint Boatbuilding Photo Essay
Rob's fancy video that played in the window of the boat shop in the GF
My Flickr pictures

Rowing the Hudson

Today, I get to row in the Hudson in that (painted) beauty. More on this later, and the Pier 40 debates.