Lan always wanted to visit the Nonations Islands in the Bronx.

But when we got there we couldn’t find them.

From all my charts, they should have been just North of Hart Island in the Long Island Sound.

But but we just couldn’t see anything out there.

As we paddled closer to Hart Island we alerted the attention of the 24 hour guard: a large police boat slowly circled the island.

Hart Island is a potter’s field, tended by inmates from Rikers Island. My friend Siobhan Liddell landed there once on accident, years ago. She said that it was beautiful.

We decided to paddle North and see what we could find.

We noticed a cresting wave ahead – a sure sign of a submerged island!

The waves were right where the Nonations Islands should be.

It turns out that East Nonations and South Nonations Islands are here, completely submerged at high tide.

We floated slowly by the rocks. There was something unsettling about knowing they had been down there all along.

Just ahead we saw something that looked like a fortress. We seemed to be under the watchful eye of the Hart Island patrol boat, so we drifted North a bit,

and snuck up from the rear.

There was a ramp on the blind side of the island.

Here is what we found.

Everything about it looked like a construction site, not like an abandoned fortress.

Doug found out later that this is going to be someones house.

Back in the water, I was getting hungry and the wind seemed to be picking up against us.

But there was one more stop to make.

I wanted to get a closer look at this little wreck. I thought that we had landed back in the Bronx.

But as we walked into the interior we started to notice things.

Like a huge old cannon facing the Sound.

And this wrecked house.

The floor of the building was completely fallen away.

It looked like someone was fixing up the building at some point, and then left it all to rot.

When we are in places like this, Lan sais that she can feel the presence of all the people that have lived and died here.

She says she doesn’t like the feeling, but sometimes I think that it draws her to exploring abandoned buildings.

It was hard to piece together all the things that we were seeing.

What was this place?

We found some kind of overgrown octagonal church or meeting place.

And as we walked along the shore,

we realized that we were seeing buidlings that we had seen from the water on the other side.

We were not on the shore of the Bronx at all, but on a large island right next to it.

I’m not sure why exploring an island is so much better than when you are just on land.

But somehow we felt like we had discovered something rare and special.

Back in the water the wind was dead against us and we paddled hard to get back to the beach where we had launched.

When we got home that night, Doug looked up where we had been online. He found this site about David’s Island – information compiled by Michael Cavanaugh – who grew up on the island. http://www.home.earthlink.net/~michaelacavanaugh/id1.html

-Marie Lorenz

On September 9th, I participated in the Five Borough Harbor Ramble, a boating event organized by Erik Baard. The idea was to get a group of small boats together and paddle all the way from the Bronx to Staten.

I drove up to the launching point with Amanda Huron.

Amanda and I have been wanting to take a trip together for a while and I thought this would be a good opportunity to cover a lot of ground. Also, we would be traveling through some areas where the boat traffic and current are significant,

so I was curious to see what we could learn from Erik Baard – an intrepid harbor paddler.

Also I figured that there would be safety in numbers, crossing the Upper Bay – a trip I have always wanted to take.

But the wind and current were dead against us in the Harlem River.

The kayaks were gliding along without much trouble.

But we were struggling to keep up.

John McGarvey decided to stay with us while the rest of the group went ahead to the first meeting point.

“I don’t know if we can keep this up.” I said to Amanda.

The hard part was convincing John to leave us behind. Erik had worked hard to get permission to do this project, and he promised the Coast Guard that no one would be left along the route.

But John also realized that there was no way the Tide and Current Taxi could keep up with the kayaks all the way to Staten Island. And eventually he left us to drift back with the current.

We also had another plan.

On the way down we had seen some inviting looking tunnels – just above the water line.

We crept in to explore.

Dead end.

A few yards down there was another.

This one smelled like a sewer,

and the air was wet with haze.

Amanda thought she saw something crawling in the tunnel. “Rats!” she said.

“Or I guess it could have been cats, I didn’t get a very good look at them.”

I don’t think it was cats, not in the sewer.

Maybe we can save that tunnel for another day.

We drifted with the wind and current,

and we chatted as we watched the bank slip by.

Amanda has been working for Eric Sanderson on a big cartography project about the New York Harbor.

They are making a map of what Manhattan looked like 400 years ago,

when Henry Hudson first sailed in on his search for the Northwest passage.

They are combing information from journals, geological data, historic maps and navigational charts to determine where certain rivers, rocks and trees once were.

They hope to complete it this year – in time for the 400 year anniversary of Hudson’s voyage. (Look for an article in the New Yorker this week about the map.)

We passed by the Flotilla 51 yacht club and I was sad to see that storms this winter took out some of the remaining docks and structures.

The current was really moving so we decided to ride it around the Northern tip of Manhattan and walk back across to where we left the truck.

This took us past the rail yards.

The current swept us North into Spuyten Duyvil.

Up here there are sections of Manhattan’s coast that look just like Henry Huidson must have found them.

We landed at the Columbia boat dock,

and explored the Inwood Hill Nature Center.

Here we found all kinds of information about the area.

They even have a structure built to look like a traditional Lenni Lenape wigwam. Amanda knows all about it because her boss is trying to make one too.

He is having trouble finding bark in such big sheets.

We sat inside for a while and admired the nice big sheets of bark.

We walked back across Manhattan to get the the truck,

and drove down the Harlem River Drive under the bridges where we had just floated.

On the way back to Brooklyn we looked out for Erik Baard and his crew. We didn’t see them from the bridge, but I found out later that the Five Borough Ramble was a great success.

-Marie Lorenz

Sam, Lex, and I drove out to New Jersey on Saturday to look for the wreck of the Mary Murray.

Lex and I had read about it in the New York Times last year, but Sam had actually seen it. The Mary Murray is visible from I95 close to where Sam grew up in Freehold NJ.

We found a place to put the boat in the water just off the highway.

If the map I copied out of the paper a year ago was accurate,

the Marry Murray should be somewhere up ahead,

where this river, the ‘No Name Creek’, meets the Raritan.

But after paddling for a while we started to wonder. The article about the Marry Murray said that the DEP was trying to remove the ship.

Maybe she was already gone.

But then we came around a bend in the creek,

and there she was.

The Marry Murray is an old Staten Island Ferry, built in 1937.

In 1975 she was taken out of service and sold at auction to George Searle.

He had her towed up here, in fact I think he lives close by in one of the houses that we passed.

He thought he would turn the ferry into a floating restaurant.

But his plans have fallen through.

And now the ship has been sitting here for so long she might be hard to move.

I read all this in the NY Times article.

But walking around on board the boat brought to life a different story…

Something about the ship reminded me of the movie ‘Fitzcarraldo’ or the ‘African Queen’.

It seemed like we were no longer in New Jersey,

and that the ferry was taking us up into some remote Jungle wilderness.

Suddenly we were all aware of a new noise.

Someone had just pulled up along the bank in a truck, and two men got out and came on board the ferry.

We didn’t know quite what to do. It didn’t seem like we should hide out, they might have already seen our boat. It seemed better to wait quietly in case they just left.

We waited until we heard them at the front of the boat,

and then we ran down the back and slipped away.

My heart was racing from our narrow escape.

We never found out who they were – perhaps they were just sightseeing like us.

On the way out we passed another ship.

The paper said that this one once belonged to the shah of Iran.

Sam spotted a beaver under the highway on the way back.

And we chatted about wildlife.

The banks were covered with flowers.

And bees! “Hey, I thought these guys were all dead.” I said. (Something else I read in the paper.)

“The problem was a little overstated,” said Lex. “One day we will probably have nanorobots to pollinate agriculture.”

“Is that what you are working on?” I asked, because I knew he was a scientist. “No, its not really my field.” said Lex. He is a Stem cell researcher at the New York Medical College.

We find the bank where we put in and laoded the boat back on the car.

On the way back over the Raritan river we could just see the Mary Murray.

Frozen in time on a journey up the ‘No Name Creek’.

-Marie Lorenz

Adam and I have been planning on going out in the boat for 2 years.

So we finally set a date and I picked him up from the shop where we both work.

The other thing that I have been saying I want to do for years is go all the way up the Newtown Creek to where it ends in Bushwick. Adam and I work a few blocks from the creek, but neither of us have even seen the end of it.

We found a place to put the boat in the water at the end of Meeker.

There appeared to be some type of continuous gurgle coming up from the creek.

We lowered the boat down the embankment.

And set off past the gurgle.

Adam wanted to go under as many bridges as possible. “There’s the Kosciuszko.” he said.

We headed south under the bridge.

I was a little worried about my most recent patch. We were taking water steadily.

The Creek gets very wide south of the bridge.

And once again I was struck by how alone we seem to be out on the water.

The Newtown Creek is lined with mostly gas companies and parking lots.

We slipped under another bridge to admire a pretty yellow factory.

And then we saw that we weren’t the only ones after all…

There was someone painting the factory!

We paddled down about as far as we could go.

“Someone should really come get all this recycling.” said Adam

Then we turned around to head home.

I guess we expected to find out that the Newtown Creek was polluted.

And it really is.

And I knew from looking at the map that there were lots of gas companies and parking lots.

But there are other things about it too.

Like these pretty old warehouses.

You can’t see it from the picture,

But this one seems to be filled with old junk.

“If we lived here we could row to work every day!” We said.

This was Adam’s favorite building: an old oil tank or train car turned into a house.

It was getting late so we decided to head in.

The tide had gone out, so the gurgle was even bigger.

Some type of foam coming out of a drain.

We pulled the boat up the bank.

This is the very end of Meeker Street. We work just a few blocks away.

Goodbye Newtown Creek.

Goodbye Gurgle.

-Marie Lorenz

Sally Paul and I wanted to paddle across to New Jersey, but the wind was up on Wednesday, so we drove across instead. I imagined all that water overhead as we went through the Holland Tunnel.

We went out to the Liberty State Park to meet some local boating experts.

Peter grew up in Bayonne, New Jersey.

When Peter was young, his dad, Paul, would drop the kids off at the water with a rowboat on his way to work. And pick them up in the evening on the way home. They would explore the bay all day.

“Before you give a kid a motor, he should learn how to row a boat.” Said Paul. Here is Paul with a beautiful rowboat that he made for the kids, 47 years ago!

We took the boats down to to the water.

The wind was still up, but we decided to set out and see what we could see.

It was hard for Sally and I to paddle into the wind, so Peter gave us a tow.

The canals of Port Liberty are shielded from the wind, and we head in to explore.

“Not many people can say they have been in the canals of New Jersey!” said Peter,”Venice, maybe, but not New Jersey.”

There is a restaurant at Port Liberty. Peter had been there by land, but he had never pulled up in a boat before…

He tied up the boats so they wouldn’t hit against each other or the dock.

Here we are!

We decided to have dinner while waiting for the wind to die down.

The view is first rate,

and so is the food!

The maître d’ lent us a pair of powerful binoculars.

And we looked out across the bay. That is Redhook over there somewhere.

We came back to the boats. Safe and Sound.

But the wind had not let up.

Each time we crashed over a wave,

I could hear the plywood seat in the boat cracking away from the frame.

But as we came around the breakwater, we were running with the wind.

“Can we get a little closer to the Statue of Liberty?” asked Sally. She said that when she was a kid her family took a ferry to the statue. When they arrived at Liberty Island, her mother wanted to stay on the boat. “This is close enough, girls.” Her mother said. And they turned around and rode the ferry back.

“The wind is too strong,” I said “If we made it there we would never get back to Jersey.”

“You’ll have to come back another time.” said Peter.

There is something else I want to come back for too.

Out there are two barges where the Corps of Engineers puts all the floating wreckage that they find in the Harbor.

Peter said that when he found out I lost my boat last year, he paddled out to see if it wound up on one of those barges. It had not, but I wonder what other kinds of things might be out there.

Sally and I started to get blown off course again and Peter threw us a tow rope.

We all made it back in one piece.

Sally helped dump the water out of the bottom of my boat.

Peter’s Dad’s boat was as dry as can be. Ship shape after 47 years!

We packed up the boats as the sun was setting,

and had some ice cream.

The tide was coming in and the lights were just coming on along the horizon.

Thanks for a great day Peter!

-Marie Lorenz

I wanted to go out in the boat on the night of the Lunar Eclipse.

The tides are caused by the gravitational pull of the moon and the sun. The most significant rise and fall of the tide occurs when the Earth, Moon, and Sun, are all lined up in a row – like during an eclipse.

Although it was very early in the morning, I was joined by a hearty crew from Greenpoint: Melissa Brown, Erinn Fierst, Brian Dunn, and Birgit Rathsman.

We set out into the Newtown Creek when it was still dark.

But we could see the sun coming up behind the Pulaski Bridge.

Coming around the Budwieser Peninsula,

we saw Manhattan in the first morning light.

We took about 100 pictures.

The current was pulling us North quickly.

But where was the moon?

We had seen a glimpse of the eclipse as we were walking to go get the boat.

But now it was behind a bank of clouds

Soon it became too light to see the moon at all.

And we headed back to Greenpoint against the tide.

“We should do this every morning” said Erinn.

It is the best hour to be out.

The Budweiser was just getting ready to leave LIC. Some of it might even come to our house!

“We’ll know Greenpoint has been gentrified when there is ‘good’ beer on the Newtown Creek.” said Melissa.

The sun came up.

And we carried the boat out of the water down at the end of Manhattan Ave.

Good thing there are only rubber fences there.

Here is what we didn’t see.

-Marie Lorenz

Samantha Hunt contacted me a few months ago and requested a special trip to Barren Island.

She just finished a book, the final scene is set on the island.

And she said that she also just likes the name.

She tried to get pregnant for years, and she had begun to refer to her uterus as ‘Barren Island’.

She has been out to the island before and knows a lot about its history,

but she wanted to explore the coast by boat.

Here is butterfly that rode with us for a while.

You can’t see him so well, but here is a naked man on the unpopulated bank of Barren Island.

Samantha’s book is about Nicola Tesla.

Although the book is fiction, she tried to stick to most of the facts about his life and work.

It seems that Nicola was an eccentric recluse. He loved Pigeons, and he thought that he was married to one.

“In real life?” I asked, “Was he crazy?”

“I don’t write about him that way.” said Samantha.

We paddled with the current for a few miles, and then tied up to have a look at the map.

Barren Island isn’t really an island any more. It was connected by landfill to make Floyd Bennet Field.

We decided to cross over the mouth of Garritsen Creek and aim for Plum Island.

We landed on Plum Beach,

and pulled the boat along through the shallow water.

There were many things to see in the tidal flats;

sea weed,

some type of egg sack that seemed to be coming out of the clam holes,

and then the most wonderful thing of all…

a small crab growing a piece of kelp right out of his head.

We pulled up by the rest stop at Plum Beach,

and had some lunch – a warm plum brought by Samantha.

I biked back across Barren island to get the truck.

We had come almost all the way around the island in just a few hours,

and it was a short trip down the runway at Floyd Bennett Field.

Samantha was waiting when I came back with the truck.

Someone else was waiting when we got back to Brooklyn.

Rosa Yvonne Hagan, just 2.5 months old. Coming to Barren Island with me was the first time that Samantha had been away from Rosa. And she was happy to come home!

Samantha gave me a copy of her first book, The Seas. We have to wait a few months for the release of ‘The Invention of Everything Else’ – the one that ends on Barren Island.

-Marie Lorenz

My brother took Bonnie, Gabriel, and me up to the Bronx with the boat.

I thought there might be some good birds to see on the way back to Greenpoint down the East River.

But things had changed in the park I usually use as a launch.

This year the park seems to have undergone some landscaping,

and we are no longer allowed to access the water here.

We slipped down to another place I know.

The old Terminal for the ferry that went to North Brother Island.

“Once we are in the water we are legal.” I told Gabriel.

And we all felt better as we floated out into the East River.

Gabriel told us a little bit about the old terminal and about North Brother Island.

He leads birdwatching tours in this area – he is the Senior Naturalist at the Prospect Park Audubon Center.

He knows all about the birds of course, but the he said best details of the tours are about things like Typhoid Mary and the quarentine islands.

Coming into Hells Gate, the water was choppy and irregular.

And then it became as smooth as glass as we passed over large sections where the water seemed to come straight up from the bottom of the river.

In the distance you can see a small fire boat. They watched us pass through the choppiest section to make sure we made it OK.

The flat sections were the most harrowing.

You can see out in the channel, how the the current was making whitecaps under the bridge.

I quietly made myself a promise:

If we make it through Hells Gate I will never come back in this boat again.

Around Hallets Point we were fighting against a strong eddy, but the water was flat and easy.

We could see Socrates Sculpture Park up ahead.

Bonnie is also a Biologist, but she works for the federal government for the Corps of Engineers.

I told her that I think those things in the water are the electrical turbines that they are experimenting with on Roosevelt Island.

Bonnie recently wrote about water access in a blog that focuses on environmental issues in the New York metro area, http://www.worldchanging.com/local/newyork/

She asked Gabriel to read us the graffitti on the seawall at Roosevelt Island.

“I think therefore I am”

We passed by the LIC boat club.

It is right next to Mathew Barney’s studio – there’s his boat!

I remember when the Pepsi sign was the tallest thing out here!

We waited for a taxi to pass,

and drifted back to Greepoint on the last of the outgoing tide.

Coming into the Newtown Creak we spotted a Seagull.

“Not a seagull” said Gabriel, “that is an adult Herring Gull. It rarely goes out to sea.” He told us that it is one of three types of gulls that inhabit the New York Harbor. You can tell them by their handsome grey and white color and a small orange spot below their beaks.

We passed by a little home that I always admire on the creek. Who lives here I wonder? Does anyone know?

We pulled up at the end of Manhattan Ave.

-Marie Lorenz

Todd Dayton wanted to take a tour of the New York Harbor and see if we could find anything to eat out there.

He wrote me an email a few months ago saying how he was interested in the history of the bay – he heard about the abundant clams and oysters that used inhabit the area, and wondered if we could take a tour to find out what remained of the shoals and beds.

There are still some things alive down there – in the most unlikely areas.

Here is a blue crab for instance.

They are all over the Gowanus Canal, right around the area of one of the biggest chemical disasters this century. You look down at them just getting by in there, and you don’t know whether to hope or despair.

We came out into the Gowanus Bay and were immediately struck by wind and wake.

I thought it might be possible to ride the tide out under the Verrazano Bridge,

but the wind was blowing us North just as fast as the tide was pulling us South.

In fact, we were holding our position fairly well out at bouey number 7.

All considering, it seemed like a nice place to be, with the Verrazano on one side,

And Manhattan on the other.

There were some people fishing from small boats.”Not much out here today,” said one man. passing with his family.

“But Good Luck!”

My friend Mathew Paulson lent us a pole and some tackle.

He recommended this one for the upper bay. Jeez – I thought – the fish that would eat that must be HUGE.

Maybe we are better off with this little buddy.

“What do we do now?” I asked.

“We wait.” said Todd.

Just then something wonderful happened.

We saw a barge passing, filled with gravel. There was a man jogging around on the gravel – doing laps atop the level mound.

When he jogged to the bow, he must have felt like he was racing,

and when he was jogging aft it was like he was standing still.

Then we saw another boat, coming up quickly.

The US Coast Guard, performing a routine inspection of the boat.

We held on to ropes along the side while they checked our identification and asked all kinds of questions about the boat.

They also erased some of the pictures on my camera. All the ones of oil tanks and bridges.

Being so close to the rocking boat, and the smell of exhaust was making us feel a little sick.

“Its just a routine inspection” they said. “With times being what they are, I’m sure you understand.”

We passed by some people fishing off the pier in Red Hook. I bet they have beer, I thought.

I couldn’t help but sneak a picture to replace the ones that were erased.

Coming back into the canal, the oil spill looked just like confetti.

We got back to 2nd street just as the day was warming up.

Sometimes you don’t do exactly what you set out to do. In fact, sometimes it is more important just to set out.

Here is my end of the paper work generated by the inspection of the Tide and Current Taxi. All safe and in working order.

My brother wanted to take a ride down the East River on July 7th.

There was a musical performance in Dumbo, conducted by the legendary Japanese musician, Yamantaka Eye, from the Boredoms.

Normally, I would shy away from a drum circle in Dumbo. But this sounded like an interesting event.

Although we figured the place would be mobbed,

we thought we might be able to land right inside the fenced off area – citing ‘Freedom of the Seas’ – the oldest principle of international law, written by a Dutch Jurist, Hugo Grotius in 1625.

In giving proof to the ‘Law of Hospitality’, Grotius quotes the poet Virgil,

“What men, what monsters, what inhuman race,

What laws, what barbarous customs of the place,

Shut up a desert shore to drowning men,

And drive us to the cruel seas again.”

The seas were indeed a little high that day.

And I was happy to be making the trip with my brother,

who grew up the same as me,

taking small boats out against gales in the Canadian wilderness.

We were well trained by our uncle – Roger Klassen.

We came into Dumbo and got the lay of the land.

It seemed clear that if we trie to land inside the grounds marked off for the concert, the security guards would not acknowledge the ‘Freedom of the Seas; Law of Hospitality”.

So we landed where everyone else who didn’t get into the show was hanging out,

and waited for the music to start.

Some friends came out of the crowd – they saw us landing in the boat.

Just as the sun set,

my brother and I pushed off into the bay with Eric Foreman.

We drifted up close to the concert.

We could hear it pretty well from there and it was nice to be out floating.

Also we could drink our beer, safely out of reach of park security.

The concert sounded great echoing under the bridges.

And soon it wass dark.

I couldn’t decide what to do. The tide had turned around after sunset and was heading back in the direction we had come.

But I didn’t have a light for the boat.

We decided to make a run for it.

The water was perfectly flat.

And the lights from the city were beautiful.

I think I always say ‘this is the best time to be out’.

But really, this is.

We slipped under the Huron Street Pier.

And made it back to Greenpoint in about an hour – just as fast as the G.

Mark Orange wanted to take a trip a boatyard in Staten Island where his friend is renovating an old tug boat.

We put in just North of the Outerbridge Crossing,

in the Aurthur Kill waterway.

From our map it looked like the boatyard might be South of the bridge.

The tide was heading that way. It flows into the ocean as the sea level recedes.

From here we were just around the bend from the Atlantic, and the ebb tide was pulling us quickly.

Next stop – Ireland, said Mark.

We found what we thought looked like the boat yard,

and we scouted for the tugboat.

Here she is, the New York Central Tugboat #13.

Eric and Christina showed up with some friends to give us a tour of the boat.

Most of the work so far has been on the hull of the boat.

The tug was built in 1887 – before we knew how to make steel!

So some parts are made of Iron.

Christina pointed out the plates on the hull that Eric replaced. She described the process of botling and bending the new steel plates by hand.

Below deck, Eric told us about his plans.

When the boat was made, it had a steam engine, but it was replaced with this diesel engine.

Eric fired up the motor and I was suprised how quiet it ran – even down here in the metal drum of the hull.

Down another hatch,

Eric showed us a section that he will divid and fill with water as a ballast.

Under the aft deck, Christina noticed something…

This is a part that she spent hours chipping rust and painting – not an easy task in such a small crawlspace. It has already started to rust again.

They don’t get to come out here as often as they would like because of their jobs and responsibilities. I know just how she feels.

Here is the whole crew, Eric Fischer and Christina Zafiris our hosts on the left, then Suzanne Thorpe, Mark Orange, Darren Vigilant, Missy Eaton, Anna Davolio, and me on the end.

Darren Vigilant is also working on a boat out here.

We stopped over and admired his beautiful and meticulous metalwork.

Eric and Darren came to the boat yard around the same time and each thought their projects would take about 3 months. That was 3 years ago.

We said goodby to the New York Central Tugboat #13.

On the way out Erik pointed out an old NYC landmark, The Purple Barge, here at it’s final resting place.

Everyone waved goodby.

The tide was flowing back to the North now,

filling the Arthur Kill with water from the Ocean.

We drifted back with almost no effort.

Here is a picture that Eric Fischer found of NYCTB#13 in her heyday.