NYCkayaker NY Times Sat - Kayakers Rescued Near Waterfall in Harbor

[David Gottlieb]

 From the Saturday NY Times (July 12, 2008):

Erik Baard was 200 yards away from a smooth, placid day on the water.

The weather was warm, the water picturesque, and Mr. Baard and 26
other kayakers were just about to finish their trip Friday on the
Brooklyn waterfront, from Red Hook to Governors Island and finally on
to Dumbo.

But then Mr. Baard heard a commotion and looked back, and suddenly,
his uneventful trip had become a cautionary tale about what goes wrong
when kayakers mix a little horseplay with a huge art exhibit along the
East River.

Two of the kayakers, in one boat, capsized after straying too close to
a waterfall erected by the Danish-Icelandic artist Olafur Eliasson
under the Brooklyn Bridge, the police said. The two, Bert Rosenblatt,
36, and Vladimir Spector, 37, were rescued by a police boat and taken
to a hospital, and released shortly after with no injuries, the police
said.

Mr. Baard said the men had been ³goofing around,² and got too close to
the fall as they tried to take pictures.

The accident happened as Mr. Baard and two other experienced kayakers
were leading a fund-raising paddle for the Long Island City Community
Boathouse, a nonprofit organization of which Mr. Baard is a founder.
Their charges were 24 members of the Young Men¹s/Women¹s Real Estate
Association of New York, many of them intent on taking photographs of
the four cascades of water that were installed last month along the
vast sweep of New York Harbor.

Everything had gone off without a hitch. With the falls under police
protection, the kayakers were warned to steer clear.

But when the group reached the waterfall that flows from a scaffold
under the Brooklyn Bridge opposite Pier 17 in Manhattan, two minutes
from the kayakers¹ dock, Mr. Baard looked back, as he does frequently
on such trips, and saw two of the novice kayakers flailing in the
water, their boat upside down.

At that point, what should have been a routine rescue turned into a
spectacle that involved dozens of police officers, a swarm of
reporters and baffled passers-by.

Before the group had taken off, everyone had been given instructions
repeatedly about what to do should their kayak flip over or drift into
trouble, said Mr. Baard, who as a freelance writer occasionally
contributes articles to The New York Times.Rule 1, clutch your
paddles, they were told. The men let them go. Rule 2, hold onto your
kayak. Instead they let it drift away, and clung to the buoys and
containment barriers that were meant to cordon off the waterfall, Mr.
Baard said. If the men had followed their instructions, Mr. Baard
said, they would have drifted to a calmer part of the river, where
they easily could have gotten back into their kayak.

³I don¹t know if they were afraid or what,² he said. ³One issue was
that they didn¹t know us very well, so they didn¹t have an immediate
trust of our judgment, which would have helped. But they didn¹t listen
to what we asked them to do, and so at that point I tried to let the
police take over.²

Paul J. Browne, the chief spokesman for the Police Department, said
that after one of the police boats guarding the waterfall noticed the
commotion, the waterfall was shut off and a 20-minute police rescue
operation began.

When the officers arrived at the scene, they found Mr. Baard pleading
with one of the men, who were both wearing life vests, to let go of
the barrier, but to no avail. Eventually, the police ordered him to
let go, and the man complied.

³One of the kayakers was able to swim towards the launch,² Mr. Browne
said, ³while the other was thrown a line and put it around himself,
and he was pulled out of the water.²

Mr. Spector and Mr. Rosenblatt were taken to New York Downtown
Hospital ³after having swallowed quite a bit of water,² Mr. Browne
said, but were quickly released. Under other circumstances, the rescue
may have been routine. But the sight of two men flailing under a
waterfall under the Brooklyn Bridge left many onlookers baffled. Josh
Brown, 29, a waiter at the River Cafe who witnessed the rescue, said
he had seen people jump off the bridge before. This, he insisted, was
more bizarre.

But Mr. Baard was unfazed.

³In a harbor like New York, where everything is under watch, it gets
inflated,² he said. ³But it was routine. The only damage is to our
reputation and our pride.²

Kareem Fahim, Christine Hauser and Colin Moynihan contributed reporting.