NYCkayaker advice on Hell Gate at max flood

[rob buchanan]

There are two beaches just south of the Manhattan bridge in dumbo cove--a
big cobble beach that's in the city park, and a little sandy one that's in
the state park (empire-fulton ferry state park). If it was a state parks
person who chased you off, then you were landing on the sandy one, I think.

Here's a link to an aerial photo of both--the dividing line between the two
parks runs right off the left-hand edge of the big red brick warehouse,
empire stores, behind the sandy beach:

http://www.newyorkharborbeaches.org/image/beach12img01.jpg

Everything to the left of that line is city park and you can normally land
there without hassle, even though it's not yet an 'official' launch or
landing. Besides the cobble beach (which can be rough on boats) there's a
sandy beach to the north, directly under the manhattan bridge (watch out for
a rocky reef back there, not visible at high tide).

The state parks rule seems to extend to all the other state parks on the
east river, in williamsburg and long island city. Rachel Gordon, the head of
the nyc region for state parks, has heard from boaters before about this,
but I think more notes and letters (civilly phrased, of course) could only
be a good thing.

Rachel Gordon: Rachel.Gordon at oprhp.state.ny.us


Rob Buchanan 





On 6/21/08 8:29 PM, "mark handy" <nycmhandy at yahoo.com> wrote:

> Thank you to the eight people who responded to my request for circumnav
> advice. I blended your very helpful information together and came up with a
> plan that worked well. The ideal conditions today helped, too, of course.
> I've never seen the Battery so calm.
> 
> We got chased off the little beach just south of the Manhattan Bridge by a NYS
> Parks officer.  I had heard of that prohibition at some point, but there were
> no signs and I had forgotten what I heard.  It seems like a wrongheaded rule.
> Anybody know the rationale, or to whom I should complain? There is a similar
> beach just north of the bridge. Is that one legal?
> 
> Hello to whomever I waved to at the yellow sit-on-tops in LIC.
> 
> The trip took us six hours.  I don't understand how people can do it in under
> four. We had a total of maybe one hour of rests, on land and on water, so
> scratch all of them and we had five hours of paddling. We didn't work all that
> hard, except on the Harlem, so maybe subtract half an hour for pushing hard
> all the way.  Then the remaining 45-minute reduction comes from where?  Pure
> muscle?  Fast boats?  Clockwise instead of counterclockwise?
> 
> Thank you again. See you on the river.
> 
> Mark
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