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Commute

Last Thursday, I picked up the Argonaut from the shop. The body work is good – solid, if not pretty. They left that part to me. I’ll post about that later, with pictures.

I left work around 1600 and got down to the shop a little after 1630. After settling up and chatting a bit, we pulled the boat out. A little more chat, and I got kitted out to get on the water. The tide was flooding in from the harbor, so I was expecting a quick ride north.

There was also a steady breeze from the southwest, which caused some interesting surface effect in some places. More importantly – and what I had been thinking about all day – was the amount of ferry traffic. At the end of the work day, plenty of Water Taxis and NY Waterway boats would be shooting across the river, back and forth, picking up and dropping off passengers. All in, I’d pass four terminals on the way up.

I was surprised at how uneventful the trip was. I paddled 56 blocks. the water was pretty calm. The only annoying thing I ran into was when a combination of ferry wake and barge wake created some tall waves coming at me at a low angle from behind. I surfed them into a cove at Chelsea Piers – but as the water got shallower, the wavers got stronger, and I had to wait for them to chill out before I turned around and headed back out

Published in 2012 Backpaddle Downtown Boathouse New York New York City NYC

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