New York Harbor

Today I paddled with Peter Armstrong and Paul DeWeerd from Liberty State Park to the beaches of Staten Island just beyond the Verrazano-Narrows Bridge at the entrance to the New York Harbor. Peter was paddling my Pungo, Paul in a Perception Sport that is part of our River of God Kayak School and I was in the Redfish Spring Run. Peter is a church planter of a new plant in lower Manhattan called Dwell. They hope to officially launch publically on 911 this year. Paul is an intern from Calvin Theological Seminary working with us for 6 weeks at Madison Ave.

I was hoping we could ride the tide to the bridge, have lunch and ride it back but the tide in the harbor is very different from in the Hudson River further up We found many conflicting tidal areas that created alot of chop and waves. We paddled to the "Tear of Grief" at the Bayonne dock that was a gift from the Russian Government to the US in memory of 911. It is a powerful sculpture and seems in a bit of an out of the way place.

From there we had to cross the shipping channel into the Newark Harbor and managed to dodge a Freighter, Tanker and several huge barges being pushed by tugboats. I don't think they are to into stopping for slow kayaks. :)We paddled toward the Staten Island Ferry and waited right behind some idle ones for the 12:00 one to pull out. You feel pretty small next to such a big boat. We stopped for lunch at the Alice Austen House & Park which has a little beach and nice shadytrees for lunch. That was about 6 miles from Liberty. We paddled anoher mile to the Verizano Narrows Bridge while a few ships were also heading out to sea.

Around the bend are the beginning of a number of Staten Island beaches. We stopped for a refreshing swim and headed back. We were 7.5 miles out at the beach and faced stong head winds all the way home. It seemed that we had the tide helping us a bit but it was hard to tell.

All in all we had a wonderful paddle together enjoying the richness of God's creation, the amazing beauty of the NY skyline and the good companionship of each other.