kayaking around manhattan

“I saw a segment on OLN last night about 2 guys kayaking around the island. While I enjoyed the footage since I've never been to NY, I wonder if they were sane??? Do we have anyone from that area who can tell us about the water quality, traffic, etc.etc. Seems like you had to really understand the tide to make the whole thing work. anyone else see this program?”

“utahiker, I saw that program last night too. While I lived in NY, I never considered kayaking around it, so I don't have any info on what it takes to do it, except for the things you stated about tides.

Two years ago when I visited NY, I was walking along the Hudson River in the evening, and saw cops standing around this man that they had just drug out of the water. Of course he was dead. So watch out for the floating bodies.

The East River is poluted, but one of the Kennedys was working on cleaning it up, so I don't know the condition of it now.”

“Thanks for your input, lh. Always good to get feedback on a post!”

“Tuff to find a campsite, you'd think!”

“Manhattan runs kinda N-S? (NW-SE?)
Say you started the trip on the N end. That would require catching an outgoing tide. You'd also have the river current behind you as well. If the S end was reached soon enough, you would hafta wait for the tide to start coming back in in order to skirt up the other side, then you'd be against the river current. If my geography serves, Manhattan - the island - is situated in the middle of the uh...uh... Mississippi River, which has a current that always flows in the same direction, but the tide ebbs and flows. Anytime you travel a river, the dynamics changes when you reach tidewater.

I had a canoe drift away one night because I didn't realize we had already reached the final stretch that was affected by the tides. Fortunately, a couple of ol' boys we'd met the previous day came by and gave me a ride in their motorboat. The canoe was snagged on the outside of the next bend - like I suspected it would be.

It's not uncommon for a standing wave to form where the river current meets an incoming tide. In fact, during the rainy season, the Amazon creates a standing wave several stories tall.

BTW - during the rainy season, the Amazon's discharge would fill an empty Lake Ontario
IN FOUR HOURS!
KEWL!”

“snakelegs, if you wanted to camp, you could pull under a bridge and camp there with the other campers (the homeless).

gojo, that was very enlightening. I am going to go to Monterey, CA and do some kayaking there in the bay.”

“I live on Staten Island and take the ferry to work every day. Let me tell you that water is filthy!!!
As for traffic; it depends on the time of year. During the summer it gets pretty crowded with sailboats, jet-skis and ferrys (Staten Island ferries, New Jersey ferries, Long Island ferries), but the rest of the year there's not too much traffic.”

“Wouldn't kayaking on asphalt scratch the bottom of the kyak? How would you paddle?”

“Sidi, so this dead guy I saw while visiting NY, did he die of drowning or pollution, lol?”

“He was probably strangled by the mutant fish.”