We needed to launch by 8:30 yesterday morning. But when we got to the municipal lot where our car lives, we were confounded. (Click for video clip)
Sure, we like our Thule racks. But this fellow loooves them! No amount of shooing could drive him away. So…we drove away. Somewhere around Level 2, he abandoned her. Is he thinking about her now? Forever dreaming of “the one that got away?”
The sun broke through the early morning fog. It’s mid-May and just a handful of boats are out of their wintertime shrink-wrap, moored in Echo Bay outside Hudson Park and New Rochelle Marina.
Workmen repair the promenade at Hudson Park
Just the other day, the 1880 New Rochelle Rowing Club was demolished. Rebuilt in 1900 after a fire, the building appeared to be deteriorating—finally, Hurricane Sandy delivered the coup de grace. Friends who’d stored kayaks there were heartbroken, especially when they weren’t allowed to retrieve their yaks!
And now it’s…gone. At least somebody saw fit to save the historic cupola. It once topped the old New Rochelle City Hall (1864), but after that building was demolished a hundred years later, the rowing club rescued the cupola and hoisted it sometime in the 70s. But set a single face to the correct time? Fuhgettabouddit. We’re guessing the works were long gone anyway.
So much for NRRC, home of Fordham Prep Crew and decades of rowing champs. Paddle on.
While other club members were busy raking and painting and sweating on HHYC Clean-Up Day, we tiptoed to our yaks and stealth-paddled off towards a campsite on Shea Island in Norwalk, CT. First break on our 20-mile journey: Great Captains Island near Greenwich, CT.
Just as we were taking this picture, a distant roar grew louder…
Um, what? It’s a motorboat. It’s a hydroplane. It’s…
Uh-huh. Ok, well, here are facts about this new thing we’re going to have to dodge: The quadski zooms up to 45 mph on land and water. It costs about $40,000. And for an extra $3,000 you can get it in custom colors, including “camo” (camouflage)…LOL, as if that’s going to help you sneak away from Clean-Up Day!
Shiny new toy, painful new drysuit 🙂
You don’t want to miss the manufacturer’s crazy loud action video. Click below. And then you, too, will have seen everything.
All hands on deck—and the beach, in the garden, on the docks and in the kayak storage room!May 2 marked the beginning of the season for Horseshoe Harbor Yacht Club and the end of a very, very long winter.
The shape of things to come…
New HHYC dock thing under construction…
Everyone helps in their own way
Painting the “optis” i.e., the sailing school boatlets
Ah, wide-eyed youth! They’re everywhere in Springtime. In the photo above, baby owls just arrived at a friend of a friend’s horse barn (they have since grown up to become a formidable mouse-patrol SWAT team).
Last weekend at Stamford Harbor: Cormorants colony nest on the breakwater’s marker #3
As we approached Stamford Lighthouse, twin osprey chicks in the nest at the very top screeched, “Mommy, WHERE ARE YOU AND OUR LUNCH LUNCH LUNCH?!”
Below: Busy birds fly over our friend, Dov, and Great Captains lighthouse. Cormorants colony nest in the trees on the south side of the island; snowy egrets on the east; gulls on rocks everywhere. It’s a fantastic, noisy place! Birds rule.
Back at home (at last!) we toss our drysuits into the wash as 21-year-old Kuno (our parrot and blog avatar) moons the camera…he’s busy building “nests” in his cage and our bathtub, like he does every Spring. He’s still waiting for Alex to lay an egg (no, seriously, that’s what he wants). Kids!
The next time we find ourselves on a kayak camping trip at dinnertime with no corkscrew (cough Norwalk Islands last weekend) we’re going to try this (click for video):