Frogma

South Street Seaport Museum - Back Underway!

noreply@blogger.com (bonnie) — Sat, 28 Jan 2012 03:23:00 +0000

grey skies...

are

gonna

clear

up!

Yippee! I'd read the news last year the South Street Seaport was going to reopen under the auspices of the Museum of the City of New York (an institution I used to enjoy when I lived on the Upper East Side back in the 90's) with happiness. I'd seen January. On January 8th, the day I took the SeaStreak out to hike at Sandy Hook, I'd left myself loads of extra time for weekend delays (the Q train's been running in parts on weekends and there was one and only one ferry that was going to get me there early enough to make it worth the price of the ride, so I wanted to be absolutely sure I'd be on that one), the delays that day weren't too bad, so while I waited I decided to run over and see if they had the opening day on the door yet. They didn't, but at least I had a little time to walk around & take some pictures of the old ships & boats there. I hadn't gotten around to posting them and the funny thing is that I'd just been thinking that I should do that this week, and wondering if the day had been announced, and then I wandered over to Jessica DuLong's Facebook page to see when her BookCourt reading was (details here) and was absolutely delighted to see that the grand reopening bash had actually just happened the night before!

Jessica was there, she loved it.

The New York Times has an interesting article about the reopening - not just a review of the new exhibits, but a good outline of the troubles of the past and the challenges the institution faces now.

I hope enough people go visit in the next 18 months that by the end of that time, the Museum of the City of New York can't imagine letting it go. Me, I can't wait.

Oh. And maybe I don't have to, at least not too long.

I've actually been completely torn about what to do on Sunday - hit the water, or take the Lumix to the Chinese New Year parade. I'm itching to paddle; between a shoulder that got a bit "tweaked" by some overenthusiastic New Year's Day rolling, bad weather, and a cold, I haven't been out since the Frostbite Regatta (pool doesn't count, really) - but if I went to the parade for a couple of hours, I could probably squeeze in a visit to the museum, too. Two birds, one stone, all that, right?

Hmm. Shoulder's mostly all better but it does still twinge a bit here & there. What do you think, should I maybe give it another week to recover?

Wetlands Strategy Draft on "A Walk in the Park"

noreply@blogger.com (bonnie) — Wed, 25 Jan 2012 16:14:00 +0000

Further to the Four Sparrow business - as I mentioned in a post on Facebook yesterday, that meeting report actually ended up being a rather hard one to write:

" don't know why I'm having such a hard time doing it, used to do that sort of thing all the time...guess I'm out of practice. Or Mill Basin doesn't feel like my turf the way the Hudson River Park was, where I first got involved when the Trust was a Conservancy, knew the people, followed the stories, maybe even got to help write little bit of its now and then before they shut down the barge and I left for the shores of the Paerdegat. This one, I was seriously jumping in in a chapter in the middle of what turned out to be a much longer tale than I realized & aside from the initial incoherent spluttering I did the other day I'm at a bit of a loss."

I did finally cough up a report last night, but I was reading it and feeling like it just wasn't very good precisely because I didn't have any sense of the backstory or how this one development fits into the bigger picture.

Fortunately the same paddling birder friend who told me about the plan and the meeting in the first place forwarded the following message that had been sent out among the birding community. I saw it AFTER I'd posted last night, looked at the link this morning, and there it was, a summary the big picture that I knew I wasn't seeing. Wish I'd read it before I wrote my report, might have made it easier!

Thanks, Prof. M!
*****************

A Walk in the Park: City Releases Wetlands Strategy Draft.

The attachment in the link above ( "Read On" in the second link ) is a very important conservation proposal put out by our city Jan 18th ( last Thursday) . The draft is 63 pages long but necessary to understand how critical this proposal is in the fight to save places like 4 Sparrow Marsh ( 64 acres) which the latest development plan threatens the marsh ecology with a large car dealership Kristol Auto next door at the current Toys R Us site; Kristol Auto is under investigation by the NY State Dept of Environment Conservation (NYSDEC) for its current location elsewhere for brownfield contamination

If you can comment on the proposed Wetlands policy, please do even if it isn't much. The deadline is February 18th.

Thanks for Brooklyn's birds and her habitats !

P

Four Sparrows Meeting Review

noreply@blogger.com (bonnie) — Wed, 25 Jan 2012 03:42:00 +0000

Just a quick bit of scribbling (note later: quick bit of scribbling? who was I kidding, when did I EVER do a meeting writeup that was "quick"??? oh well, at least it's done!) out my recollections of the updated plan for the Four Sparrows - I'd gone looking for the updated version of the plan, found an older version over on Sheepshead Bites & figured I'd just do one of my Microsoft Paint-jobs on it. Not very pretty but it gets the idea across. This isn't perfect, I should have done it sooner as sitting here 5 days after the meeting I'm not sure I'm remembering it right, but this is my best recollection.

The great thing is that the area I outlined, crosshatched & marked Gone in blue, covering buildings "Retail A", "Retail B" and the parking to serve them, are relics of the Ratner plan. Those are GONE now, thank goodness -- although as the invitation to the Community Board meeting pointed out, developers are likely to keep taking flyers at that unless it's eventually properly handed over to the parks department.

What's left is a couple of businesses that are already operating in the area, Toys 'R' Us (owners Kohlberg Kravis Roberts & Co., Bain Capital Partners LLC - and did that get a gasp when the manager started reading out the owners - and Vornado Realty Trust, who also owns the Kings Plaza Mall where the meeting was held) and Kristol Motors trying to rearrange things a bit. I've outlined the lot that they're working with in orange. The squarish building marked "Old" is the Toys 'R' Us. The polygonal building marked "New" is the car dealership. Where the marsh comes into play is that that new building will be taking up what is currently a large part of the Toys 'R' Us parking lot, so to replace that parking, they are proposing that a 60 foot wide "easement" be carved out of Four Sparrow (comprising roughly 5% of that land that everybody thought was a park)and handed over for a parking lot.

The developers were making all kinds of reassuring noises about how it was being set up so that nothing but a parking lot could ever be built on that strip, as though a parking lot is somehow a completely neutral thing to add in and of itself.

Ida Sanoff, president of the Brooklyn/Queens division of the Natural Resources Protective Association called them on that one, and I was glad to hear that as it seemed to me that putting a parking lot right on the edge of a marsh is pretty much going to guarantee that every time it rains, it's going to mean oil and gas and anything else that leaked from the cars that park there are going to wash into the marsh.

Dan Mundy from the Jamaica Bay EcoWatch followed up and said that by pointing out that with all of the money that's being poured into the maintenance and restoration of the marshes of Jamaica Bay, not protecting the Four Sparrow Marsh just didn't make sense. Well, he said it better than that but that's what it boils down to.

The residents seemed to have mixed emotions - on the one hand, Kristol is a genuine local businessman and they'd like to see him do well, but chairwoman Dorothy Turano expressed a lot of frustration with the way the developers had evaded requests for a preliminary meeting, and concern about how the development was going to deal with the increased traffic (there'd been hopes for a bus turnaround and that didn't seem to be part of the plan), and most of all, she was quite vehement about the residents not wanting even the smallest piece of that park used.

A couple of other comments that stick out in my mind -

An individual asked Kristol about his role in the brownfield status of the land where his current dealership stands - he said he inherited that when he took over the land & had nothing to do with it but that was something people seemed to be pretty clearly concerned about.

There was a very strange moment when Councilman Lew Fidler began talking about how it was his understanding that the strip of marshland was just going to be used a buffer, tree plantings, etc. etc. - he must have arrived late because the fact that that land was intended for parking cars had been one of the first things the developers said. The developers corrected him although he didn't really seem to acknowledge it - hopefully that did sink in. That mistaken assumption was also posted on Sheepshead Bites & I made a comment I sort of wish I could revise, I was just there looking for the map, saw that the Councilman had posted a comment saying the same thing & posted a rather snappish correction, thinking he'd just ignored the developers' correction...then realized he'd posted that the day before the meeting. Oh well, at least there's a correction with it now.

hmm, and back to "I'm not sure I'm remembering it right", I swear they said the strip was for parking but Dan Mundy's report says " 'some parking but mostly as a buffer area with trees and plants' according to EDC. " Maybe I misheard...still, definitely not just trees.

Most depressing moment of the evening was when someone proposed that approval be hinged on guarantees that the park be left alone. A gentleman who I believe was representing the Empire Development Corporation was quick to remind everyone that a community board doesn't actually have any power to DO something like that, they're only there in an advisory capacity.

Weirdest moment of the evening was actually before the meeting. I'd made a poster and while I was standing in line, the guy in front of me said "Nice pictures". I said thanks & told him I'd taken them from my kayak & that I paddle out of Sebago. He paused for a second & then said, "You know, I'd like to like your club but you want to ban all the motorboats from the Paerdegat". Coulda knocked me over with the proverbial feather - sure there are a couple of turkeys who just WON'T slow down when they come under the bridge, but the neighboring yacht clubs are just that, our neighbors, I can't imagine asking to have them turned out! Anyways, turned out that he was from Canarsie and some club member had said something to that effect at some planning meeting - somebody's personal opinion clearly got mistaken for club policy. Bizarre though.

According to my notes, the next meeting on the topic will be on February 8th at 5:30 at Brooklyn Borough Hall, and then there'll be a followup in March, and in April or May it'll go to the City Council.

Guess I won't throw away my poster yet.

Susan Fox Rogers comes to Yonkers, Saturday, 1/28/2012 (and Jessica DuLong reads in Brooklyn on 1/30)

noreply@blogger.com (bonnie) — Tue, 24 Jan 2012 04:55:00 +0000

Oh, goodness - the very last reading in a series of readings by Susan Fox Rogers, author of what ended up being one of my favorite books of 2011, is coming up this Saturday, January 28th at the Beczak Environmental Education Center's in Yonkers. Her reading will be the first of the center's monthly RiverTalks in 2012.

Click here to visit the RiverTalks blog for full details.

I'm so glad that I made it to her reading in Brooklyn - this one's going to be even better, she's the sole presenter of the evening, they'll be serving Hudson River wines and cheeses, and all my friends from Yonkers will be there. Aeriously, if you live anywhere within a reasonable travel distance, you're not a kayaker already, and you've ever thought you might like to be one, you absolutely owe it to yourself to go to this thing, listen to the talk and then see if you can introduce yourself to some of the nice folks from the Yonkers Paddling and ~~Rolling~~ Rowing Club. If you ARE a Yonkers-area kayaker, well, you were probably planning on going long before I got around to posting it, right? :D

I was actually trying to figure out if there was a way I could go myself. It would have taken a borderline weaselly move on my part, only I did myself in (or spared myself from being tempted into weasellitude, depending on how you look at it) last week on Facebook when a blogging friend messaged me asking if I was going to either this one or Jessica DuLong's reading on Monday (another event worth attending, My River Chronicles is another really good book), and I blithely replied,

"1/28 is our snow day for the pool classes TQ and I are teaching, but it's looking like we won't need it so it'll just be a bonus practice session. I'll have to see what the other instructors think but I'd really like to go to Yonkers..."

Of course simply making a comment like that rendered all such considerations moot - that's right, I accept at least part of the blame for the Saturday snowstorm, saying something like that is about as close to doing a magical snowbringing dance as a person can get while clickety-clicking away at a computer. Worked great, didn't it?

Happy Lunar New Year!

noreply@blogger.com (bonnie) — Mon, 23 Jan 2012 17:04:00 +0000

Enter the Dragon!

Welcome Dragon!

Here's an article with a video of one of the most unusual dragon dances I've ever seen! :D

And here's a link to this year's scheduled festivities in Manhattan's Chinatown on ExploreChinatown.com. Firecrackers today, and the big parade is next Sunday, January 29th. BTW the picture above is from a Lunar New Year gallery I did back in 2006, the year I finally made it to the parade - if you click on it I think it will take you to the Buzznet gallery.

Subway Series #2-and-a-half

noreply@blogger.com (bonnie) — Sun, 22 Jan 2012 17:18:00 +0000

A very New Yorky wishing well.

Three coins in the trackbed,
through the ripples, how they shine

(with apologies to Jules Styne, of course)

Can't quite count it as a Subway Series post 'cause those were supposed to involve me actually carving out a little time to go take pictures, but this just fits in!

Frogma Is 7!

noreply@blogger.com (bonnie) — Fri, 20 Jan 2012 15:48:00 +0000

Good grief, next thing you know the blog is going to be a teenager, start dating, talking back, calling me to come pick it up from parties when everybody drank too much to drive...

Wow, it's Froggibloggiversary Number 7, still hopping along just fine! Thanks to anyone who's been following my adventures in urban kayaking, sailing, food, gardening, wildlife, doodling, photography and whatever else happens to catch my easily-distracted attention for a moment. Amazes me how much easier it's been for me to keep a journal going when keeping a journal actually involves socializing - every one I ever tried to keep on paper died of inattention within a month.

It all started in a much nastier, colder January than this one we've got going on now - Click here to read Frogma Post #1.

PS - adding a note slightly later: Comments on that Post #1 are moderated but I am putting them up! Sorry!

TOP GEAR BREAK! Yowza! Woohoo! Vrooomvroomvroom!

noreply@blogger.com (bonnie) — Fri, 20 Jan 2012 05:54:00 +0000

OK, between yesterday's SOPA/PIPA thing, the grumbling about the Music Publishing Rights Collection Society's claiming that they own rights to one of my Dempsey's set video, and the Four Sparrows Marsh thing I feel like this blog needs a frivolity break, and I think that Top Gear's instant-classic jet-powered kayak vs. TomCat race is just the thing. I know, I know, I should probably be philosophically opposed to the very concept but shoot, it's fun!

I was planning to come home and do a bit of a writeup here about the meeting last night, but you've been spared 'cause I have a cold, I came home from work & immediately crashed for several hours on the Evil Futon of Nap and I'm now just having a quick cup of herbal tea with honey (fresh outta Balvenie, sigh, I must have a word with the butler about how this oversight was allowed to happen) and messing about on the internet for a bit before I transfer to actual bed. Way too late to get started on a Serious Post now, plus there are limits to just how much seriousness I can take in one week!

Joining the strike

noreply@blogger.com (bonnie) — Wed, 18 Jan 2012 06:29:00 +0000

Couldn't figure out how to get one of those banners on here but I'm following the lead of pretty much every genuinely tech-savvy person I know and joining in on the strike today. Back tomorrow with Four Sparrow news.

Click here for more about the SOPA and PIPA bills.

Richard Hudson - Sailing the Northwest Passage, Wednesday, 1/18/2012

noreply@blogger.com (bonnie) — Tue, 17 Jan 2012 21:27:00 +0000

Oh, shoot shoot shoot shoot shoot. My friend Richard Hudson is in town VERY briefly and he's giving a presentation about sailing the Northwest Passage tomorrow night. The presentation is for a meetup group called the Gotham City Sailing Association; charge is $5 plus there's a $12 membership fee if you aren't already a member. Richard is a great guy with some wonderful sailing stories - I would go except I really want to go to the meeting about Four Sparrow Marsh - don't know that me being there is going to make a whit of difference but I just feel like that needs fighting.

Click here for the Meetup.com event info:

Click here fora page with links to stories about the 3 small schooners Richard owns or has owned.

Orbit II was lost at sea in 2002. The Rosemary Ruth was the boat that he was sailing when I met him (the "rosemary ruth" label below should pull up some of my trip reports from sailing with him back then); she's an absolutely charming craft and he worked on her for a long time but eventually decided she was just not quite the right cruiser for him and ended up buying a more suitable schooner, now known as the Issuma, in France in 2008. He's been sailing pretty much ever since & is now in Alaska - just in the city for a few days.

noreply@blogger.com (bonnie) — Tue, 17 Jan 2012 02:39:00 +0000

Four Sparrows Marsh - "Forever Wild" still in question - meeting Wednesday, 1/18/2012

noreply@blogger.com (bonnie) — Fri, 13 Jan 2012 16:05:00 +0000

Aw, heck.

Remember how in October, I was so happy about the Four Sparrows Marsh being spared from Ratnerization? Well, I should've known that once people had their eyes on something for development, it wouldn't go away quite that easily. Ratner's out but that was of course not the end of it. I'll be going to a meeting next Wednesday to stand up for leaving the entire marsh Forever Wild, as it should be. Here's a meeting notice that's been circulating among the birding community and has now been passed on to a few members of the paddling community by my friend Mary (aka "She Who Finds Snowy Owls Upon Demand"), who is a very active member of both communities.

Here is the meeting notice, in its entirety:

***IMPORTANT MEETING - PLEASE DISTRIBUTE! Wednesday January 18 @ 8 PM***

Community Board 18 will present the NEW PLANS for the Four Sparrow Marsh area -
WEDNESDAY, JANUARY 18 @ 8 PM, Kings Plaza Community Room (enter near the garage on Flatbush Ave., the community room is to your right)

Hi folks,

Four Sparrow Marsh is located on southbound Flatbush Ave, just past Toys R Us but before Floyd Bennet Field. It bears the NYC Parks Dept's "Forever Wild" logo. The NYC Parks Dept. website says:

"Named by naturalists Ron and Jean Bourque, Four Sparrow Marsh Preserve is home to four native species which require undisturbed marshland for nesting: Sharptailed, Seaside, Swamp, and Song Sparrows. Because of its relative isolation from residential areas in Brooklyn, Four Sparrow Marsh Preserve has been allowed to remain in a fairly natural condition. This makes it ideal for many permanently nesting species, including several types of ducks, gulls, and wading and woodland birds, as well as for the common seashore mollusks and crustaceans which feed those birds. It is an important part of the Jamaica Bay estuary system. "

Note the final sentence: "It is an important part of the Jamaica Bay estuary system".

Last winter, the NYC Economic Development Corp. announced plans to turn a sizable portion of the marsh into a shopping mall. Although the site was marked by Parks Dept. signs, it turned out that the land had never been officially turned over to the Parks Dept.!!!

A number of us went to the Feb. 2011 Scoping Meeting. We've been to a lot of these meetings, but there was something really off kilter about this one. I remember turning to my colleagues & saying "something isn't right here". Several weeks later, we learned that State Senator Carl Kruger had been indicted, for among other things, being in cahoots with the developer. That was why things didn't feel right.

In the fall of 2011, the plan for the retail center was withdrawn. However, there are still plans in the works which may impact a small portion of the area that everyone thought was pakland. The new plans for development on the Toys R Us site are similar to what was previously announced (a car dealership & renovation/expansion of the existing marina). This will be built on the existing parking lot, etc. of Toys R Us. But there is an additional strip of land south of Toys R Us that is also included in the development. We need to see if this will intrude on the parkland of Four Sparrow Marsh.

(blogger's note - emphasis mine, this was the key bit I overlooked last October) We also need to insist that the remaining 60+ acres of land is OFFICIALLY turned over to the Parks Dept. Otherwise, there is a good possibility that sooner or later this site will be turned over to developers.

We lost the Vandalia Dunes to the Gateway Mall. Let's make sure that Four Sparrow Marsh does not suffer the same fate.

Three Sets at Dempsey's Pub, Tuesday, 1/10/2012

noreply@blogger.com (bonnie) — Wed, 11 Jan 2012 18:20:00 +0000

Quick lunchtime post here - between our seisiun leader John Nevin getting Patrick Mangan as a guest artist, and the continuing mild weather, I figured last night's traditional Irish music seisiun at Dempsey's was going to be a roof-raiser, so I decided to take my Optio along & take a shot at catching a few sets on video. I was glad I did. They came out very dark, of course, and the Optio microphone isn't near good enough to do justice to the music, but these 3 came out well enough that I think they get at least a little of the idea across. Enjoy! Oh, and if you like these & want to hear at least a little bit more in much higher quality, head on over to BeautifulPeopleDocFilm.com - that's the website for a really nice documentary film about our seisiun that came out last year. I'm not in it (I'd been scarce enough at that time I specifically DIDN'T go on the nights they were filming in the pub because I didn't want people to think I was just reappearing because I wanted to be in the movie), but I went to see it when it came out and it's a really wonderful depiction of this unique seisiun, which is both "the longest running open session that this town has to offer" (to steal a quote from the website) AND the most truly OPEN open seisiun there is, welcoming musicians of all levels (and not by accident, either, that's how our seisiun leader planned it & I think that's actually part of why it's endured so well).

Live in the area & want to come check it out sometime? Dempsey's is in the East Village, at 61 2nd Avenue, bet. 3rd & 4th Streets. The music starts around 8 & usually rolls on until at least midnight - I'm actually not sure what time they end, I've never been able to stay that late!

Now...I hate to mar an otherwise perfectly "Happy Bonnie" (tm) post with a mention of something annoying, but I just can't resist adding a note on the weirdness of tune recognition software:
I was astounded to get a copyright notice on the second set - it posted but there was a friendly little notice that something in the contents "Matched third party content." Continued on to say: "Your video, Dempseys 1 09 2012 - second set , may include content that is owned or administered by these entities:
Entity: Music Publishing Rights Collecting Society Content Type: Musical Composition." They didn't do anything but apparently the "Entity" may have the right to post ads on my video. :(

I assume YouTube has some corporate version of that marvellous little TunePal app I was introduced to last night - you hear a tune you like but don't know, you turn on TunePal, TunePal "listens", identifies it (giving the degree of certainty, it's never entirely sure), and can then give you sheet music and an MP3 so you can learn it yourself. I loved it. I'm still not getting an iphone but that's neatest app I've seen yet. Apparently the YouTube version "listened" to my content and is fairly sure it recognized something that somebody holds a copyright for. I've gotten that notice before, but those were both instances where I could see where the issue would be (and both videos are still up with their sound, no actual action was ever taken), but it just threw me for a loop that I could get on a video of the Dempsey's seisiun!

Sandy Hook, NJ, 1/8/2012 - pictures from a hike

noreply@blogger.com (bonnie) — Tue, 10 Jan 2012 16:52:00 +0000

Sandy Hook, NJ 1/8/2012, a set on Flickr.

Paddling? Sailing? In the end, neither one. I finally listened to the voice of reason & the voice of reason said "You know, that shoulder is coming along very nicely, but how about we give it another week before we resume the usual abuse?"

It was the sensible thing to do, but I was less than enthusiastic about giving up what looked to be a fine day for boating - until I hit on the plan of going to Sandy Hook for some hiking instead. I've only landed there once and that just was for a fast lunch break, and I've been wanting to explore it, and this was the perfect chance to do that.

There are no ferries directly to the park this time of year, but I checked the map, found that hoofing it into the park from the Conners Highland ferry terminal looked totally doable, and decided I'd give it a shot. Sunday morning, off I went!

Kite video a video by bkfrogma on Flickr.

Choices, Choices!

noreply@blogger.com (bonnie) — Fri, 06 Jan 2012 17:05:00 +0000

oh, dear...Sunday's another warm and not-too-windy day, could be another sailing day, except that it's a low water at noon kinda day which means a) there will be about 10 gallons of water in Jamaica Bay and b) that's absolutely perfect conditions to paddle out to Dead Horse Bay for a little beachcombing...shoot...extra torn because I somehow managed to do enough sailing (and blogging about sailing) in 2011 to make the Proper Course Top 9 SAILING Blogs list so now I feel like I should go sailing.

Check it out!

Funny thing was, after the totally paddlecentric summer that followed getting recertified as a kayak instructor, I was actually feeling a little bummed out 'cause I thought 2011 was going to be the year that I only got out for a proper sail once. That was before I decided to suck it up and try the Fall dinghy racing series again, though - I'd been so awful in 2010 that I almost didn't want to, but I ended up being really glad I got back on the horse. Or the fish, as the case was.

p.s. - As evidenced by my new profile shot, I have officially let my inclusion on a sailing blog list go to my head! :D

no, seriously, I was going to put up my self-portrait from that fantastic December sail that Holly & I took. I'd saved it as "Sailing", though, and when I went in to upload it, I ran across this one that I'd saved as "Saaaaailing!"

That picture just makes me happy to look at - that was taken in Fall '05, during one of the best vacations I've EVER taken. As I put it on the start of the Buzznet gallery where the photos are still hosted - One week, one 41-foot sailboat, six friends, numerous islands, lots of fun! What a wonderful, wonderful trip that was.

Inflated Self-Rescue - or Why You Need to Test Your Gear, Part 4.

noreply@blogger.com (bonnie) — Thu, 05 Jan 2012 03:30:00 +0000

Like the title says - rescuing my inflated self! And HA HA HA, first total geek-out of 2012!

An explanation of why I'm coming back to a topic I really thought I was done with will be forthcoming at the end.

This is actually the 4th (and almost definitely the last) of a set of posts involving the testing of a somewhat new hybrid lifejacket, the Kokatat Sea-O2 that I bought early last summer when my late, lamented Lotus L'ocean finally gave up the ghost after over a decade of faithful service. I'd gone to Randy at New York Kayak and tried on a good half-dozen lifejackets - none of 'em fit well (my torso seems to be shorter than most lifejacket manufacturers think torsos are supposed to be), and just as I was about to settle on the best of a not-so-hot set of options, Randy thought of the Sea-02 hybrid, which strikes a perfectly nice balance of less bulk without giving up ALL flotation (which I wouldn't do because paddling the busy urban waterways I do, my all-to-easily-imaginable worse case scenario involves getting hit by a motorboat, in which case I want to float without having to do something, y'know?). I'd been meaning to test it out for ages (Kokatat included an extra C02 cartridge specifically for that purpose) and I finally got around to it in mid-December.

The first post on the topic was of course a video of that test, which was a complete failure because some knucklehead (that would be me) had completely failed to read the instruction. For anyone who missed that:

Part 2 was of course one of my worst geek-outs in ages a photo-essay on how it was supposed to work and how I'd managed to screw up the setup of the completely straightforward doohickey that inflates the jacket when it's set up properly (scroll down to December 24th if you missed it). Part 3, a quick post after the successful test of the then properly-armed lifejacket, was "Va Va Voom" - I just couldn't resist it. Mae West is right -- as I said in that post, when that jacket inflates off the cartridge, it REALLY inflates! I mean, seriously, the thing stuck out a good five or six inches past my, er, normal profile.

I'd also mentioned that the test wasn't just about inflating the vest - I'd also wanted to see how it would affect my movements as I did normal things like get back in my boat, roll, and paddle.

The verdict? I'm definitely glad I tried 'em first under calm conditions! TQ got the self-rescue on video, and as you can see, it didn't go all that well!

I'm pretty sure this is the first time in YEARS that I've re-flipped my boat during a cowgirl rescue - and I do them VERY regularly (aside from demonstrating it for classes & practicing it for fun on hot days, in the warmer months of the year, my personal answer to the age-old question of "how does a woman take a leak when she can't get to shore" involves reversing the above manuever - I get out of the boat, I do what I have to do in the water, I get back in the boat, no trouble at all)!

The emptying and righting the boat actually went great - I love my Romany but for a smallish boat, it's a pretty heavy beast, and when I go to the bow and lift to empty it, the bow goes up but I also obey the laws of physics and go under. This was true of my L'Ocean, with 15.5 pounds of flotation, and it's of course even MORE true of the new one with 7.5 pounds uninflated (yes, I also did a number of activities to test the new vest uninflated to see how it worked that way, too - it does make a difference in a number of ways, none terribly alarming but all good to know about). The cockpit ends up empty enough to paddle but there's alway enough water left in there to be annoying. With the full 22 pounds of buoyancy - woohoo! I could hold up the bow & get every drop out.

The first moment when things got interesting was right around 0:19 - having righted the boat, I went aft to do the next manuever, which is to do a nice swimmer's kick that gets your chest up on the back deck. I went right to the point where I would usually get on the boat, went to jump up, and instantly discovered that this wasn't going to work so well with the equivalent of a small beach ball strapped to my front! I didn't want to put a lot of weight on it, either - it's probably built pretty sturdy, but I am not exactly a delicate flower myself, and that would be a pretty expensive beach ball to replace if I happened to puncture it. Instead, I went further back towards the stern - the skinnier the kayak gets, the less flotation it has, the easier it is to get it underneath you, but as you get better and better leverage, more and more of the boat actually raises up out of the water, and the less hull you have in the water, the less stability you've got. I quite literally went past the tipping point and whoops, over she went and there I was back at Square One - and although you can't really see it, i actually fairly startled at having had the boat go rolling over right in my hands and end up upside down again!

The second time, I went farther back on the boat than I usually would, but maybe not QUITE as far back as before, and paid a little more attention as I jumped on, and that worked better. The sidling forward was also a little weird - usually when I do this I'm pretty much flat on the deck, shoulders only high enough to allow the arms free play - again, with this suddenly enormous front, I had to sit up a lot more, raising my center of gravity, which once again does a bit of a number on your stability. Worked OK on a nice calm day, but I am not sure things would go so well in rougher conditions & that's a good thing to know. TQ and I reached pretty much the same conclusion after all of this, and that's that it's good to know that the extra flotation is there & works, but it makes normal operations just enough more difficult that I should probably reserve full inflation for a last-ditch measure.

I sincerely hope I never have to pull that tab in earnest.

Oh, yes, and here's why I came back to this topic. It's all Silbs' fault - he's musing on some boat-shape-related cowboy-rescue issues himself over at Silbs Says!

First Paddle of 2012 - Jan. 1, 2012, Sebago Canoe Club Frostbite Regatta

noreply@blogger.com (bonnie) — Wed, 04 Jan 2012 04:50:00 +0000

Setting out in my New Year's Day finery...

The sailors tried to get me to sail, but I just couldn't skip the New Year's Day rolling session. We had fantastic weather whichever craft you chose - the breeze was a bit light early on but picked up enough later on to let the 3 sailors who came out have a really nice sail around Canarsie Pol, and the 14 paddlers had fine conditions for a nice paddle around Ruffle Bar. With the air temperature being in the low 50's, we had some first-time New Year's Day rollers, which was fun...me, I got a little overenthusiastic & am nursing a bit of a sore shoulder today, I usually do 6 rolls when the water's cold, 3 onside & 3 off, but this time I went a little overboard - lost track of how many I did but at one point an offside roll didn't work and the onside recovery wasn't a good one. Anyways, it was a bit ouchy on Monday but it's already improving so I think I'll be OK, phew. Other than that, a great paddle, and as usual really good food afterwards, and yes, I took some pictures!.

Oh, and Chris B. was the only sailor who was there at the start of the day, but Holly and Jim joined him later in Sunfishes and he took some pictures from the sailor's point of view (including me in my penguin hat again -- jeeze, what is it about wearing a penguin hat that makes me so vain? I'm usually a bit camera shy but not with that hat on!).

Hope everybody out there also had a very happy New Year, and here's to peace, happiness, and lots of time on the water for 2012.

Last Sail of 2011 - Friday, Dec. 30th

noreply@blogger.com (bonnie) — Sat, 31 Dec 2011 17:16:00 +0000

Happy Nearly New Year to All!

Heading down the Paerdegat

Quint & I will be welcoming the New Year in our usual way - a good dinner (steak, the rest of my chard & whatever TQ comes up with for another side, yum!) and a movie at home, avoiding the masses and letting us get up early enough in the morning to go join the annual Sebago Canoe Club New Year's Day Frostbite Paddle and Rolling Session. I'm actually posting while making my contribution to the post-paddle potluck. I'd considered spam musubi but that would've taken a little more ambition than I was able to come up with, plus a musubi mold - maybe I'll do that for the season opener, but for tomorrow, it's My Mom's Sugared Pecans.

So I'll be starting out the year in a kayak as usual - but my goodness, Holly and Jim the Sailing Co-Chairs (plus my frostbiting friend Chris) must actually be turning me into a little bit more of a sailor than I used to be, 'cause my last boating excursion of 2011 was NOT in my trusty Romany, but in the Sunfish known as Baby Blue.

This was pretty much weather driven. I've been on vacation for the last 2 weeks, and TQ and I got in some nice paddles over that time, the last one on Tuesday when we simply paddled straight out into a 20-kt headwind for an hour and a half or so on a gray and rainy day & then turned around & surfed home in half the time - but Chris and I had had a great sail during my late-October "staycation" & he'd mentioned that if I had time over the holidays and the weather cooperated, he would be interested in another.

Well, boy, did the weather ever cooperate on Friday. Unfortunately that was on a day when Chris had an unbreakable engagement, but fortunately (because I won't sail alone in the wintertime), Holly the Sailing Co-Chair was available & up for a sail.

Weather came out even better than forecast - up until Thursday night it had been showing winds around 9 kts, with a pretty good chance of drizzle. The drizzle abruptly vanished from the forecast Thursday evening and was replaced with "partly sunny" -- and in the end, there wasn't even any "partly" about it. Sunny, high was around 51, and just enough breeze to keep the boats moving. We did a counterclockwise circle around Canarsie Pol. We agreed afterwards that there was nothing aerobic about it (although I did get to huffing and puffing a little bit when I saw Holly do a roll-tack and asked her about it & she tried to teach me - in the end I decided I would probably do better to come back to those in the summertime when falling backwards off of your boat is fun but I did work up a sweat trying it a few times) but what a lovely leisurely end to my 2011 boating year!

Here are a few more pictures from the sail. What a day.

Looking up the Paerdegat.

Holly, just outside the bridge

Heading out into the bay

Holly said there should be a picture of me, so I took one!

Lazy downwind leg behind Canarsie Pol. Holly gave me some pointers on sailing by the lee, great conditions for playing with stuff like that.

A million brants flew by us, hrrrnk! hrrrnk! hrrnk! There was a loon out there too, we didn't see it but we heard the unmistakable laugh a couple of times.

Bye bye brants, and bye bye Holly - I'd lost track of my steering scrambling to get a picture of Holly with the brants it the background! BTW, just click on any of the pictures to get a bigger version - this one you can't see the brants too well in the smaller one but they ARE there.

Sparkles & wake. We're not sure the wind even got up to the 8kts that had been called for, but there was always enough to keep the boats moving - launching to landing, our circumnavigation of Canarsie Pol was completed in an hour and a half.

Back up the Basin -

Dock, sweet dock.

And that's it for 2011 here on Frogma - Hau'oli Makahiki Hou to all, see you in 2012!

NYC Holiday Windows 2011

noreply@blogger.com (bonnie) — Fri, 30 Dec 2011 02:05:00 +0000

34th St. - Empire State Building and the entrance to Macy's. From here, I got one of the Chanukah faces of the Empire State Building (East and West were blue & white, North & South red and green).

It was a little bit late, but how could I skip my annual post about my annual trip to see the holiday windows with my friend Mandy? We started doing this in '09, and it's really starting to feel like a holiday tradition. I'd been doing a holiday walk through the Rockefeller Center area for a long time, but it's more fun to go with a friend. I'm posting a few pictures here - if you enjoy my "New Yorky" posts, you can go see more on Flickr.

We usually start with dinner at an Italian restaurant up in the east 60's; it's a favorite of Mandy's but being that far north, it's outside of the area we'd usually consider when choosing a dinner spot -- but with our favorite windows (Bergdorf's and Tiffany's) starting near 57th street, it works pretty well. This year, since I was on vacation & she's looking for work, we decided to experiment with reversing the order of the day - we started at Macy's and went north, finishing with dinner. That was nice in that it put those 2 favorites at the end of the route, but we'll be going back to the old routine next year because hooo, the crowds were insane! Macy's did have some special windows - magic marionettes on a magic star making ornaments out of wishes and rhinestones, but mostly rhinestones. I think we would've liked them but there were masses of people & no crowd control & we left pretty quickly because it just wasn't fun, you couldn't get to the windows without indulging in behavior more suited to the gridiron. We've seen crowds but never that bad.

The mobs may have had something to do with the very pleasant weather (windy for boating, but perfect for touristication), but we also think that maybe starting with dinner around 6 helped to put our sightseeing time back to an hour when at least parents of the smallest children would have already headed for home.

Fleeing Macy's, we headed on over to 5th Avenue. Our next stop was Lord & Taylors - we always like this one, they always do classic NYC holiday scenes with animated figures, like this park scene:

They had a fun twist this year in that they'd found a piece of advertising artwork, circa 1941, in their archives - it was entitled "What Is Christmas Made Of?" and showed a St. Nick with all sorts of holiday scenes incorporated in his suit:

They posed that same question to a number of children's organizations and asked the kids to do their own illustrations, and they took those pictures and framed them and used those to frame the windows - and in some cases even blew up some of the images and incorporated them.

I still remember how cool I thought it was when I won a prize (a gift certificate, and I still have the little beanbag elephant I got with it!) in a coloring contest when I was in 4th grade and had my picture go up the wall in the Mare Island Navy Exchange for a little while - I can't imagine how much these kids must have enjoyed seeing their artwork being admired by millions of people.

Next stop was Rockefeller Center.

Once again, hordes of people.

We paused to watch the Sak's Fifth Avenue Light Show. They used the entire front of the building for a projection screen showing a dance of bubbles & snowflakes. We noticed quite a bit of clockwork imagery in various displays this year - wonder if it was the Hugo Cabret effect? Later on we crossed the street to go look at the windows. Sak's used to be another favorite; they'd pick one of the season's crop of holiday picture books and they'd build animated scenes from it in their windows, but then last year they threw that concept out the window and just went kind of weird:

Sort of the same general idea as the Bergdorf's windows that I always like so much, but without as much commitment to taking whatever the theme is to the absolute nth degree of crazed, lavish opulence (hey, let's take this polar bear taxidermy form and completely cover it it with six hundred miles of upholstery fringe!). Meh. This year's were a little better, in fact they were tied in with the bubble-machine theme of the light show, the idea was that the bubbles were being produced by elaborately dressed mannequins operating machinery...interesting, but still didn't grab us. We moseyed, sidled, and elbowed our way on.

But before that...we had a mission to complete in Rockefeller Center.

YAY! TEUSCHER CHOCOLATE!

On past the tree and the rink again - glad I stopped to take pictures and watch the skaters the day before I went to Michigan because there was no way that was happening this time. I did get one nice shot - the little fold-out viewfinder screen on the back of the Lumix is wonderful for this sort of periscopic photography!

After that & the quick look at the Sak's windows, we had 2 more stops before dinner - both favorites, but Tiffany's totally blew us away this year. Their display windows are designed to showcase jewelry, and their holiday window designers always create beautiful little sets within that limited space. This year, though, they outdid themselves with a carousel theme - with the little jewel-case windows framed with carousel-art facings, complete with lights!

They'd framed out the windows even further with beveled & etched mirrors, and inside of those...well, I know it's the wrong season, but it was like looking into the most wonderful sugar egg ever made. Look - that's a little teeny Tiffany's in there -

You can't see it in that shot, but if you move over a little bit - look, just around the corner at the end of the street - there's a tiny carousel -

And in the rest of the windows, the carousel animals break loose and canter through a miniature New York (that is a scale model of the Gothic Bridge in Central Park.

I loved that one, but possibly the coolest from a miniature-scenic-design perspective was this lovely exercise in forced perspective - a close call between a tiny sleigh and a flyaway carousel horse high above Central Park. Again, you can't really see it, but there's a tiny carousel that comes into view - and as you move towards the edge of the frame, the Hudson River and the far shore come into view. Amazing!

Turning away from the last window (and I did leave a couple unshown), there's the snowflake that hangs at the intersection of 5th Avenue and 57th street...

which I learned, literally moments before adding that picture, is actually the Unicef Snowflake. I never knew that before, but when I went to post the picture I thought "What is the story on that snowflake, anyways - I know it's famous, but why?", and now I know!

We finished off the sightseeing part of the evening with a visit to the strange but beautiful worlds of the Bergdorf Goodman windows. This year's theme was "The Carnival of the Animals". For looking at, my favorite was the "Testing the Waves" windows, crowded with mosaic fish (insert terrible pun about tilefish here ______)

And for oohing and aaahing over the sheer painstaking labor of creation, this one:

with the animal figures crafted of cut paper.

Porcupaper? Paperpine? Whatever, isn't he lovely?

Hope you enjoyed this little slice of "New Yorky"! And again, if you want to see the other half of the pictures, they're all right here.

How Does My Garden Grow?

noreply@blogger.com (bonnie) — Thu, 29 Dec 2011 01:51:00 +0000

Bonnie Frogma, all a-gog-ma,
How does your garden grow?

With onions, sage, rosemary and thyme
and loads of chard, whaddayaknow!
**************

Just picked YESTERDAY from my garden at Sebago, after a fun paddle with TQ (winds gusting to 20 kts, we just paddled straight into the wind for a couple of miles & then turned around & surfed home, woo hoo!). I've just added a generous amount d to a big pot of lamb stew that's simmering on the stove all afternoon. TQ took some for the delicious chicken soup he made us for dinner last night, a friend's chickens got some less-prime leaves for a treat this morning, the stuff in the bowl went back in the fridge, and there's still more to pick in the garden. I'd planned to pick everything yesterday & freeze today if I had more than I thought I could use, but NOAA said the rain wouldn't start until 4 and NOAA lied, it was absolutely dumping by the time we got off the water around 3:30. I went out to my garden and picked before I took my drysuit off but it was just too yucky to keep going too long, so there's still quite a bit more to pick.

Did I mention it's December 28th?

Not sure whether this says more about the mildness of the winter so far, or the toughness of chard. Either way, I love it!

PS - ha! I was going to ask if anyone wanted to take credit for "all a-gog-ma" - I remembered that from a very silly 2009 post that was based on a lot of very funny comments people had left on another post. Forgot I'd thrown in a few of my own, though - "all a-gog-ma" was actually one of 'em!

Va Va Voom!

noreply@blogger.com (bonnie) — Mon, 26 Dec 2011 16:58:00 +0000

Off for the annual trip to look at the holiday windows...but gee, I'm looking a little zaftig here in this picture that TQ took on Christmas Eve Day. Maybe I should stay away from that infamous candy store window!

Naaaah...seriously, TQ took this photo after my 2nd try at inflating my new life jacket during our Christmas Eve Day paddle. Surprise, surprise, it works a lot better when you read the manual & set it up right! And man, when this thing inflates off the canister, it REALLY inflates - I think I'd stopped at halfway when I'd manually inflated for the pictures. I did a self-rescue with the vest inflated - it definitely makes things trickier having to work around this suddenly great big enormous chest, but it's totally doable and on the plus side, it's a lot easier to drain your boat well to begin with. I did paddle with it blown up for a while, and that's fine, the airbag is all in front of your chest or on your back so it's not it the way at all (I was even able to roll with it blown up) but I did have to loosen the straps to breathe comfortably!

Mele Kalikimaka!

noreply@blogger.com (bonnie) — Sun, 25 Dec 2011 14:50:00 +0000

Christmas Eve 2011, Jamaica Bay

noreply@blogger.com (bonnie) — Sat, 24 Dec 2011 23:21:00 +0000

Why You Need to Test Your Gear, Part 2: How It's Supposed To Work, And How I Probably Screwed It Up.

noreply@blogger.com (bonnie) — Sat, 24 Dec 2011 05:00:00 +0000

Relatively Shiny New Lifejacket - Kokatat Sea02. Purchased because it was the absolute best fit of all the lifejackets Randy had at New York Kayak Company when the poor old Lotus L'Ocean I'd bought from him back when I started gave up the ghost after over a decade of faithful service.

Well, goodness, it's been a while since my Failed (Yet Somehow Still Successful) Gear Test - holiday stuff, a wedding to attend in Michigan (yes, there WILL be a post about what Canoe-Buildin' Uncle is working on these days, he's got a couple of very nice projects in the workshop), and then just trying to wrap up work for the year. I'm on vacation until January now, and I'm hoping to need to do some good end of year trip reports...but first, yoicks, I really need to finish off with this unfinished gear test - because until I do, I'm, er, kindasorta paddling with a non-CG-compliant lifejacket. I need to do my second attempt at a test as soon as I get a nice day to do it and a couple of friends to keep an eye on me and hopefully film my hopefully successful second attempt. After that, I can re-arm the doohickey that makes it all work and then, yay, I'm legal again!

So tonight, I wanted to share how the device is supposed to work, and the stupid mistake I made that made it NOT work.

I'll just start off with an excerpt from the test, which I did in early December because we're getting to the point where a person with a hybrid inflatable lifejacket really wants to know that she can actually make it inflate. This was pretty much the outcome:

After I climbed back into my boat, I took a good close look at the device that was supposed to trigger the inflation and...d'oh! discovered I'd made a completely idiotic mistake. I must have been in a rush setting it up because I clearly neither read the instructions or even looked at the simple trigger device closely. Hindsight 20/20, and I'm glad I had the foresight to make sure that the first time I tried the thing WAS under very controlled circumstances.

Here, with a whole lot of pictures, is how it's supposed to work.

The jacket is constructed with PVC foam, same as most normal lifejackets - just a lot less. It has some inherent flotation - seven and a half pounds, when new. My old one, by comparison, had 15.5. The potential limitations of this reduced flatation are VERY clearly spelled out in the warning label inside the vest:

Might not be the right vest for somebody who's not really comfortable in the water. I did swim in it right away, it definitely floats me, but a lot lower.

What covers for the missing flotation? An extra layer built into the lifejacket.

Looks like a paddlefloat, works like a paddlefloat. The air bladder covers the entire front panel -

goes over one shoulder -

and covers the padded area of the back.

When something goes seriously wrong, you pull the tab

and if it's set up right, pffffffssssshhhh...you go from that svelte, low-profile 7.5 pounds of flotation

to a Stay-Puft-esque 22 pounds.

What makes this work, if you've actually read the instructions and been reasonably careful in setting it up, is a very simple little doohicky - a valve with a lever attached to it. In armed mode, the lever nestles neatly into a little slot on the side of the valve. When you jerk the deployment tab, the arm swings down.

Now, nothing happens here because I haven't got it set up - this was just to show the mechanism. Readying it for use requires a couple of other pieces that come with vest:

A cartridge of pressurized C02, and a tiny green plastic pin. You get 2 of each because (as I've shown) you really do need to test the thing once - the spare is for the test run.

The cartridge screws into the top of the valve.

Remember the little hole in the swing arm?

When the arm is properly slotted home ready for use, that hole and the hole in the plastic housing of the valve line up. The green pin is designed to slide in and LOCK there.

Now we're ready:

Once the green pin is in there, the only way it's coming out again is by being broken out - it essentially serves as a seal, and if it's gone, that means the lever's been pulled.

And speaking of seals...here's the last bit in how it works. The C02 cartridge is sealed.

Inside the gray plastic housing, there's a little metal spike. As the lever swings open when you jerk the tag, the spike pushes up into the seal of the C02 cylinder.

I couldn't get a good picture of the spike, but here's what it did to a little plug of tinfoil -

before:

after:

And that's all there is to it.

So how did I manage to screw up something so simple?

The green pin was the giveaway. I don't remember the circumstances under which I "armed" my new lifejacket - but I was clearly in some sort of big rush & just didn't look at the instructions or the device to see how it worked.

Instead, I must've just pulled it partway out from the pocket where it's hidden -

Said, "Oh, yeah, cylinder goes here, pin goes here, yay, let's paddle" -

and here's what I didn't see - until I discovered that the green pin was unbroken after a whole lot of yanking & looked a little closer.

I actually broke the pin trying to get it back out to reset for another try - shows that it's seriously designed to go in and stay in, and I'm told by one who knows that the Coast Guard knows to look for that bit of green plastic - without that seal saying the the jacket is properly set up, it won't pass inspection.

Looking forward to doing a hopefully more successful test - then setting up the 2nd set right!

Thus endeth the geek-out. Geeky enough for you?

Why It's Always A Good Idea to Test Your Gear.

noreply@blogger.com (bonnie) — Tue, 13 Dec 2011 05:04:00 +0000

Especially when it's new, critical to your safety, and involves anything remotely doohickey-ish.

This was my first attempt at using the pull tab to inflate my relatively new Kokatat Sea-O2 hybrid inflatable lifejacket. The jacket comes with 2 inflation cartridges precisely for this reason - you are specifically meant to give it a test inflation under controlled circumstances, and it's a really good idea to do so. Witness the above if you have any questions why!

I did, as I said, set it up - however, I apparently didn't bother to read the instructions first, or even take a very close look at the trigger device before I did. That's weird 'cause I'm usually pretty good about both of those, but I'm strongly suspecting that the failure of the vest to inflate was probably entirely due to my setting it up wrong.

I'll be making a 3-parter out of this - now that I've actually looked at the doohickey in question & figured out how it works & what I think I probably did to make it NOT work (it's not a particularly complicated little thing), naturally I now have to inflict ALL of that on anyone who'll stop by to listen (although I don't know if that will happen this week, got a lot going on so this may be my last post for a few days) - and then Part 3 will be the 2nd test, with a properly armed inflation trigger, which I expect (and hope) will have something closer to the expected results.

Discovering something like this in a real-world situation would be much less of a laughing matter. There is still the manual inflation tube, of course, and of course this being a hybrid, it has got enough flotation to let you catch your breath and DO the blowing-up - but it would be so much nicer if the thing just inflates the way it's supposed to when you ask it to!