Hi Everyone, Very interesting and informative thread...much appreciated. Here in the New York area, currents are king in terms of planning trips. Around Manhattan Island, the dynamics are very complicated. On the flood, water enters New York harbor simultaneously through both the Verrazano Narrows from the SW, and Throg's Neck from NE. The high point on the east side of Manhattan island is Hell Gate where the East River, Harlem River and Long Island sound converge. At slack it is a peaceful pool (for a few minutes). At max flood or ebb, it is a raging caldron with standing waves, eddies, even whirlpools and currents reaching speeds in excess of 5 kts. Meanwhile, on the West side of Manhattan, the flood flows up the Hudson and up the Harlem River to Hell Gate from the opposite direction. As Jack Gilman has pointed out in an earlier post, the Hudson is a tidal estuary to the Troy locks some 120 nm to the North (where the tidal variation is 4-5'). For paddlers, this often means that getting the currents right makes one feel like superman cruising along in the 6-8kt range with very little effort (often passing cars on the expressways); getting them wrong turns one into a helpless piece of driftwood able to make little or no headway. Undertaking a circumnavigation of Manhattan (about 25.4 nm.) can be regularly accomplished in 6-7 hrs by by the reasonably skilled and energetic. Even competitive swimmers can make the trip in less than 8 hours. The catch is that it must be timed within a narrow window to coincide with slack flood at Hell Gate. If it is not..? It's never happened to me, but I've heard the horror stories of strong paddlers being swept backward and spun around in whirlpools. In fact, none of the "rivers," around Manhattan are actually rivers any more. They are all channels and estuaries. It's quite an experience to watch the water in Hell Gate turn from flat glass to standing waves with whitecaps right before one's eyes. Jeff Brooklyn, NY *************************************************************************** PaddleWise Paddling Mailing List - Any opinions or suggestions expressed here are solely those of the writer(s). You must assume the entire responsibility for reliance upon them. All postings copyright the author. Submissions: PaddleWise_at_PaddleWise.net Subscriptions: PaddleWise-request_at_PaddleWise.net Website: http://www.paddlewise.net/ ***************************************************************************Received on Sat Sep 30 2006 - 14:34:33 PDT
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