oops! CIBBOWS aquarium swim race starting soon!

Oops! i’m so sorry! come and jump in the waters with the most warmhearted, welcoming swimmers to be found anywhere! CIBBOWS (Coney Island Brighton Beach Open Water Swimmers) race starts in 7 hrs! our kayakers have probably started already paddling from the east river to be there. I’ll be off soon, too. See you on the beach!

Aquarium 5K and 1Mile Saturday, August 7th 2010, 7:00am

if 7 hrs is too little notice to train, the next race will be on Saturday, November 6th 2010, 11:30am, the Veterans Day 5K, 1Mile, 2Mile

There’s no excuse to miss the next one: the annual Grimaldo’s Mile held every June:

Good luck, Swimmers! Thank you, kayakers, support boats, lifeguards, volunteers, caterers, fans!

cool charts

I love charts & maps, and here are some of my favorite sites:

Wikimapia: I like labeling, and it’s maddening to find someone’s beaten me. Clicking on the site will often lead you to the current occupier’s website, history, and other information. I’m always impressed with how thorough and fastidious my anonymous co-mappers tend to be. Map mode is easier to read street names. However, I like the satellite mode as some folks like to outline and label their boats! I’m still looking for the surveyboat–she was not at her slip the day of class photo. Please label resp0nsibly (anyone can label)! Friends don’t let friends label drunk.

Sturgeon Bay‘s out, Katherine Walker‘s out on the beat…everybody’s out working.

Google Distance Calculator / DaftLogic: Disclaimer claims that all distances are estimations, but this is great for measuring crumbling piers (in satellite mode).

So with this handy website,  you can see that the distance between Atlantic Salt and the DSNY Marine Transfer Station is, as the seagull flies:

8miles/12.6km/6.8nm

and yet we insist on rumbling over potholed roads, congested bridges, and through backed up tunnels to truck it, schlepping the salt through three four boroughs:

16mi/26.5km

when we could it tie it on seagulls’ legs and fly it!! duh!!

Antipodes Map: could we dredge our way to china? not by going straight through! we’d end up due west of Tasmania!
If It Was My Home:  this is a new find. You only feel like playing with this one once. Thanks, BitterEnd & RedRightReturning!

© 1987 D.Jouris/Hold the Mustard. All rights reserved. The copyrighted image may not be reproduced, altered, or transmitted in any format

Hold the Mustard: You in Funk? at War? in Hell? They have very fun maps! Thank you, David, for permission. Take a peek, place an order!

Upside Down and Unusual Maps: the last time I felt this disoriented was when I was driving the survey boat south, away from one of the many basins in Jamaica Bay. I was so confused: the chartplotter was north up, the manhattan skyline seemed east of us, the channel seemed south, my boss was checking our data, and I was tearing along at 20 kts headed straight for a shoal 1’depth at low water.

And! the Source—NOAA: Ode to 12327, Hommage to 12334!

¡Hola, fellow ChartLover! I have BOTH charts and Katherine Walker on here por te!

Short Sea Shipping in NYHarbor!

I love how that sounds! It would be, more accurately Very Short Sea Shipping, or simply, Harbor Shipping.
And expanding harbor shipping is only one suggestion for the Department of City Planning, who welcomes your voice in their Comprehensive Waterfront Plan for 2020. So, get involved!

Currently, our freight comes in as containerized cargo to New Jersey (Port Elizabeth, Port Newark, Jersey City-Bayonne), Staten Island (Howland Hook), and Brooklyn (Red Hook).  Everything is then mostly trucked around, with only some things moving off by rail.

Short Sea Shipping is the use of smaller vessels to bring goods from the central container terminals to various little ports around our city to get it all off the streets, and to you, via the water.

Your computer. Your clothing. Your chair. Your shoes. Your cup. The beverage in your cup (unless it’s good ol’ NYC tap–the best!). The dinner you will have tonight (unless you grew it yourself on your fire escape or illegally shot it in the park):  all these things we consume do not truly reflect what it cost to bring to you if we were to factor in the work and maintenance on roads, bridges, tunnels alone. (Not even going onto the topic of stress on the Mothership, yet.)

We are behind. Roughly 40% of freight in Europe moves by short sea shipping. And in Hongkong: mid-stream operation. Thanks, Carolina.

We currently have no little ports around our city, no working piers, limited usable docks, nowhere for feederships and lighters to tie up, some stevedores, but, no cranes for longshoremen to operate, nor storage facilities or transit sheds to hold the break bulk. (Notice, above, how many piers there were in 1933? A bit of history here on how we lost it.)

However, we have the water. NYC is richly blessed with waterways that can transport stuff into the hinterlands.

Here is what it might look like. As long as I am allowing my imagination to run amok and it is all theoretical, I shall be generous:

the newtown creek floating market & pick up point

oh, and while i’m fantasizing:

But here are the ones who know much more: America’s Marine Highways and Deep Water Writing‘s good starter package!

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Thank you, Department of City Planning, for opening the dialog for  VISION 2020 (clever!)

A very good write-up of the evening’s 4+ hr meeting was made by Frogma, found here, with interesting comments.

I regret to say, their ‘before’ slides were WAAAAAAY better than what they envision in the ‘after’ ones:

before

after

They proudly showed slides of “increased waterfront access,” but it looks exactly like the “waterfront access” we have now, which–getting to work for me–is:
• look to be sure no parks police are nearby
• climb over metal rail
• step on boat at the safest moment, or jump down if boarding at low tide.

It was put so well at the meeting from a commentator: we’d like not just ‘waterfront access’, but water access.
Yes! please, and thank you!

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where to get it: skysails, trailer bikes, cargo bikes, tallship…

(the Le Havre adventure/drawings! coming! coming!!)