Summer on the Gowanus

I love being a part of the Gowanus Dredgers. The organization has long advocated for the clean up of the canal. With some irony, the very thing that we’ve been championing is now keeping us off the canal. The EPA and the PRPs have restricted recreational boating past 9th Street, where there is ‘active dredging.’ Now, there are a whole host of reasons that we’re sour about this. We maintain that we can safely canoe around their equipment on nights or weekends when they’re not working. Boaters who haven’t been in conversation with the EPA continue to use the canal, even having the drawbridges raised for their passage. But if we’re on the canal on the wrong side of 9th, we risk fines and putting future conversations in jeopardy. So we adapt. We’ve wheeled the canoes down past 9th for launching and are working on an alternate dock situation. But the fact that we can’t launch from our boathouse means trips on the canal have been few and far between. But when we have been able to get on the water it’s been magical.

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I have the feeling that once we get construction going on our new dock things will move quickly. The site has space to store our canoes and is closer to the bay, so we have more adventures ahead of us. It’s a little more confusing to get to and we’re going to have to have a bit more supervision for our ‘open boating’ programs because it’s closer to open water, but I’m really excited about the potential. As much as I’m looking forward to the cooler weather of fall, I hope the cold stays off a bit so that we get some good paddle time in before winter!