The Hudson River at Piermont

[Journal entry for August 12, 2006] Around 5PM, Dallas and I launched Duck, our tandem sea kayak, at Flywheel Park in Piermont, NY. The tide on the Hudson River was low, and quite a bit of beach exteded below the wooden boat ramp. The day was sunny, with a bit of a breeze. We paddled eastward, paralleling the north side of Piermont Pier, and passing another kayaker and a wind-surfer. The view to the north is dominated by the Tappan Zee Bridge, and the south by the hills of the Hudson Palisades. Lot of people were on the Pier, both along the walkway by the co-ops and at the dock at the end. The tide was causing some standing waves, just north of the tip of the Pier. We splashed though these. We the turned southwest and headed into Sparkill Creek (or I suppose I should say Spar Kill, to avoid the redundancy). The lower part of this creek is tidal, and runs through Piermont marsh. We spotted several herons fishing amid the tall marsh grass. Several human anglers were also set up on the banks. After taking some photos, we turned Duck back into the Hudson, and paddled a broad loop back towards the tip of the pier, passing a couple of people in a canoe along the way. We again paddled through the patch of standing waves, finding that we could now surf them in this westward direction (so maybe they were not really standing). We sprinted back to the launch, passing a moored powerboat with some more anglers along the way. About 4.5 miles of kayaking in 1:12.