With the hustle of everyday life here, it's easy to forget that New York is surrounded by water—water that's prime for kayaking, canoeing, and even sailing. That's where the Sebago Canoe Club comes in. Located in Canarsie, this nonprofit boating organization helps New Yorkers discover (or rediscover) the beauty of our natural surroundings, with beginner-level trips launching out of Jamaica Bay, part of the National Wildlife Refuge. We spoke to Canoe Club Commodore (more on what that means later) Tony Pignatello about the organization and how you can escape the city without ever leaving.
I’m guessing that some of our readers haven’t heard of the Sebago Canoe Club until now. How would you explain it to first-timers? I can give you a brief history: we started in 1933. There was a company in Brooklyn that had a cabin in Catskills. And the employees used to go there in the summertime and some of them started training for the Olympics, practicing canoe-racing and stuff like that. They actually ended up competing in the Olympics. The company eventually went out of business, and ACA—American Canoe Association— took over the camp and the club was still active. A lot of the members lived in the city, so they had an opportunity after World War II to get some City Park land…well, it wasn't Park land exactly, it was sort of an empty lot. But eventually they got some money and the club moved to Brooklyn. We've been there ever since, since 1955. We're on Park land, we have membership fees, which are very moderate, and we have about 225 members today.
Wow. What are your members like? How old are they, where do they live?Very strange! [Laughs] No, actually, they’re interesting. They're not corporate types, basically. They're very intellectual, a lot of teachers, a lot of lawyers.
Do they live in the city and come out, or do they live upstate or on Long Island? Oh no, we all live basically in four boroughs. Most of our members are from Brooklyn, a lot are from Queens, and then just a few from Staten Island and a few in Manhattan. We're on the other side of Brooklyn, we're in Canarsie. We're two or three miles from Kennedy Airport, so we're right near the Queens/Brooklyn border, and most of our members come from Brooklyn and Queens.
For people who are interested in coming out and trying a kayak or canoe, but don't know how to start, where do we start? Do you have to join, do you have to get a membership? No, no! In July and August, we have an “open paddle” program. That's every Wednesday evening at 5:30 and every Saturday morning at 9:30. We invite people to come to our club and try kayaking. We'll give you a mini-lesson on how to paddle, we'll get you a boat, we'll get you the paddle and the life-vest and we'll take you out on Jamaica Bay, part of the National Wildlife Refuge. The whole thing takes about three hours, the water time is about an hour and a half. All we ask is a $10 donation to cover our insurance costs.
I think a lot of people don't consider New York a coastal city. Do you think that people don't take advantage of the waterways that are within reach here? Well, that's changed. That's changed from the Bloomberg quite a bit. I don't know if you're aware of the New York City water trail? Maybe five years ago, the Parks Department started up a program where they built kayak launch sites in the city. There are now about forty-five kayak launch sites in the city, and it's called the New York City Water Trail. And there's a water trail map, you can go online and Google "New York City Water Trail.” There are all these launch sites in the city—Brooklyn Bridge Park is one, that's magnificent, they're building that up. Long Island City has one. We are one. Some of them are not very sophisticated and some of them are magnificent. So the city has come a long way. There were always kayakers but you know they were more individual people who would just go to a spot and just launch. But now it's different, there are a lot more sites and a lot more activity.
Can you give me quick rundown of all the boating options people have at Sebago? It looks like you have kayaks, canoes, and sailboats, and you even do these multi-day boat trips? Kayaking is the main activity with the largest group within the club. We also have a pretty big sailing component to it. We have about twenty boats, twenty-five sailors. These are small Sunfish, one-person sailboats, very small. They're pretty active in the club. Canoers, we're starting to get more of. People prefer kayaking to canoeing, so we don't really have a big canoeing program. We have about five canoes, thirty-five kayaks. They're starting it up again, so we have family trips planned, one on the Bronx River. But the two main things we do right now, kayaking is by far the biggest, and sailing is pretty active, and canoeing is sort of being resuscitated.
How did you personally get into the boating scene here? Ok! I'll tell you. I have an unusual occupation. I'm a professional gambler. So, ten years ago, I was working at home and I was going to the track everyday, and you know, it's not like a James Bond movie where I go into a casino with a blond on each arm, say Bingo! and walk out with $50,000. It's long, lonely, ten or eleven hour days. I had a friend who was a professor and he was off in the summers, so we started talking and he mentioned that he loved the outdoors and he had a kayak. He said, ‘Why don't you come to New Rochelle and try kayaking?’ And I did, and I just fell in love with it. I didn't want to go at first because he only had one kayak and he pushed me out there by myself! But I got out on the water and I loved it! So I ran out, I bought a kayak, and I looked for a club and I found Sebago and I've been there ever since.
That was ten years ago, and I started as a member, I took training, and now I'm an instructor. I'm a Level I instructor. I was the membership chairman, I've been on the Board. And then last September, they elected me as the Commodore.
What exactly does it mean to be the Commodore? Beats me! I don't even like the name! It sounds like I’m based in a Gilbert & Sullivan opera. I grew up in the Lower East Side, so I never had a boat. But last year, I ran for Commodore and I was elected to Commodore. If we were a corporation, I'd be the president.
I know that the Canoe Club as a whole has been around for 75 years at this point. I'm curious about your impressions of how the neighborhood has changed. Our neighborhood hasn't changed much, actually. We're in Canarsie. Canarsie is a middle-class, predominantly black neighborhood. Imagine Jewish, black and Italian, but the Italians sort of moved out. It's not totally black but it's mostly black. But it's middle-class, it's not a project. It's all, you know, one and two-family homes. It's very, very middle-class. It hasn't changed, it's not like Williamsburg or Brooklyn Bridge Park, or any of those places where they took up old factories and converted them to condominiums. It's nothing like that. It's just a middle-class neighborhood and it's been like that for years. We're not near public transportation, you take the last stop on the subway and then there's either a bus ride to get to us or a mile-long walk. We're near the water so we're not near public transportation. It's not like Coney Island.
So what does it look like out on the water from where most of trips launch? It's interesting, you go out into the Basin, under the Belt Parkway, and this beautiful Jamaica Bay opens up, with islands and tons of birds and stuff like that. And you're out on the water and there are small islands in the Bay, and when you go out, you can go to the other side, and you're like...You're out of the city. You don't even know you're in the city, and you can see the Empire State Building in the distance. It's incredible.
