Success! Our first public kayak tours
Sunday’s two public kayak tours were a rousing success. Following up on the highly in-demand free paddle in Fresh Kills Creek during last October’s Sneak Peak, these were the first public boating tours we’ve held at the Freshkills Park site. Visitors who joined us for the free tours were able to soak up the sun and take in the spectacular site while paddling Main Creek and Richmond Creek. We’ve posted our photos from the tours to flickr, and we welcome others who took pictures to add them to our flickr group pool.
We’re excited about the enthusiasm people have shown for boating in the site’s creeks. These tours have been incredibly popular — the wait list for the next two tours, on July 10th, is 50 names long! The summer’s final tours will be Sunday, August 14th. Registration is not yet open for them but will be offered first to members of our newsgroup. This year’s Sneak Peak, on October 2nd, will also provide boating opportunities, and we hope to offer more programming like this next year.
These tours would not have been possible without the very generous support of a variety of committed partners: the New York Container Terminal, which donated the shipping container in which our equipment now lives; the Downtown Boathouse, which donated kayaks and life vests; and Kayak Staten Island, which provided kayaks, vests, paddles and water safety instruction and co-led the tours with us. We’re grateful to all of them.
