A plan from the Parks Department’s Marine Unit to reconstruct the Dyckman Marina has the Hudson River Community Sailing group heading for treacherous waters.
Estimated to cost about $20 million, according to the Parks Department, the project initiated in 2022 would rehabilitate the docks at the marina, one of two in Manhattan owned by the city, along with the Inwood Canoe Pier, the Dyckman Fishing Pier and adjacent shorelines at Fort Washington Park.
The Parks Department plans to close the docks as part of the reconstruction scheduled to begin next year. That leaves HRCS wondering how to get about 100 middle and high school students on the Hudson River to learn how to safely travel the water at Dyckman, where it has had 10 sailboats for nearly a decade. The group would have to reapply for a new permit to continue operating after the dock work, which is expected to take two years to complete, is done.
HRCS, which also has 15 sailboats docked in Chelsea, offers recreational sailing to local residents while also partnering with five nearby middle and high schools: Amber Charter School, Atmosphere Academy, City College Academy of the Arts, Kipp Beyond and Salomé Ureña Leadership Academy.
About 1,200 people launched sails with HRCS last year, according to spokesperson Maeve Gately, including those who participated in its adaptive sailing program for people who depend on wheelchairs.
HRCS executive director Robert Burke said their services wouldn’t be easy for the Parks Department to replicate.
“They’re not able to provide on-water access because of resources and liability, and so they need nonprofits to do this type of thing,” Burke told THE CITY in a phone interview. “So when it makes it hard for those nonprofits to plan, then I think the community suffers.”
Burke said it will be difficult to find other sites for on-water activities, as they are not “feasible operationally.”
“The alternate locations — they don’t either have the depth, they don’t have the docks, they don’t have the access,” he said, noting that potential sites in Manhattan, The Bronx and Queens need at least six feet of depth at low tide to support their sailboats or would be too distant for the students that go to school in Inwood and Dyckman.
Altogether, nearly 100 New Yorkers under 18 work, volunteer or participate with HRCS at Dyckman, and many could lose their connection with the water if the group loses access to the docks.
Even sailing on the much closer Harlem River would be too difficult.
“People always ask us, ‘Why couldn’t you sail on the Harlem River?’ You can’t sail boats there because the bridges are too low,” said Gately. The sailboats that the group owns have masts that are about 40 feet tall. The heights of the Broadway Bridge and the University Heights Bridge, the bridges on the Harlem River closest to Inwood and Dyckman, are both just over 25 feet.
While the Parks Department has yet to complete the design for the project, much less release a request for proposal, it anticipates beginning construction next summer that would take about two years. The agency did not say when exactly the docks would close, though HRCS officials told THE CITY they had been informed that the site would shut down in early 2026.
“We believe this project will be transformative for the Northern Manhattan waterfront and allow all New Yorkers to better experience the City on the water,” Kelsey Jean-Baptiste, spokesperson for the Parks Department told THE CITY in a written statement.
A spokesperson for the Parks Department told THE CITY that it notified HRCS in November 2022 that the docks would close fully during construction for logistical and safety reasons, giving the group ample time to prepare. To keep HRCS in operation when construction begins would have required building additional docks that would have tagged on $4 million to the budget and add two years of delays for design and re-permitting, according to the agency. The spokesperson also said that the department informed HRCS that they could not accommodate that additional phase.
The Parks Department offered HCRS six sites, including the 79th Street Boat Basin A-Dock, West Harlem Piers Park, Muscota Marsh on 218th Street near the Dyckman Docks and the Inwood Canoe Club in Manhattan. In The Bronx and Queens, they suggested Hammonds Cove Marina and Bayside Marina.
They said that Bayside, 79th Street Boat Basin A-Dock and West Harlem Piers Park, managed by the Economic Development Corporation, had sufficient depth for HRCS’s sailboats, which the organization rejected as too far or difficult to access.
The group also said that none of the sites could accommodate their afterschool or adaptive sailing programs. And while they did learn about the shutdown of the docks at a Manhattan Community Board 12 meeting in November 2022, Gately claimed that the Parks Department did not directly speak to the closure of the group’s sailing operations at Dyckman until the spring of 2023, adding that they did not receive written notification until November of that year.
Parks took control of the boat docks in 2019, after a judge stripped ownership from the financially and legally embattled Manhattan River Group that also ran the now-defunct La Marina restaurant that the city once shut down for noise, underage drinking and liquor law violations. The business also faced claims of wage theft and worker harassment, and co-owner Fernando Mateo, who went on to lose to Curtis Sliwa in the Republican mayoral primary in 2021, admitted to trying to bribe then Mayor Bill de Blasio years before.
HRCS got a permit for sailing activities at the Dyckman Marina in 2016 that expires in April 2026. The group could reapply for a permit to operate on the marina once the construction is complete. But for the time being, the organization is preparing for its eventual displacement from Dyckman.
“We’re going to continue with the schools, so we’ll be in there in the wintertime, building boats, building robotics, learning about the oceans and the waterways, and then during the warmer sailing season, we’ll be doing activities,” said Burke. “We’ll go to other places to sail, whether it’s down here in Chelsea or we have a program out of Shelter Island [in Suffolk County] and SUNY Maritime [College]. It won’t be the same as going to a place after school or learning to sail, but we’ll continue that.”
Burke said the group is unsure what to do with its 10 sailboats at the Dyckman Marina now. They cannot be accommodated by the docks at Chelsea because there isn’t enough space to join the already 15 sailboats that are currently there.
‘Nerve-Wracking but Fun’
THE CITY joined HRCS instructors and newcomers on an hourlong introductory sail on Sunday on the Hudson River, between the Dyckman Marina and the Englewood Marina in New Jersey.
Four other sailboats could be spotted nearby on the Hudson just north of the George Washington Bridge. Jet ski riders sped by the Dyckman Marina docks towards The Bronx while a southbound Metro North train chugged past them. The waters were calm and the winds were gentle — a perfect combination for beginner sailors.
“It was nerve-wracking but it was fun,” said first-time sailor and Washington Heights resident Maryam Perez, 30, who wanted to try a new activity. “I like being on the water. I like exploring different parts of New York, and I was just open to see what it was all about.”
Alexander Dienstag said he was coming from a driving lesson to refresh his skills on the road, when he walked by the marina and saw that HRCS was offering free sailing. He signed up on the spot.
“Just being on water, just being exposed to wind, and just being surrounded by two different lands that have green instead of something like concrete — it’s very therapeutic. It does something to your brain that the city doesn’t really do,” said Dienstag, who lives in Harlem.
Under the tutelage of their instructors, Perez and Dienstag learned how to use the main halyard to raise and lower the main sail and how to guide the tiller, which steers the boat, by shifting it the opposite way of the direction they needed to turn the boat.
Another first-time sailor on Sunday was 23-year-old Shania Butler, who is wheelchair dependent.
“I did not think I was going to be able to steer the sailboat the entire time that we were sailing,” Butler told THE CITY in a phone interview days later. But she was able to, and the experience ��was incredibly empowering and also a really great time.”
HRCS staff and volunteers used a motorized boat access lift to transfer Butler from her wheelchair on the docks to the adjacent sailboat.
Butler, who served as a lifeguard for seven years before becoming disabled two years ago due to a spinal cord malformation, said she was struck by the “vastness of the water” and that she saw some Atlantic Sturgeon, one of the largest fish that can be found in the Hudson River, jump through the surface.
For the last four years, HRCS has offered adaptive sailing that allows disabled people or those who struggle with mobility to set sail. The program was initially created as a way to cater to veterans who have limiting injuries.
Butler, a native of Crown Heights who still lives there, decided to give sailing a try after her father had sailed for the first time with HRCS at its docks in Chelsea earlier this summer.
She was skeptical of sailing, she said, but after practicing adaptive archery in Brooklyn, wanted to continue her momentum with other sports and activities that can be adapted for disabled people.
“I think a lot of times after people experience a major disability and are wheelchair dependent, people often think, ‘Why me?’” said Butler. “And the mindset shift of ‘I can’t do anything’ moved to me wondering ‘What now? What can I do right now with what I have?”
Burke noted that adaptive sailing can operate well at the Dyckman Marina because there are calm waters and enough depth, at least 6 feet when the river is at its lowest tide. It would be much more difficult in Chelsea, which has choppier waters due to increased boat traffic from ferries and more motorists using the waterway, he said.
Gately, HRCS’s spokesperson, said the adaptive sailing program served 80 people last year, who set sail 250 times.
‘I Don’t Know What I’m Gonna Do When This Place Closes’
As sailors gain more experience, they get to go as far north on the water as the Tappan Zee Bridge near Tarrytown, and as far south as the Statue of Liberty, said Burke.
Analise Rivera, 16, who’s grown up in Dyckman, has been sailing with HRCS since the fall of 2019, when she began sixth grade at City College Academy of the Arts in her neighborhood.
“It was scary because I’m out on this water. I don’t want to fall in. But once it was done at the end, I was like, wow, I don’t regret this at all. Let’s see where this goes,” Rivera recalled. Now, she sails at least once a week after school and even more during the summer months. She’s even been able to coach her mom.
Her favorite part of sailing is when the boat begins to heel, or tilt heavily on one side as the wind puts pressure on the sails.
“I literally want my boat to be 90 degrees to the water. I love when the boat is just basically touching the water, then you can see all the ripples and stuff. It’s just so pretty to watch,” said Rivera, noting that she tries to be pretty adventurous — “‘cause if you don’t take risks, what are you doing?’”
After years as a student with HRCS, she started working there part time in 2023 during her sophomore year of high school at the City College Academy of the Arts — working with middle school students in the same position that she was in once and helping the group’s ecological programs to build bird houses, robotics that swim underwater and artificial reefs.
Though Rivera could keep working with HRCS in Chelsea, the imminent closure of the Dyckman Marina has her uneasy.
“I don’t know what I’m gonna do when this place closes. I’ve been here for so long, like almost six years … And Chelsea is just so far,” said Rivera, who began to shed tears. “I’m sorry. I don’t know why I’m getting emotional, but I guess I really just love this place. I don’t know, it’s just nice coming down here. I really — I feel so productive when I come out to work.”