A group of seven strangers sat in a 25-foot-long wooden boat on a recent clear-skied Wednesday evening, brows glistening with sweat as they rowed up and down the Hudson River.
They were not trying out for a crew team but taking part in a free, twice-weekly community rowing program hosted by the nonprofit Village Community Boathouse, located in Hudson River Park.
VCB board member Phil Yee served as the coxswain at the head of the boat, instructing the rowers to ease up or go harder. After more than half an hour of trying, the group — including a grandmother of three, a visiting Parisian dad with his 12-year-old daughter and two 20-somethings — established a rhythm, rowing in near synchronization.
Yee fell silent and smiled.
Volunteering at the boathouse connects him with history, the water and other people, he said.
“It’s fun. You don’t get wet like when you row in a kayak,” said Yee, a retiree who spent more than 30 years with the NYPD. “It’s the sense of community we try to get around here.”
Phil Yee helps steer a boat in the Hudson River off the coast off the West Village, Jul 9, 2026. Credit: Samantha Maldonado/The City Reporter
VCB took shape nearly two decades ago, after being spun off from a pioneering group called Floating the Apple, which aimed to expand recreation on New York’s waterways. The group offers free boating to the public, runs youth programs and sends teams to rowing competitions.
At the height of summer, there’s no shortage of ways to experience the city on the water — floating past industrial areas, glimpsing the skyline and the Statue of Liberty, exploring nature in more remote corners. They include numerous, free opportunities in all five boroughs to hop in a canoe, kayak, dragon boat or other vessel in lakes, rivers, bays and canals, whether for 20-minute paddles or hourslong excursions.
Volunteer-run, nonprofit organizations like VCB host many of the programs. Rangers in the Gateway National Recreation Area offer free kayaking around Jamaica Bay, while Urban Park Rangers with the city’s Parks Department run free canoe trips across the city.
“It’s a giant conspiracy,” said Graeme Birchall, former president of the Downtown Boathouse in Manhattan, which offers kayaking on the Hudson. “If you get people on the water and they enjoy it — which they almost always do — they begin to feel like it’s their harbor. They start to care that the harbor is clean and safe.”
For 24-year-old Chelsea resident Shelly, the recent boat row with VCB was her third. She said she appreciated the sun and open space, and her job as a software engineer was not on her mind.
“You’re just so far away from all of the work and all the hustle and bustle of the city, even though you’re literally right here,” she said. “And you get to talk to a boatful of people.”
Jet skis whizzed by on the water, making wakes that rocked the boats. People on piers waved from the shore. At one point, Yee learned someone in another VCB boat had gotten seasick. The two boats moved close together, and Shelly carefully climbed into the other boat to take over rowing duties.
VCB’s boathouse — a warehouse on Pier 40 — also contains a workshop where members construct the wooden boats, about one per year. They’re called Whitehall gigs after the Manhattan street where they were built starting in the 18th century. Back then, they were used to ferry cargo and people up and down the Hudson.
Members of the Village Community Boathouse row homemade vessels on the Hudson River, July 8, 2026. Credit: Samantha Maldonado/The City Reporter
In The Bronx, the organization Rocking the Boat also makes Whitehall boats. The group primarily focuses on youth development and allows the public to hop in one of the boats or a sailboat on Saturdays.
Nick Siewert, chief business development officer at Rocking the Boat, said its programs aim to make boating accessible to people beyond “the wealthy and the well-resourced.”
“We’re surrounded by water and many people in the neighborhood don’t even know it’s there,” he said. “It’s not perceived as an asset in the community in a way it definitely is.”
That’s relatable to Marc Sanchez, deputy director for the Urban Park Rangers, who grew up in The Bronx and said the only water he ever went near was the Van Courtlandt Park pool. Now, he leads paddles for both newbies and more advanced enthusiasts around places like Indian Lake near the Crotona Nature Center and Wolfe’s Pond Park on Staten Island’s South Shore.
Members of the Village Community Boathouse take homemade vessels onto the Hudson River, July 8, 2026. Credit: Samantha Maldonado/The City Reporter
Sanchez said Willow Lake in Flushing Meadows-Corona Park is one of his favorites because it’s typically not accessible to the public and takes a while to reach, but the effort pays off.
“It’s like when you’re climbing up a roller coaster, and then you get up to the top and see the whole park. It’s kind of like that, where we’re paddling, paddling, and then our pathway just opens and you just see there’s this great big body of water,” Sanchez said. “Folks aren’t seeing parks from the water. They’re seeing them from the paths, and the parks look completely different once they’re out on the water.”
Among those who run free boating programs, there’s a shared mission of providing New Yorkers the eye-opening experience of accessing parts of the city “that nobody knows exist,” as Beth Eller, commodore of Sebago Canoe Club in Canarsie, put it.
Once she’s paddled beyond the Paerdegat Basin and under a Belt Parkway span out into Jamaica Bay, Eller said, she feels like she’s entered a different world — one where she’s glimpsed seals from her kayak and birdwatchers spot birds they can’t see from the ground.
“Once you have a boat, the cost of going out is the cost of a peanut butter sandwich,” she said. “It’s not like tennis or golfing with fees.”
Members of the Village Community Boathouse take homemade vessels onto the Hudson River, July 8, 2026. Credit: Samantha Maldonado/The City Reporter
At the Vernam Barbadoes Preserve in Rockaway, VCB’s various types of paddle trips — jamborees, guided paddles, lazy Sundays — are a way to explore Jamaica Bay on a peninsula where the beach often hogs the spotlight.
“A lot of people in Rockaway go to the beach side constantly but have never been to the bay,” said Seamus King, who helps run the boathouse. “We can’t shout from the rooftops enough that it’s free and right there.”
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