This story takes place the winter after my first season of kayaking. My skills have improved since then, but I'm still not a big fan of winter paddling. I have fallen in that cold water, and it does suck. It just doesn't kill you.

It’s February in New York City. What on earth am I doing in a kayak? That’s a question I should have been asking myself, but my mind was occupied with more immediate concerns like, if I capsize, which is more dangerous: the icy water or the strong current sucking me into those pilings?

It started a couple weeks ago. I sent an email to Randy, the owner of the kayak company. The accumulation of work-stress, heartbreak, stir craziness and general NYC angst were getting to me. “Randy,” I wrote, “I'm feeling a strong need to jump in the river, so I figure I'd better have a kayak strapped to me when I do it.” Randy arranged for me to rent a dry-suit and we scheduled a Saturday afternoon trip.

Saturday morning the sun was shining and the mercury showed 42 degrees. The wind was on the cruel side, however. I layered up with every bit of synthetic, thermal clothing I owned, and I headed down to the pier.

Randy consulted the tide chart and shook his head. “So much for your nice, easy paddle,” he said. Low tide was coming soon, which meant the current was going about as fast as it ever does. A check of the weather brought a smile to his face. “It looks like a good wind from the south will help push us along and give us some nice, fun conditions.” A look out the window, however, erased that smile; the wind was blowing directly east.

Undaunted, we suited up. A dry-suit is basically a body-shaped ziplock bag that keeps you dry underneath it. It is a one-piece Gore-Tex jumpsuit that covers your feet like footsie pajamas, with latex gaskets at the neck and wrists. The result is that you could swim underwater in this thing and your body would remain perfectly dry. All my head had, however, was a wool cap.

I don’t know if I can describe how it felt to be back in a kayak. It was like being home, like slipping on a pair of jeans after having to wear a suit of medieval armor for a month. It was exhilarating and comfortable and just a touch unsure. But I couldn’t really reflect on any of these feelings because I was focused on the boat, getting myself situated, regaining my balance, loosening my hips to roll with the water. That is part of the appeal of the kayak for me, the break from thinking.

I paddled around the embayment a little, just to warm up, but then Randy called me over. He needed to adjust my seat forward. I’d forgotten that all of this stress had helped me lose 10lbs since the summer; my boat wasn’t sitting as low in the water and my bow (front of the boat) was sticking out. Rather than helping me control the boat, my bow was now acting as a kind of a sail. Moving the seat helped balance me out, but not enough.

We paddled into the strong current and started hauling ass toward the north. I was out of shape and tried to remind myself to use my core rather than my arms. I was paddling like crazy, not feeling the cold at all despite the bitter winds and icy spray of water when a wave would hit my bow.

“Like being on a treadmill, eh?” Randy yelled over. I glanced over my right shoulder; I could see the corner of the pier right next to me. My strong efforts had made no forward progress at all. I dug in and started to paddle harder, harder than I ever had before.

I was having trouble keeping a heading; my bow flipping from left to right. Randy suggested I drop my skeg, a small, retractable rudder that helps keep a straight line. Likely it was a combination of my bow still sticking out of the water and the strong wind, but with my skeg down my boat kept listing to the right, toward the sea-wall. I pulled it back up again.

At this point I was really working hard, digging my paddle in and taking long strokes. I was making some forward progress, though excruciatingly slowly. Already the muscles in my stomach were warm with effort and my mouth was getting dry. I had a bottle of Gatorade, but the idea of stopping paddling, even for a second, was laughable.

An unexpected wave hit me while my paddle was in the water on the other side and I had that tense, lurching sensation you get right before you capsize. Muscle memory was awake, however, and I flicked my hip to recover balance. I let out a little war-whoop, but it was strangled by my dry throat.

“How you doing?” Randy called over. We were almost at the end of the pier, which is only six or seven hundred feet; a distance that I could traverse in stiller water without blinking an eye. Here I was, though, exhausted and aching and working too hard to even contemplate what it would feel like to capsize in this freezing water.

“I’m running out of steam,” I replied. “Can we pull into this embayment to rest?”

“Let’s get up to that buoy,” he replied. “It’s safer.” The buoy was pretty far away, about the distance of the pier we’d just struggled to get past. Steeling myself, I kept paddling against the raging water. I was fighting to get a rhythm, though the waves drummed their own beat.

My thoughts became more primal, my goal more abstract. Waves would hit me and I would take shorter strokes for stability, sacrificing some forward momentum. All there was in the world was the paddle and the water, the cold, uninviting water. The water fighting me.

When I finally nosed into the embayment and hit those calmer waters, I felt like I had been paddling for years. In truth it was closer to thirty-five minutes. I’ll say this, I certainly wasn’t cold. Finally in calmer waters, I was able to take a drink; my tongue had been glued to the roof of my mouth and all I could taste was salt. Relief, time to take stock. Man, that was hard.

After a short rest, Randy suggested that we continue north toward Chelsea Piers, but I had to admit I didn’t think I could do it. Sheepishly, I asked if we could just go back to the pier. I told him that I was pretty close to spent. He agreed, telling me that “close to spent is a dangerous place to be.”

When we pulled back out into the current, it was moving so fast we had to stay close to the pier or we might not have zipped past the embayment without having time to turn in. What had taken us over thirty minutes to traverse before, we rocketed back in about two minutes.

Back in the embayment, we kind of floated around for a while and chatted. In summer I used to like to play in our “backyard”, pirouetting and serpentine-ing and having fun with the boat. At this point, however, I just didn’t have it in me. My muscles were beat, my energy was spent, and I was tense.

Kayaking isn’t usually tense for me, but the danger was so real today. Capsizing would have meant having my head dunked in icy waters. How long would it have taken Randy to right me? Could he get me upright before the current pulled me into a serious hazard? I’ve been told that the sudden shock of cold water can cause you to gasp out any remaining air; would I have enough air left to wait for Randy to flip me back, or would I have to bail? And if I did bail, it takes one to two minutes to get someone back in their boat; with that current speed we could have drifted to Battery Park in that time. Plus the whole drowning or shock or hypothermia thing.

I think the danger is part of what I needed, though. Something to snap me out of the funk I’d been in. Stepping outside of my comfort zone, making me perform or perish. But, having done it and survived it, I was done. We dragged the boats out of the water and I started to slowly become aware how cold it was.

Did I get out of it what I wanted? I did get a photo of me paddling in winter waters, though the clear sky belies the cold air. I had gotten some kayak time, a return to an activity I love on many levels. And there was some relief there as well, like when you clench a muscle really hard, then let it go. Still, next time I think I’ll go at slack tide.