“All Boathouses” Challenged to Race in Gowanus’s Fetid Course

Donna Alberico for The New York Times Canoers on the Gowanus Canal in 2010.

Sure, you were captain of your college crew team, but are you man or woman enough for the Gowanus Canal regatta

The Gowanus Challenge, a 2.5-mile sprint up and down the fetid Brooklyn waterway to be held June 15, bills itself as the first boat race where the entire course is on a federal Superfund site.

The race is organized by the Gowanus Dredgers, who have promoted water-sports on the canal since 1999. The Dredgers have issued a challenge to “all boathouses in New York City and internationally” to dash from their dock on Second Street in Carroll Gardens to the mouth of the canal and back.

Owen Foote, a founding member of the Dredgers, said Wednesday that he had received entries so far from the Brooklyn Bridge Boathouse, a member of the Red Hook Boaters, and one from an entity that called itself “Carnival Cruise Lines.”

“I don’t know who that is, but that could be fun,” Mr. Foote said. “It’s open to all boats.”

The race is a fund-raiser for the Dredgers, to support their programs in the canal and in Red Hook, Long Island City and on Staten Island, and as such carries a steep $500 entry fee. The Dredgers have held a race before, in 2007, before Superfund designation, but it was along a much shorter 250-foot course.

Federal guidelines for kayaking and canoeing the Gowanus urge boaters to “minimize direct contact” with the canal’s toxic water, which contains PCBs, polycyclic aromatic hydrocarbons, mercury and lead, not to mention sundry more-pungent if less-toxic aromatic compounds.

“Use care to avoid tipping,” the federal factsheet [pdf] advises. All race participants must sign the Dredgers’ standard waiver.

Mr. Foote, who estimates he has logged 500 canal miles over 14 years and has not only survived with his skin and limbs intact but has fathered a child during that time, dismissed concerns that an errant or extra-vigorous paddle stroke might poison a participant.

“You’d have to be a really good shot to splash water into somebody’s mouth,” he said.