The Kayakers Of Georgica And Other Stories

By Dan Rattiner

Bruno Schreck, one of the great outdoorsmen here on the East End, went to the East Hampton Town Trustees' office recently because he got kicked off the Maidstone Golf Course. He wasn't on any fairway or green, or even up by the clubhouse, for which, he would probably agree, he could legally removed. He was, instead, kicked off for paddling a kayak on Hook Pond, which for the most part is downtown, but at the far end serves as a cove that sticks into the golf course property.

From the golf course's perspective, this is the water hazard you have to drive over to get from the teebox of the fourth hole to the apron just in front of the fourth green for, hopefully, a little pitch shot close to the cup. It is a challenging drive off that tee, not for the faint of heart. You have to hit completely across this body of water, over ducks and swans and whatever else is in that cove, and it takes a clean shot of at least 180 yards. Otherwise, you are in the drink. It's a stroke and distance penalty. And, of course, you've probably lost your ball.

Well, either a player complained to one of the fairway rangers in a golf cart driving along seeing to it that play is not delayed, or a course ranger noticed it on his own: a kayak with two people paddling away in that cove.

According to the testimony of Schreck, who was one of the two people in that kayak - the other was his 10-year-old son - this ranger just shouted out to him that he was on private property and he'd better get off pretty quick.

"He just intimidated us right out of there," Schreck said to the trustees, at their office on Bluff Road in Amagansett. "Don't YOU own that pond?"

Indeed, the trustees do. And because of prior encounters that go back nearly 100 years, since that course was first built, the club, the trustees and the boaters know this.

Any resident can freely paddle by water into any cove or harbor in this town. And they have the right to do so. The club, which is trying to track down which ranger shooed them away, of course apologized for the error.

Many of our ponds, Georgica, Hook, Mecox, Sagaponack and Agawam, are located quite near to oceanfront, and people who live on them or near them - usually among the very, very wealthy - are often mistaken about whether locals can use them or have access to them. There are numerous public access points to all of them. And if you row a boat, kayak, canoe or sail, you are welcome to slide a boat into the water from atop your car and enjoy them as much as anybody.

Some of these ponds have artificial outlets that allow them to drain into the sea. But several of them still have to be drained the old fashioned way, by men with shovels or steam shovels cutting a ditch in the beach that separates the southern edge of the pond to the ocean. This project, which is called "letting," is done about four times a year, whenever the trustees determine the water is getting too high in Mecox, Sagg or Georgica Ponds.

Perhaps the most exclusive of all these is Georgica Pond, which is bordered by magnificent mansions owned by many of the very richest people in the world. As the waters rise in that pond, they grumble and complain that their basements are getting damp, but the trustees hold on until conditions are right. If they let the pond too soon, it might not fully drain. And if they wait too long, the balance of the salt and fresh waters that comprise the pond, which support the sea and plant life in the pond, could be changed.

Years ago, when a sitting President, Bill Clinton, came with his wife to East Hampton to spend a weekend fundraising, he stayed at the home of Steven Spielberg, who lives on Georgica Pond. The day before he arrived, very much at the wrong time as far as the trustees were concerned, somebody came in the middle of the night and let the water out of the pond. For the Clintons' stay, the pond bottom was mud.

The Secret Service never owned up to it, but it was commonly believed they were responsible for this, not wishing to put the President, as he might gaze out onto the pond at some kayaks(or paparazzi photographers) at risk.

There's an outfit in town, Hampton Kayak, which rents kayaks on Georgica Pond. They don't keep them there, of course. They keep them, eight at a time, stacked up on racks on a trailer that their bus tows to a public street that dead ends at the pond. There they launch the kayaks. Georgica Pond is a great place to paddle around in. At the end of the day, the kayakers come back to the bus and trailer. It works well.

Everyone on the pond knows that kayakers are welcome there and consider it just part of the landscape. But one wealthy billionaire, who lives on the pond, periodically calls up the kayak rental people and tries to rent all the kayaks for a particular day. He wants NO kayakers in the pond when he is having one of his private parties. The kayak company has never obliged him, or so they say.

There are so many ponds all through the Hamptons where people can kayak or row. They number close to 100. At some of the more popular ponds, the trustees of East Hampton and Southampton have built kayak racks on the beach. Like bike racks, they will each hold six or eight kayaks so people can keep kayaks right there.

I'm not sure about Southampton, but in East Hampton anyway, the trustees sell licenses for people to use these racks or, alternately, leave their kayaks on the gravel beaches of the ponds overnight. It is a source of income for the trustees. The total number of licenses for this service at this time is 50. And those who get them the prior year get first refusal for the upcoming year. Everybody else keeps kayaks at home when not in use, or on the beach, at their own risk. Given the popularity of the sport, it might be a good idea for the trustees to expand that number.

Both the East Hampton and Southampton trustees, and also the Southold trustees, are organizations that were put in charge of these bay and pond bottoms, wetlands and shorelines back in the days when Long Island was owned by the King of England. Every town on Long Island had them, up for reelection every two years, by permission of the king.

After the revolution, most trustees were disbanded. (The trustees in Huntington took off their trustee hats and left their offices, turned around and put on their town board hats and went back inside to pledge their allegiance to the United States at newly installed American flags.)

But here, the trustees have persisted as a strange and, actually, a very isolated bunch. Although they retain their rights to control and ownership of the wetlands and bodies of water on behalf of the residents, they do not collect any taxes to help them with enforcement. Instead they rely on the towns, or, for at least part of their revenue, the fees they collect from the renting of boatslips or kayak racks or the like. It's a good thing. For trustee-owned properties, they have to persuade the town to provide them funds to enforce things. So the two groups meet and have to agree.

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