5/1/19 Wed. Lunch Paddle: Rockport Breakwater

[Joseph Berkovitz]

Route: Lanes Cove -> Andrews Point -> Rockport Breakwater -> Halibut Point -> Lanes Cove
People: me (Cetus), Bob Levine (Explorer)
Rockport tide data -- HT: 9.48a (8.34'); LT: 3.53p (1.04')
Conditions: Glassy calm increasing to light SE, then SSW 5 kt (which was not predicted), very light, long swell on outside. Overcast with spotty light rain, air 45 F, water 45 F.
Track: https://www.gaiagps.com/datasummary/track/2cc21ba97ca3bf634e73e95b7530e89d/?layer=gaianoaarnc

10.30a: Launch from Lanes Cove. On Ipswich Bay the sea was almost mirror-flat, reflecting the gray overcast so perfectly that the horizon was practically invisible in places. Only the dots of distant buoys conveyed a sense of receding distance. Given the incredibly mild conditions, we opted to head around Halibut Point and enjoy a bit of the open ocean, perhaps head to the breakwater.

11.00a: Crossing Folly Cove, conditions were so calm that I wanted to measure my paddling speed using GPS without the confounding factors of wind or current. I did a couple of runs in opposing directions and averaged them out, both cruising (3.3 kt) and sprinting (5 kt).

11.30a: Left Andrews Point for a 30-minute crossing to the historic Rockland Breakwater. Along the way, we stopped at green can "3" to gauge the ebb, which appeared to be flowing quite substantially in our favor. (The GPS track shows we were getting an extra knot of speed at that point.)  We wondered when and why the can's gong has 3 different notes triggered by hammers of different lengths, and whether the sound can be interpreted by mariners in any useful ways.

12.00p: Arrival at the breakwater.  This massive failed project delivered both great expectations and disappointments in its day.  (See https://vintagerockport.com/2011/01/17/putting-the-top-on-the-sandy-bay-breakwater-circa-1912/ for a quick background.) Bob had been before, but I had not, and neither of us had landed there. The breakwater is often a violent place that you wouldn't want to approach, but today seemed like a good day to try it as the water was as close to motionless as it gets. Alongside the breakwater looked unlandable but we thought there might be some broken up sections at one end or the other that would afford a possibility.

A lobsterman was pulling and laying traps at the SW end of the breakwater, so we headed to the NE end along the inside. The breakwater was stepped like a long, linear ziggurat built out of huge granite blocks. At the end, a large white harbor seal was perched improbably on one of the blocks, calmly staring at us. We moved away and headed around the outside of the breakwater out of its visual range; fortunately the seal didn't launch. Back at the SW end again, we poked around looking for a landing spot. And we found one, in fact the only one that seemed doable at the time: a big seaweed-covered block exactly big enough for two boats:

(I was standing at the other end of the block, to give you an idea of how compact this situation was!)

There was a nice flat course of submerged lower blocks around it to stand on, while we lifted the boats up to this one, waiting for such swell as we could get to raise the boats a little higher. Then we walked on the underwater blocks over to the main breakwater and hauled ourselves up for lunch at this spot, nicely sheltered from the wind at that time:

The lighthouses visible in the background are one of the Thatcher lights, and Straitsmouth light.  Note for future landings: tide level was about 1/4 above low tide (1/12 + 2/12), so 1' + (8-1)/4, or a little less than 3 feet. At maybe 2' higher water (or 1' lower) it might be easy to just shift a boat directly onto a block without any lifting.

12.50p: Launch from the breakwater, just as the submerged course of blocks was being uncovered by the falling tide. Bob put his boat carefully in the water, clipped in to it, and then stood in the water first, clipping into his boat and taking one end of mine while I lowered it from our "parking block". Then we each cowboyed into our boats, as there was no other convenient way to get into the cockpit in the chest-deep water.

1.57p: Just north of Folly Point, a pod of 3-5 porpoises came rolling by in one of those magic ocean moments. It was so quiet we heard their quick breaths as they surfaced and dove.

3.40p: Landing at Lanes Cove!

This was a super fun paddle. We probably would not have done the breakwater with a group, since it would have been unlikely that more than a couple of boats could land there, but everything else about this trip was a perfect, relaxing early-spring outing.

Look for another trip to be posted next week, Wed May 8.

 

[Dan Foster]

Looks and sounds like an idyllic trip. Hope to join you later in the season for a few of these.

Perhaps Can #3 has three tones on its gong to reinforce its "Threeness". If so, I'd hate to live next to Can #17. I know that our "right red returning" is opposite of the red/green color scheme used in much of the rest of the world. Do they swap the can/nun buoy shapes as well? If so, there's a distinct possibility that Cans numbered "2" throughout the Amazon are painted and instrumented to look and sound like toucans.

[EEL]

"Do they swap the can/nun buoy shapes as well? "

No, just the color.  Nuns on right entering harbor is universal. Red or Green, they are always on right.

Ed Lawson